This past Sunday, I went to a big church in Virginia with a friend.  It’s a church that you can’t show up late for — we did, and we were given a flyer and asked to come to the next service (they have 3).  Being the rebels we are, we parked anyway (after being told we didn’t have room to park there) and went in.  It was standing room only, and we debated about actually heeding the parking guy’s advice.  While we were pondering that idea, two people gave up their seats so that we could sit down.  Apparently, they have people in this church who have agreed to volunteer their seats when new people show up.

I’m guessing there were at least 500 people in the room.  Roughly 98% were younger than 30.

Whenever I go into a new church, the first thing I do is read the bulletin.
I figure that people talk about what they are doing and what they are passionate about, so it’s an easy way to get a read on what kind of church I just stepped into and what is important to that church.  That’s even more true of big churches since they can’t possibly put everything in the bulletin that the church is doing.

So I looked at the 3 pieces of paper I was handed when walking in.
The biggest was a card to fill out my address and blah blah blah so they can “follow up” with visitors and count the # of people who show up.  I think everyone is supposed to put this in the offering.  I don’t even do this at my own church most of the time.  Why would I do it there?  :)
The second was a card that described their new service schedule since they are starting up a Sunday night service and are trying to get new people to go.
And… I don’t remember what the third was.  It was the smallest and I think it had a form on it also… may have been something specifically for visitors.

I was confused.  This had never happened to me before, and I’ve been in almost 100 churches of all types in the past 5 years.  Then I realized the collective age of the church and thought one word: “website.”  So I checked it out.  I was even more confounded to find that it basically described how the church could minister to you, why you should come, and to pimp their small groups.  I wanted to find out what the church was DOING not why I should come.  So I clicked on the Service tab.  There were 3 options.  They were to become a member of the church, to join a “serving team” that do part of the operation of the church, and a compassion team focused on the 10/40 window.  This didn’t make sense.  Where were the other things… the prayer meetings, the homeless ministry, the nursing home ministry, the food pantry, the intercessors, the Bible classes, etc?

What kind of church doesn’t hand out a bulletin but hands me an address card?  What is important to this church?

Itself.

I dug even deeper and found that an important goal to this church is having 10,000 people attending in 10 years.  It’s this church’s “Big Vision.”  And on the page that described it was the first time I read the word “pray” on their literature… to of course, “strategically to pray for and prepare our church to launch it.”

Really?  That’s your Big Vision?  That’s your passion?

I then started thinking about this further and connected it with a huge, fast-growing church in Birmingham that was built around people that were dedicated to making it grow.  That was another church that intrigued me — I’d never been in a standing-room-only church on a Wednesday night!  Ultimately, I decided they needed a kick in the pants to get them to wake up, and I’ve been praying for that since.  I still like that church.

I’m tired of watching self-centered churches want to add numbers and not want to just go after God and let him figure out the whole crowds of people thing.  Do these churches not know that Jesus actually hid from the crowds?  Church is not about making me or anyone else happy.  I just wish it would make God happy.

(Random note: the pastor stayed in Scripture in his sermon more than nearly every pastor I’ve had in the past 7 years.  That was refreshing)

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