Congregational Differences

Amy and I decided to attend the North Central congregation this morning. It is the largest congregation in town, averaging somewhere around 300 people on a Sunday morning. The difference in this service and the worship assemblies we've become accustomed to was striking.

The congregation we are members at, Highland Village, has about 70 members. Many of them are related, and the average age hovers around 60. It is a perfectly nice congregation, and we call it home.

Sunday morning Bible class at Highland Village consists of one of the elders reading from the Bible. For as long as I can remember we've been going through the Old Testament, we're up to Deuteronomy now. The elder literally reads a few versus, sums up what was just read, and then asks for questions. Sometimes someone will pipe in either with another summary of the passage, or will make broad generalizations with an application of the passage. It never seems that the elder has done any preparation for the class. Rarely are there cross references or detailed mentions of any scholarly commentary.

Boring is the word.

This morning we caught the last class of what sounded like something very interesting. The class dealt with a history of the church. Today's lesson dealt with the changes of the church over the last few decades. There was discussion on changing attitudes over instrumental usage and women's roles.

Interestingly it dealt with the issues on a strictly historical basis, and didn't get into any of the actual theology. There also wasn't a lick of scripture read.

Worship was lively. As mentioned Highland Village is smaller and consists of mostly elderly folks, who, I must say can't hold much of a tune. Song services are lead out of the old books filled with the classic standards of Church of Christ hymnology.

This morning's song service was lead by a beautiful baritone with some southern soul. The congregation followed suit and sang passionately and in tune. We sang a good mix of the classics and some more contemporary songs. It was all quite moving.

Although being a larger and more "progressive" church we got the occasional hand rising from an audience member and there was a clap filled song or two. In order to keep the beat, the song leader tended to snap his fingers from time to time.

I've had various thoughts about these issues, and I don't want to get into them here, but needless to say I have not been a part of these things in a long time, and it was quite shocking to see them again.

Highland Village's preacher is a very intelligent (he has a couple of Harvard degrees) and interesting man who prepares very good sermons and well researched Bible classes. He actually reminds me of Dr. Morris, who some of you will remember, in that he often seems to think on a level well above the rest of the room. He also often tells jokes that leave most of the audience staring blankly while I try to suppress my uproarious laughter.

Today's sermon was from a guest speaker, a high school senior, about to embark to college. While he did an admirable job, it definitely seemed like a high school senior preaching for the first time.

North Central had several greeters lined at the doors, who met us with outstretched hands and a warm smile. We were asked a few questions as we introduced ourselves in order to lead us to the proper Bible class. Afterwards many of the members came up and introduced themselves.

At Highland Village, though we have been members there for several years, and the congregation is quite small, we still do not know many of the other members well if at all.

I'm not trying to make judgment on either church. There are very good things, and not so good things at both congregations, as with every congregation throughout the world. Having been a member at Highland Village for many years, and attending a very small church in France the differences with a larger congregation made a big impression on me today. I thought I'd share.