Posted on 13 October 2009 | 
We had a really spiritual weekend attending three churches on Sunday, meeting two people and visiting two churches on Monday.
The three churches were so different and yet the same. The style of delivery was just totally different . We went to church with our friend in the morning to an evangelical church which had a congregation of about 2,000 people in two services in the morning. We did sense the move of the Spirit in the worship though again there was nothing new in the songs we sang, either English or Australian. A good word was preached and everything was very respectable and ordered.
The second church was in the evening at 5.00pm in a downtown part of Hollywood and just a small group of about 50 people meeting in a hall under the name Kairos . There was no accompaniment for the singing though this was an experiment as there were huge speakers suspended from the ceiling which made me think things were probably very different normally. After the main service 5 people were prayed for as they began ministry as equippers much like our own ministry coordinators. This concluded with the sharing in a very formal way communion.
We then shot off quickly and went to a church meeting in a theatre in downtown LA part of the Mosaic chain of churches. the worship here was loud, vibrant, young and modern. Probably 2000 packed into the theatre in a dark clubby kind of atmosphere. The message was a clear call to faith for unbelievers.
Though the outward manifestation of worship was very different the content was very similar in that there was a time of singing, followed by notices and a sermon for at least 30 minutes. This seemed to be the accepted pattern outside the liturgical churches.
Early on the Monday morning we set off to meet with Eddie Gibbs who though born in England trained in the UK and in the USA and ministered in the UK before being called to be a bishop in Latin America. Finally returning to USA as a lecturer at Fuller Seminary. He retired a couple of years ago. Having written a number of books on Emerging church he is an authority on the subject. He is quite pessimistic about the state of the church especially the Episcopal church. Though he is concerned about the move in the USA to a post-Christendom atmosphere much like in the UK.
We met with J.R. Woodward who leads the Kairos group of three churches which there are in LA. The church we had attended the previous day. He believes small (less than 150) is beautiful as relationship between members is for him most important. They simply plant another church when they have outgrown that figure. There seemed to be no restraint on where or when anyone plants a church, very different from our own situation.
We briefly visited the Crystal Cathedral and Saddleback churches. Both of which were amazing simply for the scale of the operation at both sites. the former being a more traditional form of church which started life in the ’60′s as a drive-in-church in a drive-in-movie show ground. The latter developed by Rick Warren who prayed for President Obama and wrote the “Purpose driven …..” books.
After this we spent a few days chillin’ in San Diego, what a beautiful city. Spending extra time at the coast meant we didn’t make it to Bryce Canyon (our original plan) but we are now near to Grand Canyon which we will reach tomorrow.
