Tuesday, June 24
Going to church on vacation…
I know any of you who grew up in a pastor’s home had to deal with the speech, “God doesn’t take a vacation from you, so we shouldn’t take a vacation from God”, while you were on vacation….I’m sorry you had to endure that.But for me, I was really excited about being able to go to a couple of churches I’ve heard much about while we’ve been in the Pacific Northwest…
The first Sunday we were in Portland so we went to Imago Dei… It was a great experience…
I’ve heard many things about their community and have read one of the books from their lead guy, Rick McKinley.
They are a 7 year old community…and Rick talked that day about different aspects of vision, mission, etc. It was good to hear, and to know someone else continues to pound away at the vision part as much as we do…
They have a great community of faith…and hearing what they are about and what they think God is trying to do through them, was a great thing. And it made me think that Imago Dei has so many characteristics that we want to continue to come to fruition at Crossings.
After worship, we met up with Matt Payne and his family in Beaverton.
Matt is a fellow New Thing Pastor and in the same Network I am in…he leads the Church! at Bethany. It was great to meet his family and celebrate Father’s day together. (here’s a picture from lunch)And then yesterday, being in Seattle, we took the challenge and went to Mars Hill Church. They have 7 sites throughout the Seattle area, with about 5,500 adults in attendance each week (plus kids). Mark Driscoll is the teaching pastor. (You might have heard of him)
It was a good experience as well…Driscoll taught on Stewardship, and he actually did well with it. (I don’t say that about many stewardship messages).
It was definitely a different feel than Imago Dei, but still really good to be there.
The best thing at both…the highlight for me…both churches had communion and invited people to come to the front to take. And, especially at Imago Dei, they encouraged families to come together and take together. That was really cool. (Oh yeah, and Meghan got wine by mistake at Imago Dei…communion took on a whole new meaning for her that day)
Mark Nelson at 12:54 AM 1comments
1 Comments
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at 10:01 AM
Meriam said... I grew up hearing that and after a very disturbing Sunday in a Church of Christ non-instrumental where the term "joyful noise" brought on a whole new meaning, we try not to repeat that mistake. Now Ron and I plan our vacations around what cool church we can go to. Our kids have seen some pretty cool churches, too. Thank goodness for the internet.