This summer has been a summer of transition. For those of you who know anything about Sara or me there has been a lot of changes. Not the least of these changes has been our decision to travel around to visit several churches as we are looking for a new church home. Now to be fair, for anyone expecting an update (which I'm sure you're not) on 6 churches (we are 6 Sundays in from June as that is when we started visiting) will be disappointed as we have not been at a church every week this summer. We have visited friends at their churches or were out of town. However, here is an update on our first church we visited.
The church is called First Congregational Church of Minnesota. We visited it on June 19th, Fathers Day. It is fairly close to our place which is a plus as that is something we both want. It is right off of 35W and 4th St by the U of M campus. The experience was pretty great. The people were great, small congregation of about 70ish. The demographic ranged from college age to elderly.
The sermon the pastor gave was on the Great Commission and her message consisted of talking about how June 19th or Juneteenth was the day that slavery was abolished. Throughout her sermon she connected the injusices of today are the same things that Jesus spoke about in the Gospels. The things that upset us are the things that upset Jesus. She reminded me of the passage when it says "go and make disciples" that it is NOT saying go and convert a bunch of people to believe what you believe. That is how I have heard this passage preached on more than not. I really appreciated the different spin on the interpretation of the text. Disciples in Greek and Hebrew would translate to student or learner. We are to make other students of Jesus Christ. Tell them and show them who Christ is and then let God and the Spirit do the work on the person instead of telling them what to believe about Christ.
The other significant thing I took from this visit was the song which is in my previous post, "bring many names." I cannot stand the organ, so that was not my favorite part as it sounds like everyone is dying as they sing with it, but the lyrics to this song are phenomenal. I loved the message behind it and a few of the other songs we sang.
We then left the service and talked to a guy who has been a part of the church for quite a while and I immediately connected with him as he had been a drug counselor in a high school in the southern metro. He really didn't have any bearing on me liking or not liking the church, but he was a cool guy. We met quite a few other people in the church as well, all were friendly and wish us luck on our visit.
Here is the website of the church if you're curious to know more about it.
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