We go to church at Fig Garden

The Well Community Church (Fig Garden campus), Fresno, California
This may be hard for you to imagine, but sermon collections used to be a thing. People published books of acclaimed sermons from preachers such as Charles Spurgeon or even anthologies of several preacher's sermons. I had to purchase some sermon books for seminary, but back in the day, ordinary people bought them, and churches without pastors could read those sermons during their worship services.

Video has, of course, changed all that. Churches can bring the preacher into the church virtually by projecting it on a screen. Lots of churches make this technology part of their culture. Churches divide into a number of “campuses” (locations) and share the same sermon, either live or prerecorded.

Which raises a question: we aim to go to a different church every week, but did we go to a different church if we went to worship services at different campuses of the same church? Last April, we visited The Well Community Church in Fresno -- North Campus. This Sunday we went to The Well Community Church in Fresno -- Fig Garden Campus.

So did we go to a new place or did we cheat? (And can we cheat on the rule of going to a new church every week when we make up our own rules?)

Anyway, on Sunday morning, we went to Fig Garden, and they used a prerecorded video for the sermon. (We were sure it was “Memorex” rather than live, because Mike the on-screen preacher kept saying “tonight.”)

Still, I think it’s an interesting question. Are multi-campus churches just one church, or are they more? Do people who attend always go to the same campus or rotate around? From the way people greeted friends, my bet would be people stick with one campus. We were greeted with a hearty hardy firm handshake by the ushers at the door.

The campus has its own pastor who introduced himself at the beginning of the service. “Good morning! I’m Josh, and I have the privilege to serve as campus pastor.” Josh was live and in person, and he announced some things that were happening at The Well. The night before, the church had hosted other churches for the city wide 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting, and the night before they had also hosted a dessert for some missionaries. Those same missionaries were introduced at the end of the service we attended.

Along with everybody else, we were encouraged to fill out attendance cards as part of a “conversation.”

“I’m Chris, one of the pastors on staff. We’re going to bring back an old hymn, ‘Come Thou Fount’.” (Is it really an old hymn that needs bringing back when it’s covered by Mumford and Sons?) The worship team consisted of four men: two on guitar, one on bass, and one on drums. It was interesting not to have a keyboard of any kind, but I enjoyed the singing.

It was time for the sermon and time to watch the screen. “I’m Mike, one of the three teaching pastors... The Three Musketeers, The Three Stooges, depending on the week.” He introduced a new series on I Thessalonians (which Mike mostly referred to as “First Thess.”)

Mike began by “bragging on our artistic team.” Art is evidently an important component in the ministry; there are rather abstract paintings on the wall in the foyer, and some nice more representational stained glass. He told about how the teaching pastors tell the artistic team the Scripture themes they’ll be teaching, and the team runs with it (after asking follow up questions such as “What is the Greek word for ‘hope’?”)

As he started the sermon, Mike talked about the importance of setting in the stories, and he turned to the Book of Acts for the story of the founding of church in Thessalonica.

Mike talked about persecution the early church faced, saying that we don’t have to face such things in modern America. He said his one experience of “persecution” in his decades of faith was when a professor said he wouldn’t work with him because he was a Christian.

Nonetheless, there is still persecution and suffering for Christians in the world, as the missionaries who came forward at the end of the service know. They serve in a country closed to missions. So I can’t say anything more about them or their ministry, but I can say the Fig Garden Campus of The Well is a church -- even if it is a part of a bigger church -- because all of it is part of the One, Apostolic Church, and we were glad we visited.

We Go to Church for the Children

Northpark Community Church, Fresno, California
You just can’t stop some pastors from preaching. Northpark Community Church, along with other Fresno and Clovis churches, is participating in 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. Each evening of those three weeks, different churches are hosting evening worship. Bob Willis, pastor of Northpark, said he’d already planned his sermon for the evening when he received a request to host His Little Feet, a children’s choir.

Willis wasn’t about to say “no” to orphans -- he knows James 1 says that true religion is about caring for orphans (and widows -- but hosting the choir didn’t stop him from getting his sermon points in.

