City of Hope 2

  Lindsey and I visited City of Hope church this past Sunday May 1, 2011 and it was an interesting experience. I will start with what I liked about this church and there were some very good positives about City of Hope. The best thing this church has to offer, in my opinion, was their community. We were greeting by many people while we were there and it was not a greeting team that did it, it was the community of this church that noticed new people there and went out of their way to make us feel welcomed. As my lovely girlfriend said in her post (read her's first if you have not, its better) this church has a small body. She said 50 but I think it might have been smaller so it was not hard to notice new people and I stick out but we felt right at home and very welcomed. The next part of this church that I really enjoyed is they had a praise/prayer request portion of the service. In this portion of the service everyone is encouraged to share anything they need prayer for or share something they just are happy about and want to praise God for. This was very cool to experience. I have only done this in a bible study but done on a larger scale is a reason why they have a great community because everyone can pray and share their lives with each other.

  Now on to the things that were just not for me, the first of which was the very traditional service that was this church. I just am not used to the traditional praying every 5 minutes and so much standing and sitting and reading scripture together aloud. I am not saying its bad, I just have not experienced it so it does not help me connect to God in a church service. The next thing that was not for me is all the hymns, I am not used to hymns and don't have much experience with them and it just was awkward. I am of the mind set that hymns had their place in time and its not this time. As my good friend Zak has said "they are of the old school and we are of the new school". Now I do enjoy an occasional hymn to bring us back to where we came from but just not a full worship service of them. The last thing that I did not connect with was the sermon. We were yelled at for most of the sermon and I know its just how some pastors get the message a crossed but its hard to take away a message when you feel like you have been scolded and you lose yourself in that bad feeling. He started his sermon with a comic book reference, which I was all about because he loves the Vision from Marvel comics and that's just an obscure love, but it never tied into his point at all. His talk was about walking by faith and he repeated that many times but just used different words. I just could not connect with it.

  Well that's it for City of Hope, little church that I feel has tons of potential and I hope they reach it. I am sure we will find our home someplace and we will continue to let God lead our search. Thanks for reading.

  Todd