Church Experience

A friend of ours asked us a few days ago how we would rate our “church experience” right now. This has something that I have given a lot of thought since. In fact, it has been on my mind a lot lately. Greg and I have discussed it, and we both agreed that we think our church experience could be better. In saying this, I feel I must first disclaim that some of the fault for this lies with us right now:

1) We haven’t been regularly attending Sunday School.
2) The distance to our church is a huge factor-it takes us 45 minutes to get there and that is with good traffic at 6:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning. We don’t miss services (unless we are out of town), but this makes it really difficult to get involved in other church functions outside of Sunday mornings.
3) We are not overly outgoing and seeing people only on Sunday mornings (Sunday School included!) tends to lend itself to just a casual acquaintance mode rather than close friend mode.
4) We have not been attending our “other” church, Re:Focus, either lately due to my tiredness in the evenings after a full day of work.

That said, I feel as if I have been drifting for quite some time now in both how I feel about church as a whole and my walk with Christ. What do I want in a church? How can I improve my own walk with Christ? These are things I am still working out in my own mind.

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2 Responses

  1. janis says:

    hi amber, I would say that to improve your walk with Christ, I know for me, reading my bible faithfully everyday is really helpful for me. It has become a habit now every morning. I am almost done reading all the way through and when I am done I plan to reread it. I would like to see how many times I can read it all the way through in my life time. but not only that I believe each time I read it I will gain more understanding and closeness to Christ. I would also like to find a church that I could look forward to going to. as it is now I force myself to go because I know I should (and because Ken isn’t open to attending other churches) but not because I enjoy the experience of this particular church. (although the people are very nice.) It is a very dead, boring church to put it bluntly.

  2. Nathan says:

    Amber., the way you described church looks strangely familiar. I don’t know how much you have heard but Brett has given his resignation to Riverside. The reason being he feels as if he is being called to plant another church. As I have been apart of the planning team for this church I have worked through some his core values. I have been having an ongoing dialogue with him on the subject of the effectiveness of how church is setup right now. We have really agreed that the hearing a sermon for 45 min. to an hour is not the most effective means of learning.

    As we’ve worked through this idea Brett has really felt led to start a church that, not only is more engaged with our daily lives and the world around us but also is formatted drastically different from the standard format we have come to know our church experiences falling into. Basically it would be an interactive, leader led discussion. More of an interactive sermon that would be structured in a much smaller over all gathering that would be made up of smaller discussion groups within that larger gathering.

    So instead of listening to someone preach for an hour there is more interaction and life application. And of course knowing Brett the truth of the Word will not be sacrificed for the sake of opinion which often is the case in heavy discussion settings.

    Just something to think about. In fact I should Brett the letter you sent me and he agrees that you guys are right there with us in where you are right now.

    The church plant starts in January but I think you guys might want to be a part of the planning process. No pressure.

    .n.

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