NoelHeikkinen.com

Churches

Oct 27, 2005 Print This Post

//MOOD: I need to work…

//ITUNES: Amie from the album “O” by Damien Rice

OK, so I have a crapload of message prep to do, but I am having a horrible time getting a rhythm going, so I am going to report of my weekend first and then get back into the grind.

This last weekend, Sean and I visited Minneapolis. We stayed at my friend Mark’s house and had quite a full weekend. For the sake of getting my mind flushed and going back to work, I will diary our weekend here. I am going to talk about 5 church services (at two churches) we went to, as well. I mention this, because in the spirit of this post and not wanting to pick a fight, I am going to mention the things I liked about each of these services and I am going to be uncharacteristically quiet about what I didn’t like. I’m also not in the mood to pick a fight, so there you go.

FRIDAY

Early morning flight, arrived in Minneapolis at 8ish

IHOP for breakfast

Mall of America – we were in and out of there in an hour. And, yes, I worshipped at the Apple Store.

Hung out with Mark and his fam

Dinner with Lizz’s guy

Attended The Rock

The Rock is part of a multi-site church in the Twin Cities called Evergreen. They have five locations around the city, but consider themselves one church. They have something like 13 pastors that serve as a team (no Senior Pastor), which is very cool. It must be a trip, especially knowing the guys. Their meetings must be something to behold.

The Rock targets an aggressively younger crowd and it was cool to see so many young people in one place. It reminded me of our later Saturday Night service as far as the crowd was concerned. While we were there, I finally got to meet Adam and Peter in person. These guys have been blogging buddies for awhile now, so it was awesome to meet them in person. And, yes, Peter looks like John Larroquette.

That night, we went out with Andy and Marco from the Urban Refuge (another of Evergreen’s sites…but I’ll get into that in a bit).

SATURDAY

Slept in a bit.

Had lunch with my friend Aaron. He showed me around the city and we had an amazing lunch at some crazy pizza place that has ovens so hot they heat your pizza up in 90 seconds. Freakin’ awesome. I would eat there everyday. OK, maybe not. But it was good, nonetheless.

Sean and I then wandered around Uptown, which is very cool.

Attended The Urban Refuge. It was kinda weird because we heard the exact same message as the night before. The same guy taught both places (which I understand is rare). This service meets in a church they share with a Baptist congregation. This was a very multi-ethnic church, which was cool. There was even one asian there, which made me fit in.

Then, Chad showed us around the city (quite different at night) and we grabbed dinner and talked Emerging Church stuff. In fact, we saw this truck with a glass box on the back with people in their swimsuits dancing inside. Weird for Minneapolis. They were advertising Mexico and getting a parking ticket.

SUNDAY

Went to Evergreen Lakeville. This service was also doing the same series as the other two. It was surreal, because their target is definitely older (35-45 or so). The same series, different message, different pastor teaching, same video. In fact they had this video that they showed at at 4 services we went to that parodied The Amazing Race.

They do one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. Just before the message, they have a five minute intermission so parents can walk their kids to their classes. Kinda cool. It was a bit of mingle time, as well.

We only had time to stay for 2 minutes of the message, so I can’t say much about that. We hopped in the car and drove to…

Evergreen Bloomington to go to another service. Again, same series. I finally asked and found out that they are in an advertising season and this is one of two times a year all the locations do the same thing. Gotcha. It was cool to be at this service, because I got to hear my friend Brent teach and he did an awesome job. In fact, he said the most amazing thing about Stephen’s stoning…but I’ll tell you about that later.

After church, I had lunch with Ben, Aaron, and Chris at a little pub. We tested my call in number deal (206-888-NOEL, by the way) and here’s our little ditty we recorded.

We then hung out with Mark and his fam again for a bit and then headed downtown to check out

Solomon’s Porch for their service. Solomon’s Porch shares a facility with two other churches (I continue to love this concept). This church was by far the most eclectic I have ever visited. I really appreciated their creativity and willingness to try new things and create their own traditions. We had to duck out a little early to catch our flight, but I wish we had been able to stay.

All of their music is original. None of the songs sounded like sing-songy worship songs, so that was very cool. They had lots of art, tons of people read scripture and other stuff. By far my favorite thing, though, was that when they did a baby dedication they invited all the kids in the church up to take part. Just as they asked the parents and the church to support this kid, they asked all t he kids to be his friend and to help him too. It was way cool.

Well, that’s about it. That may be my longest post ever, but now I have all that off my brain and I can squeeze a bit of message prep in before my appointment arrives in 22 minutes.

Sorry about any typos. There is no way in heck I am proofing this long ass post.