Nathan's View:
Grace Pointe was an interesting church. It is Nondenominational dish with a Pentecostal glaze over the top. It was one of those churches that is sooo Nashville. How do you make a church sooo Nashville you ask. You must start with an overly emotional praise and worship team. Put one black man on the key board and let the weird guitar player do a solo riff during "My God is an Awesome God." Ensure at least half of them cry during the transition from song to prayer and you are off to a pretty good start. This church was a young, emotional church that was still in the process of defining who they are as a group. They had just built a brand new facility with an outstanding demographic and seemed to be desperate financially. I promise I wont go too deep into the sermon this go around like I did on the last one...but to sum it up it was a communal reading from Revelations where heaven (the prize) is revealed. And let me tell you. You better not pick your nose or scratch your butt in that joint because according to John...everything is made of eyes. Any way, the praise and worship leader spoke about her ministry through music...we heard how important it was to give unconditionally and we were reminded of how the poor widow gave all she had which was just two coins (a fantastic business plan created by the church I might add...I have an equation for it E + G = $ or Emotion + Guilt = a 53,000 monthly budget...) and there you had it. Ashley really enjoyed this church which I blame of the Freudian connection from her youth (the pastor was a player in Christ Church on Old Hickory where Ashley went for many years) but for me it was a little much. I prefer a more intimate approach to God rather then an emotional public display of affection that I saw here. The irony is I didn't much care for the quiet doldrums of Christ Church Cathedral either. Ahhh the life of a contradictory cynic...I guess someone has to do it...right?
Melissa's View:
Hmmmm, this is an interesting one...this is more of the "type" of Church that I am use to and thrive in, but GracePointe did not capture me in any area of the hour we sp
ent there. I don't know that I ever got past the cheesy one liners and the used car salesman for a pastor. Within the 1st 5 minutes Stan (pastor) was helping some kid ask his girlfriend to prom...I mean are we at church or a sporting event? I was waiting for the blimp asking "will you marry me" but it never came. The singing was over the top...maybe 2 songs that the congregation could actually engage in and all the others were awkward and a chance for us to stare at the choir. It was hard to find a moment of connection with God with the song selections. This was then followed by a reading that we participated in from Revelation that I still have no clue why we were reading it. After the Revelation reading there was a strange transition to communion where you go as you "feel led" to the front to take bread and wine...which again...awkward. I think the concept of doing it this way is awesome, but their presentation of directing us was a little uncomfortable. It ended up being more about looking at the person next to you and asking "are you ready" as you move in a heard to the front. I go to Fellowship Bible and they actually did this same idea, but was very intimate and you knew why you were doing it as well as how it was going to happen. You would go in rows and as you made your way to the table, there was someone there to pray over the communion as you took it together as a Body of Christ. Not quite the same at GracePointe, anyway, after communion a girl spoke on praise and worship and gave the history of why we do certain things to show respect to God as we sing. I did enjoy listening to her and think she did a great job speaking about where her heart is. The service was then concluded by my favorite...Stan, creepy with tricks up his sleeve. His emotional reenactment of the poor widow giving everything she had to guilt me into giving was just flat out drama queen. Just wanted to laugh and roll my eyes all at the same time when listening to him talk about giving/tithe. The more I think about it, I'm sure someone else could say the exact same words as him and I would have received it differently, but something about him I just couldn't trust. It was really interesting to me that I ran into someone from work there that is a member of GracePointe and he said, "Didn't you just love Stan? He is just so transparent"....I just nodded and smiled (didn't want to tell a boldfaced lie in church)After re-reading what I wrote, I feel like I was pretty harsh....they might just be a new church feeling out what works for them, but I will say it certainly didn't work for me!
Ashley's View:
Wow--to say Mel was brutal is an understatement! Geesh--talk about a personal attack! This is so crazy to me--out of the three of us, when we started, I was the most anti-church...yet I went to this church and thought it was really nice. Let's see--Nathan and Mel saw fakeness, and I saw real people. Maybe my perception was skewed because I know Stan...but I didn't see the shadiness, or the emotion for play. I saw him being himself. Granted, he is more theatric-emotional...which fits where he is. This church was the non-denominational young church that thrived in music and media, but I thought they did a great job of not going overboard with the bells and whistles--yes, they built a church (they were formerly meeting in a school gym, I think?), but the church isn't full of stained glass and the jumbotron out front. It's basic. It's with the times technology-wise, but not over the top where I questioned the stewardship of their money. The music...it was music I enjoyed, and the lady that talked about worship painted a beautiful picture of why people raise their hands in praise. I liked what she had to say, I liked the music, and I thought hmm, although this is more charismatic than I usually go for, I think I could get involved here. But boy did Mel and Nathan have a different perspective! Maybe I am viewing this church through rose-colored glasses. I have known Stan for a long time--I know his story, and I know his sermons. I know that while at Christ Church, I have few good memories, but there were three pastors there that really reached me with their sermons--Stan was one of those.
