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.
I love City Centre Church. This makes me very happy to read. Bless you on your journey, Alanna.
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