Church Experience #8 – February 20, 2011
Abba’s House (a.k.a. Central Baptist Church)
Megachurch
So here I am, almost two months into ChurchSurfer and I haven’t been to a “megachurch” yet. Shame on me. Having just moved right next to Hixson, TN, I located the closest (there are 50 in Tennessee) mega church, Abba’s House, and decided to visit. Laura and I showed up about 20 minutes early, as I always like to do, to give us time to explore and hopefully meet a few people to talk to and gain a little insider’s perspective into this church. As we approached the building we were warmly welcomed by a door greeter, and I was glad to see that there was someone at each of the six or eight doors, not just one or two for the entire entrance. We walked around the hallway, which seemed shockingly barren for a church of this size…I fully expected to be weaving and bumping shoulders through a massive crowd. I had skipped my regular Sunday morning coffee stop, anticipating a lavish coffee and refreshment station in a church of this size, and was only slightly disappointed to find out that coffee is served in the small group Bible studies (Lifegroups) in another building. Had I been faced with a completely caffeine-free church visit, I might have been recognizably fretful, but alas…there was a cafe/bookstore in the lobby where I was able to make a coffee purchase. Laura and I sipped on our coffee and wandered around the lobby in search of conversation. I’m not sure how, after being able to engage a few people in pre-church conversation almost every week, this week’s attempt was unfruitful…could be a side effect of a megachurch, or maybe just bad timing. So I went outside and snapped a couple of photos of the front of the enormously impressive sanctuary building, and then went to the folks at the guest services desk to dig for some information. It turns out this should have been my initial destination.