What to expect and ask from Church

In my not so great recent review of the Hillsong Church I said I'd write a "What to expect from Church" kind of post. This was a bit harder than I first thought but since part of the initial premise of the this blog was to go church surfing and to see if I could find a church, which I have done. I thought I'm probably as good as anyone to write this especially seeing that the church I've found (like many churches) is not a super funky ultra post modern alternative church.

So here goes...

What to expect from a church...

• Expect that the pastor will not be as good a speaker as that head of an overseas theological college you heard on a podcast last month.
• Expect that you won't like the music.
• Expect that almost everyone in the church will be incredibly uncool. Remember that if your a little cool this will then make you the coolest person in church or if you are uncool you will not stand out.
• Expect that your radical ideas on how to revamp the evening service will be ignored. Lets face it if they listen to you then they'll probably listen to the next chump who comes along and suggests that everyone dress up as clowns to run the service.

What to ask from a church...

• Ask that you can give to the church community in some meaningful way. For me at that the moment that means doing the occasional talk and playing bass for music I don't really like very much and going to an Alpha course that wasn't quite my cup of tea either.
• Ask that your different ideas be respected (not necessarily embraced by all).
• Ask that you have space to explore your faith.
• Ask that you get proportional support for your faith explorations and ministry experiments. For me at the moment the best example is the alternative worship service I've been talking about. Me and four others want to give this a go and we've got the support to give it a go, we're not taking over an existing service, after all there is only five of us keen to try this, but we have been given enough support to start this in mid February.

In short expect that church won't be all that you wish it could be or even a quarter of that just ask that you have space to give your ideas a crack. I'm feeling pretty luck at the moment because all of these things I have found in the church I am attending at the moment.