Tag Archives: charismatic

ChurchSurfer @ Redemption Point Church: A Charlie Brown Pentecostal Praise Break

Church Visit #34 – September 4, 2011

Redemption Point Church – Ooltewah, TN

It’s All About the Timing

On multiple occasions this year I have been invited to visit Redemption Point Church in Ooltewah.  I am not sure how or why I have ended up running into so many people who attend there, but it is one of those weird things that keeps popping up over and over.  At one point earlier in the year I visited the Redemption Point website and was intrigued by the “Aspiring to be the most loving church in America” slogan right there on the home page.  At the time I was really focusing on how I was welcomed into the churches that I was visiting and how the people at each church interacted with me.  I thought it would be interesting to see if the people at Redemption Point were doing any better at living out their aspiration to be the most loving church than all the other churches around Chattanooga.  Maybe God knew that would be the wrong reason (or maybe the wrong time) to visit Redemption Point, because it soon slipped my mind and I never felt strongly led to go there…until now.  After having another one of those “chance” encounters…this time with a friend who had been on the same Walk to Emmaus that I attended in the Spring, who I ran into again at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon recently.  He invited me to visit his church, which just happened to be Redemption Point.  So this time I felt like it was definitely time to go, and after visiting I know why I was supposed to wait until now.  I’ll go over the timing aspect of this church visit a little later, but here’s how the experience went…

ChurchSurfer @ Hephzibah Ministries: In Tune with the Spiritual

Church Experience #32 – August 21, 2011

Hephzibah Ministries – Chattanooga, TN

Starting with a Sermon

In the midst of attending fifty different churches in 2011, I have also gone through daily and weekly personal reflection in an attempt to evaluate my walk in faith to live for my Savior, Jesus Christ.  I have been intentional this year, more so than I ever have before, to focus on the eternal rather than the here and now.  That is not to say that my present circumstances and actions are not important, but my hope is that I can think eternally in order to act immediately (wow, I like that…that may be my new catch phrase, “think eternally in order to act immediately”).  I want to spend as much of my time, energy, and resources as I can investing in things that will enrich the lives of those around me rather than doing things that we, as Americans, often end up consumed by such as entertaining ourselves, trying to gain wealth, buying new toys, and chasing notoriety.  I have faith that I will share in the inheritance of eternal life in the Kingdom of God, so earthly pursuits of luxury and comfort serve only as a distraction to what is to come next.  I have recently read two books that have helped me along in my personal reflections and eternal focus – “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven“, by Kevin and Alex Malarkey, and “Radical:  Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream“, by David Platt.  These books have helped me to pay more attention to the reality of unseen forces at work in the world around us and how the forces of darkness are intertwined with the urges that drive us toward the pursuits of luxury and comfort.  I have always had a sense of how American churches have fallen so easily into the snare of these fleshly pursuits and have never felt fully comfortable connecting my spiritual life to one of them for fear that I would also begin feeding into the problem.  The truth of the matter is that we are the Church.  An amazing and humbling realization is that as the Church, we are the bride of Christ.  We are united with Christ as one, and with this blessing comes responsibility.  We are called to represent Christ to this world in order to bring glory and honor to Him as Head of the Church and to invite all who will believe in Jesus to come into the same covenant that we have entered into.  So the question is…how well are we representing our Lord?  Can the world see that we are different?  Can they see Christ in us or do we look just like them?  Let me get away from this mini-sermon and move on to the church visit I had this week and you might be able to make some connections.

ChurchSurfer @ Joyful Sound Church of God: Holy Spirit Power

Church Experience #5 – Jan 30, 2011

Joyful Sound Church of God

Lively Up Yourself

It’s the end of my first month on ChurchSurfer and I thought it was about time to take the blog to one of the more…how should I say it…energetic or charismatic denominations – Church of God.  We all know the stereotype that all the variations of Pentecostal have earned over the generations, and I usually recall the movie “The Apostle” with Robert Duvall as the Pentecostal preacher, scenes of the rural South, roadside tent revivals, and sermons that resemble “pep rallies” that evoke the Holy Spirit, usually climaxing with people jumping, shouting, writhing on the ground, and speaking in tongues.  I mention this not because I buy into this stereotype, but because we all know it.  I personally believe most stereotypes of this nature begin with some amount of truth, but you never know how much gets exaggerated and fabricated over time.  So I don’t believe the hype until I experience it for myself…and in this case let’s just say I wasn’t disappointed!  Not that the stereotype was confirmed, but that I discovered where the truth of it began.  So here we go…

Don’t Judge a Book…  

Joyful Sound Church of God