Roller coaster ride at church

We went to church this morning and it was a roller coaster ride.

This church is in Tega Cay. Of course, if you don’t live here you have no idea where that is. But it was further than I remembered. And I was thinking, “This is not a local church (for us). Bummer. Where is the turn off?!” I was almost ready to turn around when we saw it.

Not such a good start.

But we found it and managed to find our way in and find a seat. We were just a minute or so late and the service had already begun. That’s good, teach us to arrive on time. The first half of the service was really wonderful! The music was great and singable. There was such excitement. And there were times of free worship. And prayer. It did not take long to discover this was a church that emphasized prayer. I was starting to think, “Yes!” Excitement was beginning to build and I was really comfortable with what we were seeing.

Then the Pastor stepped forward and began his part. And the longer he spoke the more discouraged I became. He spent nearly the entire teaching time on his introduction to the new series. He did have an occasional good thing to say, but I wanted to stand up and say, “Stop with the introduction and give us the Word.” And when he did finally get to a text it was ok. He said some really questionable things like – “Heaven, the New Jerusalem, is already occupied; people are living there and working there; they have jobs. There is government there with laws (just like here, mayors, alderman etc).” He said some good things, “When believers die young their life is not cut short, they just got an early promotion.” And funny things, “In a recent staff meeting, a staff member mentioned that I had been talking about the second coming a lot. Maybe too much… I’m gonna miss him.”

We may well need to go again to get a better feel for this fellowship. But as I sat there I realized something once again: There must be a school somewhere where they teach these things: no pulpit, just a little table like at a night club, elaborate visual aids on the platform corresponding to the message/series, and they don’t have pastors and pastors’ meetings, they have Staff and Staff Meetings. This church was a mix of ‘old-time excited’ and ‘new program.’ Who is the guy or where is the school all these pastors go to? Why do all these churches want to look like a night club instead of preaching the gospel and teaching the Word in a simple and straight-forward manner??

He used a lot of different versions. I have never liked that. It makes you feel like he picks a version that says what he wants to say rather than let the Scripture speak and then explain it. But he did finally get to a passage and go through it. And he did use a Bible – I’ve been to churches where the Pastor didn’t even hold a Bible, just loose leaf notes on his little night club table. (One church where the worship leader was rebuked for bringing a Bible to the platform and reading from it). This pastor did ask us to turn to Psalm 1 but he sort of discouraged us from turning in our Bibles to follow him, as every verse he used was on the screen.

As I said, a roller coaster ride this morning. Probably have to go back to make sure of some things. Over all: good worship and his message, when reduced to a sentence (which he did) was good – The grass really is greener in heaven!