Before he introduced the choir, he delivered his three points about three aspects of fasting: first, that, as Jesus taught, there is a private aspect of fasting (Matthew 6); second, there is a corporate aspect to fasting (I Samuel 7); and third, fasting should always go along with doing good works. (He cited Isaiah 58 as his text for this point, using a wonderful translation for verse 7: “Give clothes to those who need them and don’t hide from relatives that need your help.”) He gave a decent sermon in under ten minutes, though I’m sure he would have taken more time without the choir. I wouldn’t mind if more pastors knew the short sermon can be done.

But then the choir came forward. There were seventeen children in the choir, orphans or near orphans representing three continents: Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Though, perhaps you could say there were eighteen (36? Should we count one foot for each child or two?) “Little Feet” there; a graduated member of the choir was in the audience, and somebody said, “Once you’re His Little Feet, you’ll always be.” The foot reference comes from Isaiah 52:7, “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of them who bring good news”.

The children are aged 7 to 13 and come from India, Kenya, and Haiti but sing primarily in English -- Amharic, Kiswahili, Spanish, and Mizo are also part of their music. The children gain confidence and skills to equip them for vocations and leadership positions in the future. Members of the choir attend His Little Feet Training Academy while they’re on tour. They didn’t perform many songs, but their voices were clear and sweet, and they performed with cheer and energy.

The choir partners with the ministry of Compassion International, which sponsors needy children throughout the world, as well as several other global ministries. After the choir’s performance, a video showed the work of the ministry along with four ways people could contribute to children’s lives: a simple one time financial gift, mission trips, monthly child sponsorship (since I don’t drink coffee, I was glad they didn’t use the “for less than the cost of your daily cup of coffee” cliche that always seems to be used in such presentations). Finally, as a major commitment, adoption of needy children was mentioned.

I appreciated that the service was kept at about an hour, since a number of small children were in attendance. Older children, perhaps middle-school aged, were called forward to offer the closing prayers, one praying for orphans and children in need, another for widows, and a third for families. I appreciated that children from the church were given an important part of the service.

After those prayers, there were announcements about upcoming worship services during the remainder of the 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. We were glad to know that people were praying and fasting alone, together, and that they were doing good works as well (see, Pastor Willis, I got your points!).

We Go to an Early Service

Saint James Episcopal Cathedral, Fresno, California
To be honest, we went to Saint James because it was nearby, and the service started at 7:30 am. I’d worked 11:00 pm to 7:00 am the night before, so an early service meant I’d get to bed earlier -- which sounded very good. Many churches don’t offer an early service, but I didn’t feel like I could stay awake for an 11:00 am service.

There are plenty of other reasons people choose early services: those kids’ soccer leagues that play on Sundays, or Sunday work schedules (next Sunday morning, Mindy has to be at work by 10:45), not to mention (though I guess I’m about to) the NFL playoffs -- after church I heard a few guys discussing whether that afternoon’s games would make an Eagles - Patriots Super Bowl matchup. (I’m hoping for Vikings - Jaguars myself.)

The Reverend Canon Keith Brown acknowledged during the service that there was something different about the 7:30 crowd from 9 and 11 o’clockers. He mentioned that those who attend the early service tend to arrive early, while people at later services tend to come late. That was true the morning we visited; a number of people were already seated, all quiet, when we arrived around 7:25. A moment later, Keith said, “I’m sorry to interrupt you while you meditate or pray,” but he wanted to encourage worshipers to ponder the calls of Samuel and Nathanael in the morning Scripture readings. “These two important calls are your homework for the next four minutes,” he added.

Keith referred to those who come to that early service as “active contemplatives,” people who want both to be Mary and Martha, to be still and to work simultaneously. Keith said that's his own tendency as well, and that by looking at the faces in the congregation, he could tell that many could relate.

A little later, during the sermon, Keith did talk about those calls to ministry, which are found in I Samuel 3 and in John 1. He discussed the importance of listening to God’s call and also answering God’s call. He also talked about the importance of having other people in our lives who help us discern God’s call.

