Our Sunday Field Trip Report
Yesterday was our first Sunday “away” from SPV, the church we’ve been part of for about 3 years. It was a strange feeling. On one hand I was relieved to not have to load and setup musical equipment, on the other hand we terribly missed being with our dear friends. It felt a bit isolated, yet peaceful. Hard to explain.
We took a nice walk around the neighborhood (awfully quiet on a Sunday morning!). Later, we hooked up with some friends and visited a church called Quest in Ballard.
Here’s the link to Quest’s website: www.seaq.org
They’ve been together for about two years now and seem to have a congregation of about 100 people or so. What interested me (and the reason I wanted to visit) is the way they’ve structured their ministry. They renovated a building in Ballard and turned it into a coffee/espresso bar and cyber café called Qcafe (www.qcafe.org). In addition to being a nice place where people can hang out during the week, they also function as a non-profit community center which provides referrals to social services, teaches computer classes and has other services to the community.
So instead of having a building that sits empty all week long and is only used on Sunday morning, they use the facility to reach into the surrounding community, provide a non-"churchy" place for people in the community to hang out and generate revenue to boot. Then they also use it to meet on Sundays for “church”.
The congregation appeared to be about 80% young people – lots of college students. The pastor was an engaging young man named Eugene Cho.
The service itself was very traditional. 3-4 (moderately recent) worship songs, announcements, sermon, communion, blessing & dismissal. Apart from the hip & trendy espresso bar decor, it could've been any Evangelical church service. I guess I was a little disappointed that they weren’t as adventurous in their liturgy as they are in other areas. As I noticed some of the college students yawning and squirming in their seats 30 minutes into the sermon, I wondered how much more an interactive, dialogical approach to the service might have engaged them.
All in all though it was a great learning experience and a blessing. More blessings followed as we were treated to lunch and conversation with friends.
Not sure what we’ll be doing next Sunday, but this week we’ll have our first get-together to talk and pray about where to go from here as an ekklesia. The adventure begins…
We took a nice walk around the neighborhood (awfully quiet on a Sunday morning!). Later, we hooked up with some friends and visited a church called Quest in Ballard.
Here’s the link to Quest’s website: www.seaq.org
They’ve been together for about two years now and seem to have a congregation of about 100 people or so. What interested me (and the reason I wanted to visit) is the way they’ve structured their ministry. They renovated a building in Ballard and turned it into a coffee/espresso bar and cyber café called Qcafe (www.qcafe.org). In addition to being a nice place where people can hang out during the week, they also function as a non-profit community center which provides referrals to social services, teaches computer classes and has other services to the community.
So instead of having a building that sits empty all week long and is only used on Sunday morning, they use the facility to reach into the surrounding community, provide a non-"churchy" place for people in the community to hang out and generate revenue to boot. Then they also use it to meet on Sundays for “church”.
The congregation appeared to be about 80% young people – lots of college students. The pastor was an engaging young man named Eugene Cho.
The service itself was very traditional. 3-4 (moderately recent) worship songs, announcements, sermon, communion, blessing & dismissal. Apart from the hip & trendy espresso bar decor, it could've been any Evangelical church service. I guess I was a little disappointed that they weren’t as adventurous in their liturgy as they are in other areas. As I noticed some of the college students yawning and squirming in their seats 30 minutes into the sermon, I wondered how much more an interactive, dialogical approach to the service might have engaged them.
All in all though it was a great learning experience and a blessing. More blessings followed as we were treated to lunch and conversation with friends.
Not sure what we’ll be doing next Sunday, but this week we’ll have our first get-together to talk and pray about where to go from here as an ekklesia. The adventure begins…
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