Ok, now that we’re settled in, I’m going to do my best to use this blog to inform, embellish, and illustrate what life is like out here in Plano. I will attempt to cover every genre, such as horror (traffic, “big-city-folk”, and job interviews), drama (missing Abilene, Crosspoint, friends, etc.), fantasy (starting churches, self-employment and entrepreneurial dreams), and of course comedy, which will mostly fall under the subcategories of satire and sarcasm (visiting churches). I’m not sure if I will be able to justly represent sci-fi, but you never know.

Today will be my first installment of our adventures in church visiting. I’m going to try my hardest not to be too rough or condescending, but I’m telling you right now….that’s going to be very hard to do, considering where I’m coming from.

First, as someone who has his finger on the pulse of the emerging and missional movements, it is difficult to repress the impulse to “write-off” entire groups, denominations, and structures before even taking a look at most of the churches around here. Katy and I have been very spoiled for the last two and a half years and as a result we have become a little snobbish about what a church should look like, what the vision should be, what the worship should be like, etc. And especially that last part about worship. Considering the fact that I’ve been leading worship at my local church on a regular basis for the past 10 years or so, worship music will be an extremely sensitive issue for me.

First of all, I’m not ready at all to say that full-time worship ministry is not what I should be doing. In fact, if this past Sunday has done anything, it has encouraged me to remain in worship ministry as much as I can. So, the very idea of me standing in the congregation every Sunday is heartbreaking. It’s been nice these past couple of weeks, but I’m not sure how much longer I can do it. There will be much to blog about in the future.

Secondly, the fact that I am so passionate about worship and music and church ministry makes me extremely analytical when I am sitting in a Sunday service. I am constantly comparing my own worship preferences to what I am observing, thinking to myself what I would change, what I would do, what I don’t like. You have no idea how tough this is. Again, I will blog a lot about this too.

Also, I am also extremely passionate about church period. So in a situation where I am supposed to be a little analytical because I am looking for a good church to plug my life into, I find myself in analysis overdrive. I take notes about every single detail. Website, facility, bulletin, logo, vocabulary, instruments, powerpoint graphics, atmosphere. And in case you didn’t notice, these are all things that I was in charge of at Crosspoint. These are the things that I care about. I’m also taking notes about the more central things like worship, preaching, people, etc. It’s just that I make an analysis of way too many things, thus the percentage of negative opinions increases.

Ok, enough explanation. I’m sure I will have more to say about this stuff on the future “Church Visiting” posts. For now, let’s talk about yesterday’s visit. By the way, the names of the churches we visit will be kept secret on order to protect the innocent and the ignorant. Hey, I don’t want any members of the churches I visit to read this blog and bug me with hateful and defensive comments. I get to do the hating here. My blog. Deal with it. But out of the kindness of my heart, I will choose not to name names. If you really want to know, call me and I just might tell you.

The church we visited yesterday was our first choice because it was among the churches I looked up that had a decent website. It had good information on the site and I picked up on some good vocabulary in their core values, such as “biblical teaching”, “intentional relationships”, “engaging the world”, and “authentic worship”. Pretty good stuff, huh? It looked good on my computer screen, so we checked it out.

First of all, we got a little jipped because the pastor wasn’t preaching that morning. Instead, one of the missionaries the church supported made a presentation along with sharing a message with a Japanese pastor who he had been working with in the field. That part was actually pretty interesting. It was cool to hear about what God is doing in Japan, one of the darkest parts of the world. Still, it was disappointing to not be able to hear the pastor do his thing. He did lead in communion at the end of the service, though. The crackers were pretty good: crunchy, not too salty, but buttery. The juice was good, but the shot glasses were smaller than I was used to…not quite enough to wash down that cracker.

I’m not gonna lie, worship was painful for me. I could hardly take it. There was a band, but not the good or talented kind. First of all, there is no paid music minister or worship pastor, just a volunteer forty-ish fella who was obviously not musically trained. Here’s the basic layout: He led the singing, but not really because three women and another guy stood right next to him, singing…kinda like and ensemble. The musicians consisted of a grand piano player, keyboardist (sweet), some high school kid playing acoustic guitar, drums, trombone, saxaphone, and french horn I think. Needless to say, it was a pretty mushy sounding band. Plus, they had a lot of trouble staying together, reading each other, etc. They did some decent songs, but with that kind of sound, it just didn’t sound right at all. Not to mention that the “leader” kept inserting these cheesy anecdotes in between the songs that sounded a bit formulated, although they could have very well been sincere. As a result, just five songs that would take me less than 20 minutes to lead through lasted about 40, standing the whole time. He said we were free to sit whenever we needed to, but then he would say before each song that he felt it was a “standing up song” or something, so everyone kept standing.

From what I saw and heard of the pastor, he seemed like I good and genuine guy, but he also came off a bit cheesy due to a evening DJ type of voice. I kept waiting for him to introduce a soft rock song from the early nineties, dedicated from boyfriend to girlfriend. This isn’t the type of voice I want to hear when the Word is being preached.

Now I know I’m being really picky, but hey, church is a big deal to me, so everything matters. Most of my complaints about “cheesiness” is almost entirely due to my paradigm of Crosspoint I’m sure. Crosspoint has no tolerance for that kind of nonsense, so I can detect the slightest aroma of cheese in most other churches.

So I guess I should say “thanks” and “no thanks” to the Crosspoint crew for making me so finely tuned to every aspect of church, but I know that I’m equally to blame and I was already a cynic, even before Crosspoint was around. So, I think it’s safe to say that this church was not a fit. I realize that I will end up in a pit of frustration and disappointment if I go out every week expecting to find another Crosspoint out there. There can never be another Crosspoint; every church is different. But I think it’s ok to have expectations and standards, even if they are high and specific. I know God will bring us to the right place and let us know if we need to sacrifice a preference or two.

I know this is a long post, but first of all I had to preface myself a whole lot just this once, so the future posts will be shorter. Secondly, I’ll only be posting once a week on this topic, assuming I will visit a church just once a week. Alrighty then, that’s all for this episode, but post a comment if you like and tune in next week!