Church #8. City Center Church

Are you a 20 something year old in college, dead broke, confused, stressed and living on a diet of instant noodles and beer?  This might the church for you.  For real’s, this is YOUR place to feel alive.

 I was pretty excited to go to this place because I had an old friend there who works as part of the church and was the person that headed the grant mac bible study on floor 8. Yes I am talking about you Ryan :P  . I knew this place would be different for many reasons, first being that the service is held in an old movie theater that is one block from my work downtown.  This is the highest population church I have been to yet, 200 on an average Sunday I am told (but I could swear it looked like more) , almost all 20 something year old college students and 85% of them girls. At least half of the service was provided by the church “worship team” which included 6 college age girls and guys all playing guitars keyboard, drums and vocals rocking out some modern worship music. There is no sitting quietly in this place most people are standing with their hands raised to the lord, dancing, singing with their kids on their shoulder you name it they are doing it.  

Another thing that caught my eyes was a rough natural looking cross likely made of two huge logs aprox15 feet high and sticker-ed in band aids. This apparently came from the service one week earlier, where church members went up and stuck a band aid on the cross and took a moment to think of a blessing that they enjoy in their daily lives that they often forget about and are often ungrateful for.

Overall, it’s a  pretty casual place, everyone just kind of rolls into church wearing whatever they feel like. But one thing that I noticed when waiting for the bathroom is that a lot of girls still came in some form of dress or skirt. This I find interesting because this church is not traditional or conservative in the least. Even the head speaker of the church for that day looked like a 27 year old hipster.  There was a lot of interesting quotes that day. My personal favorites include “Jesus is on Facebook!” , “Jesus is on Instagram!” “Everyone is talking about Jesus” , “ I don’t remember what I had to drink that night” ,  “ Starbucks gave us free coffee, say WHHHAATTTTTT? :P"

I felt like this church is really with the times.  They had a few announcements and a lot of them were very interesting and refreshing. Such as; they required a need sound person to be trained to work the sound boards and directly encouraged women to step up and apply for the position because the stereotype of the “sound man” has reigned for to long. That and they are the first church where I have seen the option to pay your offering by E-transfer, debit or automatic bank withdrawals.

There was a lot of speakers that day….ho man :P

We had a short speech from a female Cree Church leader who was announcing a new church community group that has the goal of encouraging first nation’s people to come together and feast and draw themselves closer to god. She spoke of how she lived in a polluted world as a young person full of drugs crime, hatred, suicide and murder. Her cousin was the only church leader in the community, he was 19.  And that in one night the elders build a fire and some of the young people came forward to purge themselves of all the evil within them.  And after that the whole community changed for the better.  This woman called for the revival for the native population and totally inspired me and hopefully others in the room.

Then we had another speaker that went for much longer, he was what looked to be a young enthusiastic 30-ish year old man with the style of an Alberta cowboy meats Southern preacher.  I wish I could compile all of the heart and power of that mans speech into a blog but sadly I can’t.  But I can tell you what I got from it, that we all play an important part in gods dream for the world, that we need to trust god and be brave and fallow it no matter how daunting the path, and that there are others with a common dream that will be willing to help you along the way.

Lastly there was an advertisement for the men to get together  for a “simulcast”  and the name of this event was “For  god sake fight”, obviously orienting  themselves toward the notably small male population there.  Which bring me to my topic of focus for this week. Men aren’t showing up to church, straight up. And its true. And that is probably even more true in the churches orientated towards young people as far as I can tell. And just by looking at the crowd you can tell that half of the men that are in there were coaxed into coming by their girlfriends.  But I noticed that 5% which was the men that were there on their own free will, where totally into it and had no questions, no dough’s, no shame and all love for what they were doing on Sunday mornings.  Everyone has theories on why men don’t wanna  go to church. But here is mine.  In order to open yourself to god’s love you need to leave yourself vulnerable open and at his love and mercy. Men hate feeling vulnerable even on a good day, if you have ever been in a relationship with one? It’s like pulling teeth for them to even tell you about little things never mind throwing their soles down before god! !! so here is my advice, men GO TO CHURCH AND ENJOY IT!!!! Or at the very least pretend to enjoy it!!!! You don’t need to go to the bar on ladies night anymore, there are more cute young women looking for a man of god in this building then you can shake a stick at! They say church is the best place to find your future husband, and who know you might even get lucky ;)

Overall one of the best church experiences I have had yet and I really hope the rest could even come close to this. So much love and god bless all of you and heal you from your hangovers and help you scrub the permanent marker off your forehead.