Sunday, March 05, 2006

The Sunday Routine


click to visit the mars hill church website

i’ve found a church now, and it’s called mars hill.  it’s one of those megachurches with 3 services every sunday.  they meet inside a rented shopping center, and the take up one of those really big department store spaces.  the room is pretty cool.  the stage is in the middle and the congregation sits around the stage.  the place has not really been decorated, so it looks pretty industrial.  you can see all the support beams in the ceilings.  it’s a big change from my home church in hong kong, Emmanuel English Church.  EEC is much much smaller, with a current Sunday attendance of around 100 people.  i’ve grown up in small churches my entire life, so mars hill with its several-thousand-member congregation kinda blows me away.

for the past four sundays, my friends ian and dan come with me to mars hill.  phatty, a fellow leader from youth life, kindly picks us up and takes us to the church.  the service is usually structured with music worship, and then a sermon.  pastor rob bell is the senior pastor, and he has a pretty good reputation in grand rapids.  some of my professors talk about him, and my philosophy professor, prof. corcoran, highly recommends him.  he’s written a book called velvet elvis, which dan has a copy of, and he’s featured in a Christian video series called Nooma.  i’ve seen a video from that series and it’s very well produced.  looks very professional, and each video has great content.  phatty’s told me a bit about the church and how they serve the community.  they have a network of members in west michigan that constantly try to meet the needs of the community.  for example, phatty has an extra room in his house that he wouldn’t mind housing someone in need, and he’s emailed mars hill with that information.  mars hill will then send an email out notifying the entire network of this opening.  if anyone needs to stay somewhere for a while, they can contact mars hill or phatty.  west michigan is sectioned off into districts, so information is only sent within that district.  so mars hill has developed a useful system for serving the community.  i find that great, because i dont often see churches reaching out to the community like that.  many are focused on themselves and serving their own congregation.  this is a good thing, but when the motivation to reach out is completely replaced by self-fulfillment, churches are in dangerous territory.

Posted by Nehe555 on 03/05 at 04:30 PM
(0) Trackbacks • Permalink

<< Back to main