We noticed another distinctive in the earliest service of the morning (called the Contemplative Eucharist): it had no accompanist. Later services include hymns and songs, but this one doesn’t. Even so, the service isn’t without music. As it says in the liturgy, “A proper preface (to the Eucharist) is sung or said on all Sundays.” When Keith leads the service, it is sung, because he loves music.

After the service, I asked Keith how the other morning services differ from that first service. He said that people in later services tended to be more involved in social activism, and that the later services have a younger crowd.Most at the service we attended were roughly our age(that would be “not young”) or older. No children were in attendance at the 7:30 service, but we saw several arriving for the 9:00 worship.

We mentioned our project of visiting churches and bars, and he kindly said he hoped we’d be back at Saint James more than once a year. He also sent a very nice email the next day, which
is the kind of personal follow up we’ve really come to appreciate.

The saying is the early bird catches the worm. Frankly, I haven’t gone fishing for a very long time, so my interest in worms is minimal, but being early has other benefits, such as an encouraging time of worship at churches like Saint James.

We Go to Church by Mistake

Armenian Church CEF, Fresno, California
“Mistakes were made.” (The passive voice is ideal for avoiding blame.)

We thought it was time to visit some Armenian churches. Armenians have a long history in Fresno, arriving in the area after escaping European persecution in the late 19th and early 20th century. “Little Armenia” is no longer a part of the city as it was, but anyone can visit the Armenian Museum of Fresno, established in 2003. Fresno’s most famous native son, writer William Saroyan, was Armenian, as is artist Corky Normart.

So Mindy went about researching Armenian churches in the area, and found one in our neighborhood. The website (all in English) had the service start time at 11:00 am. To our delight, the pastor had previously served at a church we visited in San Francisco a couple of years ago, and we looked forward to seeing him again. We were excited.

But when we entered the church a little before eleven, the service seemed to have started already, and the room was pretty full. We wondered if we'd come in for the end of Sunday School.

The church we’d visited in San Francisco used some English as well as Armenian, but we saw no English writing and heard no English spoken from from the platform during the service this time. In spite of all this, it still took a while to figure out we’d gone to the wrong church.

We hadn’t visited the Armenian Protestant church a few blocks south west of us (Pilgrim Armenian Congregational Church) but had gone to the Armenian Protestant church a few blocks south east of us, Armenian Church, Christians of Evangelical Faith. (Which explained why we didn’t see the pastor and why the sanctuary -- even the cross up front -- looked entirely different from the website.)

The people in the church were hospitable. Someone offered to translate the service for us, but we didn’t want to take away from someone else’s morning.

Mindy was glad she’d brought a scarf, because every woman wore a head covering, and she didn’t want to give offense.

There was singing, and the words were on the wall, but the Armenian alphabet is very different from English -- or even Greek or Russian, so we couldn’t even sing along phonetically.

During the times of prayer, many people prayed at the same time, so we’re guessing there was a charismatic aspect to the worship. It’s difficult to know if anyone is praying in tongues when you don’t even recognize the primary language being used.

We were grateful we’d stopped keeping track of sermon length, because we weren’t sure which of the several speakers gave the official sermon. It’s possible there were a number of sermons.

We did recognize some things though. The Christmas tree in the front was familiar. We were visiting on the day the Armenian community celebrates Christmas (for most other churches, it was Epiphany Sunday), and the service ended with a Christmas program. Children wearing white shirts and dark pants or skirts came forward and recited things -- we suspect Bible verses -- in Armenian and sang Armenian songs. One of those songs, “Silent Night,” was first sung in Armenian, but, music scholars as we are, we still managed to recognize the tune. The children and the congregation then sang the first verse of the song in English, which allowed us to sing along.

When the service was over, people invited us to join them for lunch, but we had plans to get together with our son and headed out. It was good our son’s apartment was within walking distance, because we went to the parking lot to find our car blocked in by someone who’d arrived later than we did.

