Looking for a church as we live full-time on the road is somewhat of a quandry. We desire to to meet new people and to be encouraged by good Biblical teaching.
So how do you do it if you do not have a clue about the area where you are staying? On top of that…this Tennessee county has to be “church central” – We don’t think we’ve ever seen such a concentration of churches.
We start with the Internet and look for non-denominational churches. We are not ruling out the other churches but we are members of a community church (www.uplandcc.org) and enjoy it very much. We look at the various church web sites to see what they are like. Some of the sites are polished and slick and you can tell they have tech-savvy people behind the design. Others will not be much more than a few pages telling you about themselves and when they meet.
Next we look on Google maps to see where the churches are located. If possible we will drive by it ahead of time….but finally we make a decision and take off.
Last week we attended a church that meets in a high school and are starting a building project. They had a great sounding praise band and the pastor did a good job…we left thinking it was OK but not worth a repeat visit.
Today we chose a church plant of only 18 months. They had a praise band that was not at all “glitzy” but each song tied directly to the message of the morning. The service was simply a time of praise, scripture reading, a low-key offering, and teaching from the WORD by the Pastor. He taught from the book of Mark. It was obvious after a few minutes that this man was not trying to impress you but was simply teaching. He taught almost 50 minutes and it was refreshing.
We didn’t see Vanna White but we felt we made it to the bonus round just fine.
- What will our next spin bring us????
