Last Sunday, January 22, my parents and I went to visit Fellowship Missionary Church. This was the church that one of Pastor Al's friend (one of my old pastors) attends, so we decided to check it out.
In A Nutshell: Very much like a huge New Life for adults, only with less Jesus.
Church Overview
Affiliation - Missionary Church (wiki, official site)
Attendance - 2,200 people, split up into 3 services
Demographics - Very diverse. Probably only 2/3 of the church was white, and a the rest were black or Hispanic, but we were the only Asians that we saw. Overall, the church was also very young, with a good number of young adults.
The Environment
Just walking into the building, it was very obvious that the church was very modern. They had a little cafe/lounge area to sit down and drink coffee, and instead of calling their worship center a sanctuary, they called it the "Activities Center". As we walked towards the Activity Center, we saw a lot of different stands and displays, with some booths set up for different ministries (like the Youth, Men's and Women's ministries) and some informational boards on the different missionaries being sponsored around the world. Even though everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and having a good time, we were never welcomed by an usher and our hands were never shaken. This is probably because of how large of a church it was, but as a new person who felt lost in such a big church, a welcome from someone would have been nice. The church itself seemed like a school building that had been converted to a church, and the auditorium seated around 800. The lighting and stage and everything of the auditorium reminded me a little bit of Urbana, with just a really big stage and really flashy technology.
Service
Overall the service didn't really have a sense of reverence to it. There wasn't a call to worship, a corporate Scripture reading, or a benediction, and the time for tithes was just slipped in and basically ignored, almost an afterthought. The worship was good, but the "sermon" wasn't much more than just advice from a guy on a stage.
The Worship
The music was really, really quality. It was a band of around 8 or 9 that spread themselves across the big stage. The songs we sang ranged from contemporary Christian worship songs from a decade ago to the most recent worship songs, and the execution of those songs were amazing - it really reminded me of New Life. Random note: their electric guitarist was sick! Also, because the service was held in what looked like it used to be a school auditorium, they had stage lights, so they did some cool light work on the band as the worship went on, like like moving around and changing colors and stuff. The worship was so contemporary that I found it hard to believe that older white people (of which there were a good number) would actually enjoy it. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time picturing 70 year old white gentlemen and ladies rocking out to Jesus Culture or Hillsong. But that all said, I really enjoyed the worship.
The Sermon
The talk (video here) we heard was the last of a three-part series on money called "Give. Save. Love". The pastor, Pastor Dave DeSelm, was really funny and extremely engaging, extensively using multimedia like a spiffy PowerPoint presentation and a long video at the end. He attempted to speak out of Deuteronomy 28:12-14, and, long story short, he is basically like Joel Olsteen with a Scripture reading in the beginning. He was just as engaging as Olsteen, gave a little more statistical and educated talk than Olsteen normally does, but just like him, he often repeated some nice quotables and gave a few self-glorifying stories on how not getting into debt has affected his life. To call the message shallow is an understatement. He was basically exhorting people to not get into debt and to live carefully with their money, saying things like "Live within the rest (of what you have after you've given and saved)" and "Living within one's means is not spending money you don't have." I learned a lot about the different statistics about credit card debt and interest rates and the difference between "good debt" and "bad debt". I learned some tips on how to budget and how to save money. But I didn't learn about Jesus. Not once in his message did Pastor Dave ever mention the name of Jesus. I think it's kind of funny that in claiming to preach against moralism and living a "free" life, churches like this (and Joel Olsteen's church) really just end up being moralistic churches because really any rule, or even guideline, ends up that way without Jesus.
My parents told me afterwards, "God prepared this message for you", as we had just been talking about a lot of money issues after getting an apartment and buying a car, but I was horrified. I told them how it was terrible and how Jesus wasn't even mentioned and everything, and my mom just replied, "I know, I know. But if you don't think of it like you came to worship God and think of it more as a financial seminar, it isn't so bad." The sad thing is that she's totally right. Marc Driscoll says that as Christians, we have good news, not just good advice. It's sad that you can walk into a church and leave only with some good advice but not the good news of Jesus.
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| This spiffy-lookin' thing was their bulletin for the week. |
What I liked
Diversity - Given how predominantly white Fort Wayne has seemed so far, Fellowship Missionary Church was truly a multi-ethnic church. Not only was there people of different races, but there seemed to be immigrants from different countries and also a diversity of socio-economic status.
Youth - The church also seemed to have a good balance between young people and older people, something that I'm definitely looking for in a church.
Ministries - Looking at the bulletin, there was a long list of different ministries and classes that I could participate in. There was stuff from Christian book teachings to men's ministry to cell groups.
Community Service - The church seemed to also be very involved in a lot of different community service ministries throughout Fort Wayne, and actually at the service, the pastor presented two checks of around $44,000 each to two different organizations in the area. Apparently every Christmas service, they donate the entire amount of money given to the church that week to charities, and they presented those checks during the service that we attended.
Seems Mission-focused - I need to be careful in saying that the church is mission-focused because missions without Gospel isn't missions at all, but the church does seem to be involved in various movements around the world and it seems to have sent missionaries out, and there seems to be a good amount of resources invested in missional sort of endeavors like missional prayer and learning about the world and stuff.
What I didn't like
Size - As I mentioned before, it seemed way too easy to get lost in such a big church, and it didn't seem to me like the people that attended really knew that many other people that attended the church. There wasn't the tighter-knit sort of community in the church that I had grown accustomed too bad at home and at Knox.
No Gospel - This is the kicker. Above all, this is the reason that I cannot attend a church like Fellowship Missionary Church. It became apparent to me, looking through the Sunday School classes offered and the different ministries and the talk, that this is one of those churches that only exists to help make good Christians better. It's solely focused on application and how to be a "good" Christian and live a "better" life. All of these suspicions were ultimately affirmed in probably THE worst "sermon" I have ever heard in my life (Ken White's talk on politics in AIV is a close second, but Pastor White gets a tiny bit more leeway because it was a Friday night message, not a Sunday morning sermon), as the name of Jesus was never mentioned and the saving grace of God wasn't even alluded to. My parents suggested that the focus on application might have been because of the lower socio-economic and academic standing of the congregation (in comparison to Knox and MCCC), and while I agree, it really isn't much of an excuse. In the end, people need Jesus, not financial advice.
The Verdict
As much as FMC offers that other churches in the area probably won't, such as youth and diversity, church really isn't church without Jesus, and the gospel was not preached or even touched upon in the message. I'm tempted to go back and visit to see if it was just this one week that was horrible, but I think the reality is that if a pastor has a clear conscious giving a sermon without the any sort of gospel once, this church isn't somewhere that I want to be.
Moral of the story: Enjoy Knox while you're there, you lucky college kids!!
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