New Community Service

0 comments | Aug 24, 08:35 AM | best-of-earl | by Earl Creps

Last night Jan and I visited Central Assembly of God’s New Community mid-week service with our friends Paul and Ronda Martinez.

This event has been underway for only a few months and represents an effort to give younger adults at Central a “home” on Wednesday evenings as well as a place to connect with one another while they worship and are exposed to bible teaching that speaks to their lives.

The service is usually in Central’s new (and very groovy) multi-purpose room, but last night was in the Chapel.

The entryway to this space features coffee, while the interior is populated with round tables that automatically get everyone to sit in a circle. So that’s the formula: coffee and circles.

The worship experience is contemporary, guitar-driven, PPT supported with a nice sound and a relaxed atmosphere. I saw a lot of outward worship expressions without any apparent encouragement from the front of the room. It felt comfortable but spiritual at the same time.

The sermon (I usually call it the “talk” these days) was given by Paul. He continued a series on heroes of the Old Testament, introduced last night by a PPT game in which we had to guess the names of heroes ranging from Underdog to Superman.

Paul, who is our Director of Development at AGTS http://www.agts.edu/partners/index.html, gave a terrific talk on Ehud, the left-handed dude who assassinated King Eglon of the Moabites to set the nation of Israel free from despotic Moabitic repression. He, Paul, not Ehud, had us all write our names and addresses using our left hands—very weird feeling if you ask me—then talked about how LH people were viewed as outcasts in the ancient, and sometimes the modern, world, but that God seems to specialize in using the unilikely people to do some of the most dramatic things.

These people (gulp) have to be ready to take risks and to “play the cards they are dealt” to reach their potential.

Paul’s talk was really effective, dealing a lot with the ways in which we allow fear to block what God is trying to do in and through us.

Two things really jumped me last night:

1. Paul’s sermon made me ask myself a question: “Am I doing anything in my life that scares me?” Oh sure, you can have anxiety about this project or that stressful meeting or whatever, but what am I up to on a regular basis that really frightens me? The answer is not much. The older I get, the more I live like an actuary, calculating the incremental risks of everything I do (from daily caffeine consumption to seatbelt use) in order to keep everything as safe as possible. This question was brewing in me like fine coffee because my wife said at dinner before the service that I am not a church planter only because I am afraid. Ouch.

2. I was impressed by Central’s goal of creating this home for younger adults within a conservative church. This experience, along with many others around the country, tells me that building a bridge to the future and between the generations might not be as hard as everyone thinks. I’m not saying it’s easy, but that sometimes our events get no response, not because of spiritual resistance or generational struggle, but because they just aren’t very good. If you do something reasonable, like a mid-week bible study, with good music and teaching that people relate to, you might just be surprised.