College-Aged Service Visit

This Sunday (April 27th) I finally got a ride, with Josh, to visit Franklin Road Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. From reading their website over the course of the last month and having some conversation over email with the youth pastor, Joel Norris, I got the impression that the church really makes an effort to connect with the community that they are in.That impression was not wrong. From the moment we pulled into the parking lot I could tell that this was a place that made an effort to welcome all the new guests. The front parking spaces were for handicapped and guests and they were specifically marked.The building and people were more formal and traditional than I am used to, but that was what I was told to expect in the email conversation with Joel. I was somewhat prepared but it was still a pretty new thing to me. When we walked in, whether because they did not recognize our faces or because we came from the direction of the guest parking, we were welcomed and asked if we were guests. We were directed towards a lady who took us to the appropriate room for the 10:00 college/ carrier/ young singles service. She introduced us and the youth pastor, whom I had email conversations with, remembered who I was and invited us to sit by his wife.We were given cards to fill out our contact information and were told that they would call us sometime this week to follow up and check on us.  

The service started with a song, there were no instruments and one college senior was standing at the front on the room leading us in a song. The problem was that I had never heard of the song that we were singing. I stood there awkwardly until I got enough of the song to join in a little the second go around. We had prayer requests and prayer time then sang a second time. This time there were words on the projector and I knew the song from church in Colorado. It bothered me though, that they would put so much effort into welcoming directing and introducing guests that they wouldn't put in the little effort to copy and paste lyrics to all of the songs on the slides they already had going. It may seem like a minor thing but it makes a huge difference in how well you feel you are fitting into the group. Sitting there while everyone knows the words to a song by heart makes you feel out of place and ignorant when you are in a new unusual place.Granted, it's really hard to see how strange things are from a new person's standpoint without asking them so it is definitely a forgivable thing, especially with all the other things they do for guests.

The teaching was in a series of common things young adult Christians ask about the faith. Today's service was on prayer. I have sat through teachings on prayer many many times in my life but I still liked what Joel had to say. He gave the acronym for pray (praise repent ask yield) and talked about asking fervently, almost to the point of annoying, for things we really want or need from god. What I really liked about this particular service is that he emphasized the relationship and human aspect to prayer. He gave us the formula/ acronym as a basis for our prayers to pay him proper respect and to make sure we were REALLY thinking about our life and communicating not just going through the motions or asking for something and expecting it to be handed to us on a silver platter. He talked about God as primarily a friend. He made the analogy that you would not just go up to a friend and ask them for something then not talk to them for a month. You have a real relationship with your friends and you go through life with them, just as you should with God. I think that is the most important thing to emphasize in a sermon about communication with God.  

After the sermon was over, Joel pointed at Josh and I and told everyone to introduce themselves and get to know us if they wanted to. Five or six people did and we ended up staying and talking for a little while before leaving. The men at the front door talked to us again making sure we got to where we needed to go okay. I thanked them and told them we would be back next week.  We did not get to go to the main service at 11 because Josh had to go to work, so I have not experienced the entire service yet but it seems like a good church with a good handle on how to reach out to people.