As I said, mistakes were made. But this faithful gathering of God’s people was not one of them.

We Go to Church with a Saint We Didn't Know

Saint Columba Church, Fresno, California
“Would you like to hear the story of the stained glass?” Father Jim Snell asked us after the 8:00 am Holy Eucharist service. Though Mindy had noticed stained glass in another part of the church as we walked to the sanctuary, from inside we only saw the clear glass windows behind the altar with a cross hanging before them. The windows provide a lovely view of evergreen trees just outside.

The stained glass was elsewhere. Father Jim took us first to the chapel to see the two beautiful abstract glass windows representing the Resurrection and Heaven. “The Third Day” is a work by Corky Normart, a local artist and a parishioner of the church. The heart of the window was his first work in stained glass, along with a window for the fellowship hall representing creation. (Most impressively, Normart in was selected in 1997 to work on the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, traditionally believed to be built on the location of Christ’s tomb).

Father Jim has served at Saint Columba for the last two decades. We told him about our project of visiting churches, and that though we’ve been to a number of Episcopal churches, we hadn’t been to any Anglican churches. Jim jokingly referred to the Anglican Church as “Catholic lite.”

There certainly were elements of the worship service that reminded us of worshiping in a Catholic church, like the vestments worn by those leading the worship service, the procession before the reading from the Gospel of John (chapter 1, verses 1-18), responses like “and with your spirit,” responsive readings and bowings toward the altar, and making the sign of the cross at several points during worship. There was the “passing of the peace” (though I often slip up and say “Good morning” rather than “Peace be with you”). But there are differences. For instance, it was so much easier for a newcomer to follow along in the worship booklet than we’ve found it to be in Roman Catholic masses, with much clearer directions of what’s being read and what we’re expected to do at any moment during the service. (Mindy mentioned that she also appreciated being addressed as “sisters and brothers” rather than “brethren” or even “brothers and sisters,” but we weren’t sure if this was a St Columba’s thing or an Anglican thing or just something we hadn’t noticed before.)

There are, of course, theological differences. In a Roman Catholic Church, only those who are Catholics in good standing are to receive the Eucharist, but we noticed in the worship booklet that all baptized believers in Jesus Christ were invited to partake. Mindy also noticed that some people ate the wafer and then drank from the cup while others received the wafer dipped in the wine. Father Jim said they tried to accommodate people for their comfort with regard to germs or alcohol consumption. The important thing, he said, was that all who desired to received the sacrament (“Whether that be the bread or the cup or both,” Father Jim added).

Another thing that the Anglican Church has in common with the Catholic Church is that Christmas does not end on the 25th. When we entered the church, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” was being played on the organ, and we sang “Joy to the World” during the service. The Twelve Days of Christmas continued on this New Year’s Eve morning, including the draped evergreens around the sanctuary, poinsettias in various corners, and the carved wooden nativity scene just inside the door. Father Phil, the congregation’s curate, even included a Santa shout out during the sermon about becoming a child of God (from the John 1 Gospel reading).

I appreciated the way Scripture was read by lay readers, shared as congregational responsive readings, and declaimed by the clergy. The congregation also read the Nicene Creed aloud. During the prayers of the people, birthdays and anniversaries were acknowledged along with illnesses and struggles.

We enjoyed worshiping at Saint Columba, and after we got back home, I was curious about the man the church was named after. Mindy had done a quick Wikipedia search, but the church website had information, too. Saint Columba was an Irish monk who sailed to Scotland in 562 and is credited with bringing the Gospel to that part of the world. In Iona, he and his companions formed a community devoted to prayer, singing Psalms, studying Scripture, and sharing the Gospel with others. The church website says, “Like those Christians at Iona, Saint Columba Church is a community of worship and prayer, dedicated to the Lord Jesus and to one another. We have heard God’s call. And we too are on mission, serving those around us, bringing the good news of Jesus to our friends, neighbors, and everyone we meet.”

Mindy and I are glad to be among that community, met and made to feel most welcome.