This church prompted major discussion with Nathan and me...bottom line, I fell on the analogy of a wedding ceremony vs. a marriage. Your every day life is your "marriage" with God-the ups and downs and learning to understand how to bring out the best in the relationship (truly honoring/loving God)...and Sundays...they are the wedding ceremony-the pomp and circumstance. People go for different things--some want the big fancy dress and the formal ceremony (Christ Church Cathedral). Other people strive for the most emotional public display of their love for the other person--they want to shout it from the mountaintops (hello Pentecostals!). And others flat don't want a ceremony--they want to elope (that man be Nathan). Church is a ceremony. It's an external display on an internal relationship. For someone who is private with their emotions, it's hard to understand why others want to display it...and the immediate judgment is they they are full of BS. My take is that church is the "date." It's the step out of routine--it's supposed to be the chance for community--it's the time to grow and challenge each other--to step out of complacency and have some focused one-on-one time. But then again, one-on-one is anything but when you are in a whole congregation of people with their one-on-one relationship. Nathan thinks it's the little moments throughout the day that make a marriage (and a spiritual walk) work. I feel like the ceremony and the dating process is a part of it. That it's important to step out of the little things and make a concerted effort beyond the norm to really focus on the relationship.
I think this church is a great fit for some people, and for others it's a turn-off. Kindof like relationships in general. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I wasn't offended, and this church prompted great discussions. Interesting, though. The ceremony is something I appreciate...but is it truly necessary for a "marriage" with God?
"Meet Melissa McPherson and Nathan & Ashley Logsdon--three friends who have been through thick and thin together, and aren't afraid to discuss the controversial issues surrounding morality and eternal life"...WOW, did this ever just come to life :) Hope we are still friends when we are done! When we started this I thought more discussions would come from the "out there religions." Now I feel that the most talk will come from the churches that are barely riding the line of our beliefs. I am loving this journey more each week to have the opportunity to tweak what I really desire in a church/community/relationship with God/praise and worship etc...Defining my religion!
ReplyDeleteOK, so I think it is about time for me to comment on this blog..if for no other reason than to cheer along the cause :-) I applaud Nathan and Ashley for taking action in their unrest rather than becoming complacent pine riders, and M for her ability to be objective despite her seemingly confident stand on where she is in her faith walk . Ash, you asked if church were necessary to our marriage with God...so...I will start with my two cents on that one :) My opinion is NO. You don't have to walk in to a church every Sunday, or Wed., or whatever day of the week an organized church meets, sing a song you may or may not know the words to, pray a prayer that someone else has written out for you, and listen to a sinful human preach what we hope is a good interpretation of what God intended His word to mean. And NO, sitting in a pew no more gets you to heaven than eating carrots alone makes you skinny! But if we are going to compare church to dating and marriage and ceremony, then let's take a look at how we feel about marriage. Once you say "I do" the only thing that makes you unmarried legally is a divorce decree, and you can make it to the end of life married even if you never speak another word to the person that you walked down the aisle with and made a commitment to. However, without support, action, learning, failure, growing, backsliding, struggles, and joys, all you have is a piece of paper stating you are married. If you don't spend some time throughout your marriage and occasionally return to those feelings and efforts you put forth when you were courting, your marriage quickly turns in to a duty and not a passion. And, if you don't talk to married folks that are older than you and have succeeded through some of the hard times, you don't learn how to make your marriage better or how to avoid some of the rough spots...I can't even tell you how valuable some of our mentors have been in this area!! I feel that it is the same with church. We make a commitment to follow Christ and accept him as the groom of our hearts. But, without support from other people that understand life with Him a little better, we can quickly become bitter when we feel like He leaves too much of the dirty laundry laying on the floor. The organized church setting, with all it's inadequacies, still offers good things as we flail around trying to make sense
ReplyDeleteof what His purpose for us in in life or even what His purpose for life in general is. I find it sad that people understand and stand by their commitment to faith but reject the idea of church. I understand where that comes from, but sad nonetheless. The hard part about relationships, in general, is that there is so much emotion involved...and a relationship with God is no different. Organized church does it's best to marry the ideas of what they think Christ meant for organized religion to be, but obviously we fall short....painfully short often times. And, different people have different opinions, likes, dislikes, etc. and the emotion of that often times stands in the way of what people think about organized church. But, there are still valuable things and people there that represent pieces of what Christ intended...just like there are pieces of our marriages that represent what God had intended it to be...but we fall short so often to. That doesn't mean we need to divorce each other because we are not perfect...and we don't need to divorce church just because it is not 100% what we think it should be for us. But, it would be pretty easy for us to do that and to focus on all the bad things in the decision we made to marry that person if we didn't have support from others! We don't want to go through life having walked down the aisle just to get to the other end. Salvation through Christ does not require church to get to Heaven, but the decision becomes
more of a relationship when you do just as our marriages do when we put intention and time into them.