An interesting weekend this past weekend;
Saturday Night – Sheldon, a mate of mine, and I went to the City Church of Christ in Stirling St Northbridge (Inner city) where they have an open house every Saturday night from about 6-9 for people who need a place to eat a free meal and chat with others. They can have up to 100 people drop in for food and drink. People come mainly from around the streets, homeless, mentally ill, poor and so on.
We sat and played connect four, checkers, Ludo and so on. Alex the pastor is a bit of a muso and he took to the guitar and played some worship tunes. Conversation flowed well after we settled in and after the night was pretty much over Sheldon and I took to the streets, wandered around witnessed an accident bought some Asia drink and drove home.
I thought it was one of the best church services I had been to for a while…although the church themselves don’t see it as such. The next morning they set up for ‘normal church’ – I guess if it was me, I would be looking at how to make what was happening Saturday evening as their ‘service’ as it sure looked like worship to me!
Sunday Morning I went to Inglewood Church of Christ, just down the road from where I was the night before. Seemed odd. They look like any church really, just a smaller version. Lots of chairs laid out for very few people, band, power point, newsletter handed out by friendly ushers, morning tea, presidential talk for communion and the like. I wondered why they were meeting in a big hall, no doubt hired. I wondered why they couldn’t join the church down the road I was at the night before. I wondered why they couldn’t meet in a lounge or one of the many great cafes around the area, I wondered why the 15 or so people needed to sit in rows and rows of empty chairs…I just wondered what makes us do church like this, no matter how big a number we are! Nice folk though.
Sunday Afternoon we met with the Joondalup crew, I have already mentioned all about this below.
Sunday night I went to Lake Joondalup Baptist Church. Pretty much same as most churches, but for the fact that they take a few risks with their choice of speaker. Jarrod McKenna gets a pulpit there form time to time. He is good, but not safe! Love that guy, he did well. He does not preach as much as facilitates an evening of discussion. What a guy!
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