crazy morning (aka finding a new church--week 2)

What started out as a disaster ended up being pretty alright.  We had picked out a church to try this week, I had the general idea on how to get there, and we were ready to roll!  I decided to double-check that I knew where I was going, and turn on the GPS to get it ready in case we made a wrong turn....and the GPS didn't have the road listed.  Great.  So I just wrote down the directions from Google Maps (I tried MapQuest, but it didn't recognize the address either) and we went about our merry little way.

We followed the directions....and I tell you, that church was NO WHERE to be found.  We drove up and down the road, looked for signs, nothing.  (Once we were back home, I looked up the directions again, and it looked like we followed them, but that the church is in one of the shopping center areas that we passed.  But there weren't any signs. Maybe next week...)

At this point, we were already 5 minutes late for this church, so we decided to try heading back towards home.  We knew there was a church near home, and hoped that they had a service around the time we'd get there (11:00ish).  Sure enough, we saw a ton of people walking around in the parking lot, so we decided to give it a shot.

There was a sign as we were driving in asking first time visitors to turn on their flashers.  We debated over whether we should or not--we're not ones to deliberately draw attention to ourselves--but I decided to give it a shot.  The fella directing traffic stopped us, came to the window and let us know to drive towards the front and someone would get us parked close to the entrance.  (Then Jeremy heard him say "We have VIPs coming to the front"--that's what they call first time guests--so he started joking around saying things like, "Yep, let's grab 'em and bag 'em".  So cynical.)  We got parked, and someone actually came over to us to give us information, walk us inside, show us around and tell us about the church.  There were people greeting us EVERYWHERE...very different than the church last week.  (Jeremy said "It was a little scary at first...." lol)

We got in, and we were in for a ride!  I could go on and on and on about all sorts of things, but here's the summary:

• The music was good, but VERY loud.  
• They did some original songs (like last week's church) but there were 2 main differences: a) they put a mainstream, familiar song towards the beginning and b) I thought their original songs were really good quality and easy to follow
• The pastor was VERY engaging (even though we were watching him on a screen--he was live at another campus) and used some very contemporary examples--comparing the way that some people follow Jesus to pressing the "follow" button for someone on Twitter...and that we need to be more than that.
• They had a huge baptism event today, and the pastor really did a good job of explaining what baptism is, and how you don't need classes or an appointment to be baptized.  They had thought of EVERY excuse that someone would have to not get baptized spontaneously, and had: t-shirts, shorts, boxers, women's underwear, towels, hair products, feminine hygiene products, etc so that no one could say "well, I would get baptized IF..."
• It was a pretty large church, and we're not sure if that part will be a fit for us
• I feel there's NO WAY I'd ever fit in with the music team, and that's something that's important to me, as I'd really love to get back into worship leading once we can find the right church

Overall, a MUCH better experience than last week, and I reckon God meant for us to go to this church on this day.  It's a possibility, but we're not sure.  More Sundays, more churches to visit :)