Finding a new church--Week 1

Well, one of the things I'm simultaneously looking forward to and dreading is finding a new church.  After being with our "old" church for around 8 years, I haven't had to do this in a long time.  Today, we started with a very contemporary church 15ish minutes away from us.  I think I can speak for both of us when I say that this is not the church God is calling us to.

A few of the good points:

• Parking "attendants"--there were several people in the parking lot helping direct the flow of traffic
• Greeters--they did have folks at the front door and the door to the auditorium to say hello and hand out bulletins
• The building itself is rather modern, and seemed to be very clean
• The preaching was alright.  Nothing that made me say "wow" or anything.

What bothered us the most:

• About 30 seconds before the band started playing, they started a fog machine.  Really?  A fog machine?  Is that truly necessary for worship?  I personally think not.
• It seems 4 of the 5 songs that were played were original songs (as in, I believe the people at the church wrote them).  Now, I am all for original songs.  Several people at Covenant wrote songs, and they were played in worship every once in a while.  But for a person who really worships through music, it was very hard to get into the spirit of worship.  They finally played a "mainstream" song at the very end, and I could get into that, but at that point, the service was over.
• The music was L-O-U-D.  And when Jeremy and I say that, you KNOW it's loud.  All we could hear was the band and the lead singer.  Those poor backup singers could have been mouthing the words, or even singing a completely different song, and no one would have known the difference

Let me say that I am glad that this church exists, and that the MANY people in attendance have a church they can call home.  But, we found it to be fairly unfriendly towards newcomers.


If anyone has any suggestions for contemporary churches (or churches who have a contemporary service) in the Mint Hill/Matthews/Charlotte area, let us know!  We're looking for a place to try next week :)

First Post

This seems to be the thing that people do when they move away--create a blog so that they can talk about all the things that are happening in their "new" lives.  So, to be as AWESOME as possible, here we are.  :)  Especially until I find a job, I'll have plenty of time to update this with all the random happenings in Mint Hill, NC!