Tag Archives: non-denominational

ChurchSurfer @ River City Church: Art, Worship, and a Punch in the Gut

Church Experience #40 – October 23, 2011

River City Church – Chattanooga, TN

Google It

The end of the month of October is upon us, which means there are only two more months left in 2011.  Each time I sit down to write a new blog article now, I think about how many churches I have visited this year (forty!) and how few I have left to visit.  Knowing that I only have ten church visits remaining (yes, I realize that looking at the calendar my fiftieth church will actually be on 1/1/12, so technically I will not visit fifty churches in 2011) makes each decision on where to go more difficult.  My desire is to experience something unique, something special, something completely “of God” each week, which means that just like every other decision I make in life, I must truly seek His guidance and trust in His direction.  I am already thinking about all the writing I will have on my plate after all fifty of my blog articles have been completed…there are a ton of reflections, lessons learned, and discoveries made that I can share (if anyone is interested) which will certainly keep me busy for an unknown portion of 2012.  But without looking too far into the future, I still have an immediate task at hand…church visit number forty.  While searching for a church to visit this week I used Google to do some online browsing.  This is something that I have (surprisingly) done very few times this year, and instead I have usually selected churches by word of mouth, personal invitation, or drive-by.  Google search is, however, a relevant tool that most of us use for finding pretty much anything in today’s world, so I would feel remiss if I did not use it for discovering potential churches to visit.  While browsing search results looking for churches that I had never heard of, I came across the website for River City Church and was immediately intrigued.  It wasn’t that the website was something spectacular (not to pick on them, but there is actually a ginormous blank white space dominating the visible part of their home page), but what grabbed my attention was the place where the church meets…Mosaic Arts Venue.  I work on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga, so I spend a lot of time down there and for me Mosaic is one of those businesses that I always see and am always curious about but never go in the door to find out what is inside.  So I decided to go to River City Church and find out what it and Mosaic, were all about.

ChurchSurfer @ Chattanooga Church: Going Medieval on Chattanooga Church(es)

Church Experience #37 – September 25, 2011

Chattanooga Church – Chattanooga, TN

A Building That Beckons

Some time earlier this year I was Googling and browsing the websites of various churches in Chattanooga and came across Chattanooga Church.  It just so happened that as I clicked through the pages on their website I noticed a blog post from their pastor, Morty Lloyd, that referenced the ChurchSurfer blog.  He had read the newspaper article about ChurchSurfer that appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and used it as an opportunity to challenge his congregation to look at their own church introspectively and think about how they may be perceived by visitors.  I made a mental note about this church (which doesn’t always work so well) and then kept noticing it as I would pass by on Bonnie Oaks Drive.  The Chattanooga Church building is one of those intriguing structures that you just want to go look at because of its unique charm.  It is a small grey stone structure that looks like it belongs among the rolling hills of the Irish countryside or in some quaint little village in rural England.  Instead, Chattanooga Church is paradoxically perched on the left side of the circle driveway that leads into Bonnie Oaks Business Park.  Despite the out-of-place location, the building still invites you to come inside for a closer look, as does the name of the church, which without any denominational tags or descriptive adjectives in the title, leaves you wondering what it is all about.  Full of questions and curiosity, my wife Laura and I decided to give Chattanooga Church a try, and here is how it went…

ChurchSurfer @ Rock Point Community Church: A Very Special Guest

Church Experience #30 – August 7, 2011

Rock Point Community Church – Chattanooga, TN

Faith Changes Things

(Warning, philosophy ahead – please read this first paragraph slowly)  It is a strange thing how faith changes your life.  When you think about it, how could it not change your life?  Hebrews 11:1 gives us a definition of faith when it tells us, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  When you have evidence of something that you have not seen, it makes it possible to believe it exists.  Without evidence, that thing is just an idea or concept, but with enough evidence it becomes established as real, or as truth, even without physically seeing it.  This initial belief in the existence of something by faith then results in a change of your understanding of the things that are related to that thing.  If this thing is significant enough, then over time, the way you act, feel, and think about everything else will change, as it is now filtered through this newly established truth.  One day the world is believed to be flat, then there is evidence to prove it is round, and everything changes.  For those who are disciples of Christ, the evidence of the claims He made is revealed to us in a real way that cannot be denied.  This evidence (which comes from Jesus Himself and the Holy Spirit) gives us the ability to believe, and as the rest of our lives are then filtered through this new truth…we change.  The more we are willing to act, feel, and think through the filter of our faith in Jesus, the greater our faith becomes (given, of course, because of God’s grace) and the more we as an individual change.  The strange thing (that I alluded to in the very first sentence) is that this changed person of great faith is who you were really created to be…so basically you are becoming your real self.  I told you it was strange (or maybe just my strange way of explaining and phrasing things).  The point of this feeble attempt at a philosophy lesson was to prelude some significant events that happened around this week’s church visit.  Now that I think about it, that message does not actually do a good job of leading into this story at all, but it was on my heart to share for some reason, so there you go…faith.  Now on to the next paragraph.

ChurchSurfer @ Journey Church: The Church, Not the Band (Journey)

Church Experience #27 – July 10, 2011

Journey Church – Hixson, TN

Many Questions

The non-denominational Christian church movement in recent years is a curious thing to me.  I always wonder how each of these churches came into existence.  Some of these churches meet in people’s homes, in rented or shared commercial space, in re-purposed abandoned buildings, in church buildings of disbanded churches, the list goes on and on.  How they came into being is a whole other story.  They may have split from another church, they may have been a church plant from some organization, they may have started as a Bible study group that grew into a church, and I am sure there are countless other ways in which non-denominational churches continue to pop up.  For some reason I find it very interesting to think about these things…about how churches get formed, grow, and become a part of the community and have an impact on society.  I have done very little research about individual church origins, but I bet there are some great stories out there.  A completely separate rabbit trail of thought is how and why the non-denominational church movement itself began.  Was there too little flexibility within denominations for different styles of worship and self-expression?  Were there doctrinal issues that denominations were unwilling to budge on?  One big question I often ponder is whether it is a good or bad thing that the Christian church continues to fracture and divide into more denominations and also unconnected non-denominational churches, or whether it has any consequence at all.  I may not receive a definitive answer to these questions during my lifetime, but it does not mean I should stop considering them…or the question of what I can do to try to bring unconnected churches together.  The one thing I do feel sure about is that God would rather see his followers united than divided.  We, as the Church (big “C”) need to have a heart for each other, no matter what, and find a way to work together to serve our Lord, Jesus Christ.  These are all things that have been on my mind since my visit to Journey Church, a non-denominational church in Hixson, TN.  Here is how my experience went…