Sunday Morning

We went to Cedar Ridge Community Church today.  I was reading about the Emerging Church movement last night on Wikipedia, and that led me to read about Brian McLaren, and then I realized that the church he founded was here in Montgomery County.

It was a very different church experience from what I’m familiar with.  It gave me a great deal to think about, and to write about, but it might take me a little bit of time to unpack it all so I can articulate it well.

In brief, the church is part of the Emerging Church movement, which is supposed to be a postmodern approach to God.  As I understand it, the focus is more on community, and on how Jesus mends out broken relationships with God and with other people.  It seems to have everything I like about Evangelical Christianity, but without all of the stuff about evangelicalism that repels me.  at the same time, it manages to avoid a lot of the liberal theology garbage that I have absolutely no time for.

The service itself  was interesting, too.  While it was by all accounts contemporary, there were many elements I recognized from liturgical tradition.  It was a eucharistic service (which I feel is important), and the presentation and preparation for the eucharist felt like it was straight out of an Episcopal or Lutheran service.  At the same time, there was an element of personal worship in it that I hadn’t really ever encountered before, as during the communion, you were also free to go around to different stations where you can make an offering, have people pray for you or lay on hands, write down a prayer for the church to pray over later, creatively express your worship experience in visual art form, or just sit and listen to the music.

Also, the sermon was absolutely fantastic, thoroughly grounded in scripture, and accessible and relevant.

While I have my reservations, I think we’ll be going back.  It’s possible that this is exactly the kind of Christianity I’ve been looking for.  We’ll see.  I’m so wishy-washy about this kind of thing.  One day I’m certain that I’ve found it, the next day I’m grumpy and absolutely certain that I haven’t found anything at all.