We go to Church before the Big Game

Mountain View Community Church, Fresno, California
“I’m Tony, one of the pastors here at Mountain View Community Church, and welcome to Jersey Sunday!”

We’d already spotted quite a variety of jerseys: Niners, Raiders, Colts, Packers, Cowboys… But we didn’t see any Eagles or Patriots jerseys, probably because it was a Christian church. (I kid, I kid. Nowhere does Scripture explicitly say you can’t be a fan of Philly or New England. Well, Psalm 1:1 says not to walk with the wicked, but…)

The varied jerseys were not the usual Sunday attire at Mountain View, but the flags from many nations around the interior of the sanctuary and lining the driveway at the church entrance are there every week, which I believe signals that missions is a priority in the church. Just as Revelation 7:9 describes every nation and tongue represented in heaven, perhaps so is every flag (and jersey).

I think the worship service we attended was a more sparsely attended than usual, which is the case for most churches on Super Bowl Sunday. (I learned this early in my life of ministry when I was an intern at a large church with a large staff. When I was finally offered the opportunity to preach at a Sunday evening service, I was excited and happily accepted. Then someone else on the staff whispered to me, “You know that’s Super Bowl Sunday.” There were definitely fewer people than average at that service -- only about 600 -- but it’s still the biggest crowd in my preaching experience.)

Still, I think was smart to use the football theme while they could. For instance, the sermon began with a clip from an episode of last week’s Jeopardy. The contestants had left the “Talkin’ Football” category for last. The three players were unable to answer a single question. None of them were willing to even hazard a guess, to Alex Trebek’s amusement. Pastor Fred Leonard noted the frustration of watching people who were unable to answer questions when we knew the answers, which led into a discussion of how much more important it is to know God’s love, focusing on Romans 8.

The Missions Moment before the sermon was also introduced with a video clip. When the missions pastor, Mary-Tyler Wahl, mentioned the film Pay It Forward, I was concerned; a Kevin Spacey film clip might be a bit awkward considering the actor’s recent mentions in the news. But the clip was instead a Cheerios commercial on the theme of giving. After the video clip, the congregation was encouraged to contribute to the Pound of Love program, a monthly food and clothes give away. Mary-tyler did say that Pound of Love was different from the idea of paying it forward: the gifts are given with no strings attached, with only the goal of demonstrating Christ’s love.

One of the challenges of writing about churches every week is that good churches tend to do many of the same things, but this church had many little things that they just did very well. I liked that they took the offering during the opening of the sermon. The worship team led the congregation in singing rather than performing before them, and I appreciated that the lyrics on the screen were in Spanish as well as English.

I very much appreciated the way the church handles visitors. Part of the area where people gather before and after worship services is a Guest Hub which newcomers are encouraged to visit, and different visitor’s gifts are offered for the three first visits (a candy filled mug for the first visit, a t-shirt for the second, and a book for the third). Donuts are available in the Hub every week, too.

Long tables in with information about (and sign-up sheets for) small groups were in the gathering area and at one of the main entrances. I noticed that there were sign-ups for Spanish language ministries as well, and the staff of the Spanish language congregation (which meets on Sunday afternoons) was featured with other staff portraits in the Guest Hub.

It so happened that on the day we visited there wasn’t much of a mountain view because of Fresno smog and fog. The other half of the name, representing God’s community in that place, is obviously a constant.