Tags
Bible, Christianity, Church, Church service, Cory Monteith, Glee, God, Religion and Spirituality
I attended church this morning at River Valley Christian Fellowship. A friend of mine goes there and I wanted to check it out.
I got to the church about twenty minutes before the service was scheduled to start. I sat in my car fifteen minutes before the start, watching the other people who were arriving and seeing where they were going so I wouldn’t be going in blind. I was over dressed but I would a million times over prefer to be over dressed than under dressed. I wore a dress that I wear to work pretty often and some heels. Nobody was wearing heels.
At the entrance I was greeted by a woman who asked if it was my first time there and gave me a packet. The packet had an NIV booklet of the gospel of John so I asked her if that’s the version of the bible the church used. Her reply wasn’t a simple “yes” as I was expecting or a “no, we use the NASB but they don’t have the pamphlets in that version.” Her response is that they use multiple versions of the bible, and sometimes they even use the Greek. – Yeah, that’s not helpful lady, I just want to be able to read along with the scripture being read today and I doubt your congregation has twenty different types of bible. I’m a bit cranky today. I found out Cory Monteith from Glee died yesterday, probably from drugs, and it’s brought back some of the feelings from when my cousin died of an overdose a couple years back. I didn’t go to sleep until really late because I started watching a Glee marathon and I’m not the greatest on no sleep.
Anyway, I took my pamphlets and wandered into the sanctuary. It’s a bunch of chairs organized like pews would be. I sat in the back section on the right and started going through them. Unlike the other churches I have visited, no one approached me as we waited for the service to start. Maybe I was giving off “leave me alone vibes” I don’t know.
The service itself went really quickly. They did a couple contemporary style songs (I am not a big fan of this contemporary stuff – so much of it is droning, I thought it was supposed to be better than hymns. There was one lively song I enjoyed at the end of the service.) After the songs a woman got up and read 2 Corinthians 8:1-9 before the pastor/preacher person got up and gave his message.
The message itself was about money and giving. It was a really good message and one I needed to hear. The preacher is fairly young which I really like. I feel like a church with a younger preacher is going to be more relevant to me because we will have more in common and I would assume it would attract a younger following.
Key points I needed to hear from today’s message were:
- A fool vents his feelings, a wise man holds them back. (Proverbs 29:11)
- The attitude of the giver is much more important than the amount given.
- Don’t pretend to have what you don’t. You can look at your credit card bills and get a good idea of whether you pretend too much. (I do.)
- All money is God’s money. We are managers of the money God lets us have.
I filled out the contact me card. So far I haven’t been contacted by any church I’ve done this for but I still like doing it. I really enjoyed the message but not so much the service but that might be all me. I’m not sure if I’ll be back or not. I do like the amount of programs and community involvement the church has and that is something I am looking for.