Church 3 – Independent

This is For All the Lonely People

—Song by America, heard this morning on the radio on my way to the Independent Church

I was a few minutes late getting to church this morning. It was foggy, rainy, and I needed a second cup of coffee before waddling out into cold, duck weather. I entered the church’s front doors with a few other people, wiping our feet on the welcome mats, but missing any welcome handshakes. There was a desk right inside the door that had a sign about visitors, but it was unmanned. There were six gentleman sitting on the plush chairs just outside this area, but they were too busy to notice my stuttering glances at the empty welcome center so I passed them by.

A couple of doors to my right had “No Entry During Service” on them, while another said, “Enter Quietly.” I hoped I wasn’t opening a door near the stage so I pulled it open very carefully. Thankfully it and all of the non-entry doors were in the back of the room and I hadn’t interrupted the message or found the back way into the baptismal.

The service at this church is held in the gymnasium because the sanctuary wing hasn’t been built yet. The bleacher section serves as a stage, a cross is located where the scoreboard might hang, and the basketball hoops are all been winched up tight to the ceiling. Having staged more than a couple of church services myself in a gym I check the bottom of the blue padded chairs—indeed, all of the legs were properly fitted with rubber bottoms so that the gym floor wouldn’t get scratched.

The early service was at least ten times more populated than the Baptist service I attended last week. Though I was impressed with the comfortable atmosphere that this larger church had been able to create in a gym, I missed the warmth and hospitality of the smaller congregation. If you want to go to a church and hide, pick a big one; it’s much easier to not be seen. This morning I shook hands with no one, had to seek out an usher for a bulletin, filled out nothing intended for a visitor, and felt absolutely no motivation to stop back at the visitor’s center on my way out.

I did stop by their wall of pamphlets and handouts. I started at the top, left hand corner, like I was reading a book. The first pamphlet was “Policy for Handling Matters of Church Intervention.” It outlined the procedures and policies this church has for disciplining church members and regular attendees when they are caught in sin. Besides grabbing a Welcome booklet on the way out the door, I decided I didn’t really want any more of their church documents.

This is a Bible-centric church. There was a Bible reading by a lady in a black pant suit and a ponytail before the pastor came forward to teach. His message covered only two verses, and next week, he said, will cover just one. The Pastor even packaged a take home study guide in the bulletin and he encouraged the congregation to read more scripture at home, wrestle with the issues themselves, and join the upcoming Bible study training at the church, named after his father, Herman Uticks.

The message covered the five ministry roles that God gave the church (Eph 4:11-12). The pastor’s main point was that it is hard to build without tools, so everybody needs to be doing their part. Then he went through the five ministries.

• Apostle—The pastor taught that this role was only about the original 12 of Jesus’ handpicked disciples. Well, not Judas, of course, but it included Matthias, who was chosen to replace the traitor by means of a divine coin flip.
• Prophet—This was a role needed in the OT, when the Bible wasn’t finished, but one that isn’t necessary any longer now that the full will of God has been revealed through his word. No one gets to be a prophet in this pastor’s church.
• Evangelist—The church, and the world, need lots of evangelists today to share the message of the Bible so people can get saved. The pastor was very excited about this role.
• Pastors/Teachers—Though some see these as two different jobs, this pastor said they were meant to be one (check the Greek, he said), and that true pastors/teachers had to have both expressions. (That would rule out a great many of the Pastors and Teachers I know.)

So at the end of the message I was less sure of the passage than I was before the meeting began. Instead of having a solid five-fold ministry foundation, this pastor had narrowed it down to two. Fewer people on the payroll, I guess, but not sure how this proved his point that it’s hard to build without tools. It’s also hard to build without builders.

There were parts of the church service that I enjoyed.

• The congregation had the freedom to stand, sit, raise their hands, etc when they wanted; and the music service didn’t feel overly scripted.
• One of the worship songs we sang echoed the sentiments right out of my own heart.
• The pastor was a very good story teller and he got out from behind the pulpit, came down from the stage and gave his message closer to the people, which seemed very friendly.
• During the prayer time the leader prayed for specific needs in the congregation. There may have been 300 people in attendance, but during prayer time it felt like a family all around the dinner table, praying for individuals and needs by name.

My favorite part of the morning was this prayer time. The prayer leader asked us to close our eyes and picture God as an elementary school principal, who is loved by all the kids. We were to run up to him in our imaginations like the first graders would on the playground when the principal came out to check on and play with them all.

I liked my elementary principal a lot. He liked me too, and I could tell he cared about me even when I got in trouble or was caught cheating.

My childhood principal used to go to this same church. He got in trouble too, for cheating with another man’s wife. This Independent Church used what they have decided are Biblical principles to discipline him; probably with the same procedures set forth in the policy handout that I picked up from the wall. When the church was done with him, he didn’t think they liked him very much. They asked him to leave.

When I close my eyes and picture God as a principal, by both experience and example, I can feel loved and cared for; but when I close my eyes and consider hanging out any longer in this corner of my neighborhood, I feel lonely.