Not your ordinary Church Service

Posted by ksummerall | Posted in Church, Leadership, Uncategorized | Posted on 26-01-2010

After seeing photos like this and this Saturday afternoon. My wife and decided that we would get up early and head up to the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, SC for church. The excitement that I was getting from seeing Twitter updates and text messages from friends that were involved we knew that we needed to be a part of NewSpring’s 10th anniversary celebration even though we do not attend NewSpring.

So we got up early and drove 2 hours in very dreary weather, arriving at the Bi-Lo center just a few minutes before the doors opened. We stood in the rain with no umbrella (who wants to carry an umbrella into an arena anyway) until the doors opened. We followed the crowd through the doors, past the cheering NewSpringers that are shouting chants of “Jesus…Jesus…Jesus” and high fiving us as we went past. This was certainly not like any other church service that I had been to.

We had some doughnuts and coffee and saw a few people with popcorn, or nachos and even french fries! I have seen some strange things in church, but never french fries.

I have seen churches get in crazy fights over putting in one projection screen. I wonder what they would say about 12?

It was electric, the videos were playing, the boom sticks were…well, they were booming, and the beach balls were bouncing all over the place, and then we did the wave! I’ve never done the wave in church before.

When things got started it was amazing. The lights, the sound, the video, the HUGE band, etc. The crowd, or congregation, was going wild singing God’s praise. It was a beautiful thing, that I have done in church before.

Now I bet a few of you reading this are seething right now, you can’t imagine how God could be glorified in such a secular setting, after all, this was an arena, not a church building. For some of you it was the band that makes you mad, for some it was the screens, a few of you are ticked off at the idea of french fries in church.

For those that are mad, I’m sorry that you feel that way because my favorite part of the day was when Perry Noble, the Pastor of NewSpring, stood on stage and said, “This is Church!” He was right. It was church, it didn’t matter what that building had been the day before, or the week before, at that moment it was church. It was 15,000 of God’s children gathered together to praise His name and that, my friends, is church. It’s not traditional. It may not be what you think of when you think of church, but it was church.

My point is that we all have different visions of what it means to have church. For some it is stuffy and quiet, for some it is casual and loud. But none of that matters. What matters is that we gather together and worship our great and mighty God. Our God that has saved us from ourselves. Our God that has plucked us up from certain death and given us the gift of eternal life. Our God who loved us while we were still vile. Our God that created our universe. We may have different worship styles but Who we worship remains the same.

So next time you want to criticize a church or a person or a pastor because you don’t like their particular worship style just remember that they worship the same God you do.