Our church has been going through some major changes lately. It actually began before we even started coming to the church 5 years ago, but the ball really got going last year when our founding pastor left the church. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave under the best of circumstances. But, it was actually years in the making and there were many factors at play. Also, our current pastor and elders decided to do a church overhaul by deciding to recast the vision, change locations, and even change name. In effect, start a new church. So, with all these changes in the past year, many people have decided to leave the church. And recently, we have decided to leave also. The critical mass was not there for us anymore. My wife’s friends, my kid’s friends, and even several of my friends had already left. And also the key features of the church that attracted us to it the first place was gone. So, then we decided to do a little church shopping.
The first place we visited was Johnson Ferry Baptist Church since it was close to our house. And also since it is the host church of the Reasons to Believe Atlanta chapter was a bit of a factor for me. It’s a fairly large church with probably around 8000 members and 5 Sunday morning services. I was impressed that Pastor Bryant Wright wasn’t afraid to offend the members. From the pulpit, he stated that probably half of the members of the church would carry the mark of the beast. Not exactly something that you would hear in a sermon from a senior pastor. But, the church was a bit too large, too white (I would guess there were less than 5% minorities there), and too impersonal.
Next, we visited Atlanta Vineyard. It was a bit smaller, perhaps 1000 members. And when we visited, we met several people from the old church. The pastor, Johnny Crist, was OK. His teaching was Biblical, but I left wondering how could I really apply his message to my life. And it was also another predominantly Caucasian church. Also, why does every contemporary church have to blast the music during the singing?
Then we visited Lilburn Alliance. We attended the Pastor’s Welcome class, which is a good opportunity to learn more about the church. It was a bit smaller with around 800 members. The church also seemed to have a diverse group of people. There were 5 other ethnic churches on the campus. And the main church had the most representation of minorities out of the three churches we’ve visited. It also has a large group of seniors, which seems unusual to me. It perhaps has the best mix of traditional and contemporary flavor out of the three churches. In the class, I asked the pastor what makes this church distinct. He said emphasis on prayer, being multi-cultural, and being missional. Which happen to be three of my buttons. So, it looks like we’re leaning towards Lilburn Alliance. However, it’s pretty far away from our house. So, in addition to changing job, changing church, it seems like the next thing we’ll be doing is changing to another house.