My 4th week wasn’t really a shopping week. I was blessed with the opportunity to travel halfway across the country to visit my family and was invited to sing at their church. My family belongs to a beautiful Lutheran church with approximately 450 members; a little larger than that to which I am accustomed, but still small enough to be very friendly. I attended the contemporary service and really enjoyed it. A missionary brought the message and he painted a very compelling picture of the situation in Haiti and spoke about what his organization is doing to help. His message was excellent. The praise team sang mostly familiar music and I enjoyed singing along, albeit from the pew. The praise team consisted of keyboard, bass, and 5 singers. They were short handed the Sunday I was there but I was able to attend their weekday rehearsal where they added two members, one of whom plays violin and one of whom plays the trumpet. Both of these members also play percussion instruments, a dijimbe and another, lower pitched drum that I did not recognize.
The praise team was led by the keyboard player and he is quite good. I enjoyed listening to him (and was grateful for his extremely adept accompaniment of my solo, playing on very short notice). The sound was quite well balanced, thanks to a mixing position at the rear of the church and a few capable engineers. The singers did a good job of singing together and overall, I thought the praise team was quite good. I did, however, miss the percussion. While the two drums added some needed motion to the sound when I attended the rehearsal, there is no substitute for a drum kit. The pastor and I spoke briefly about his desire to add percussion and I passed along my suggestion that a digital kit would be a good solution.
I was astonished at the difference in resources between a 200 member church and a 450 member church. I’ve always been a fan of the small church because of the greater potential for intimacy within the community, but I found no lack of fellowship here, and the greater resources of the slightly larger church do present some appealing pluses; greater participation in missions, a healthy batch of programs, and a stronger economic base. Maybe I need to expand my horizons.
Hopefully I will add a 5th blog next week. I did not attend any church over the past three weeks due to a travel day, a day when I had to be at work too early to attend, and this past Sunday when I was just a bit too depressed to drag myself somewhere. Hopefully this Sunday will be better.
Please pray for me as I continue my search.
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