A tale of two churches

We move from Muskegon back south to Grand Rapids for our last stop and a return in the morning to Mars Hill. This time the second morning service of the day sees thousands gathering the converted Mall. Again the service is so different to what we are used to. The service begins virtually without introduction with half an hour of worship, led in a contemporary way but again containing a good number of traditional hymns. There follows just over half an hour of teaching in the round by a father and son team speaking on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s good stuff, practical and clear and grounded in much life experience as the father of the team talks about his prayer life as he battles incurable cancer. Grown up stuff then but no prayerful response, and as the service ends the place clears very quickly, no-one talks and I suspect that they head off like we do to the genuine Mall for some Sunday Trading. It provides much discussion for Catherine and I as it feels to be so lacking in fellowship.
Surely this isn’t the full Mars Hill church life, where is the fellowship?
As far as we can gather there is more to Mars Hill: there are mini congregations, house groups and groups that are helping others. They are building houses with Habitat for Humanity, they are giving fuel vouchers to locals in trouble and they are being supportive of one another. They are not really expressing that in their morning worship: perhaps this is the place where people come when they are not ready to dive completely in. I have a lot more to reflect on about Mars Hill when I get home.
From Mars Hill via Meijrs Supermarket to get a sandwich we head to Frederick Meijr Gardens and Sculpture Park. The two things are connected… apparently the Meijr of the Supermarkets was a big fan of sculpture and on being turned down by a local community for building a supermarket he decided to build a garden and sculpture park on the land. The result is like a combination of the Eden Project and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and was really a great afternoon out. The gardens have regenerated that bit of Grand Rapids, a testimony to the value of negative planning decisions and in the USA the value of the private philanthropy.
It was a rush but we zipped back into Down Town Grand Rapids to go to church again, this time to a very traditionally American Christian Reformed Church. It was a beautiful modernish building and a vast complex of community facilities. A fairly traditional service with a congregation of well over a hundred for its smaller service of the day. It was predominantly white, very middle class but on chatting with them afterwards (Yes, these Christians talk to each other) they were very active in reaching out to their very rough neighbourhood with practical help. We listened respectfully but thought they were exaggerating about their neighbourhood. That was until we took a wrong turn on the way back and met some of their neighbours: like getting lost on a seventy’s cop show we were glad when we rediscovered 28th street and got back to the hotel. So these very white, very middle class people, were comfortable to bring help to those we locked oru car doors to protect ourselves from.
So two churches, two stories, two more faith communities, each in their own way changing their neighbourhood. But to paraphrase the song “Sisters are doing it for themselves.” Neither of them is really in partnership with government who is happy to let them do it but doesn’t really do more than stand on the side and applaud.
We need to do better in Britain I think as we begin to work more closely with government.