Reviewing the Pew: RiverSprings

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Here’s an opposite approach: the last three weekends, I’ve been filling in for a pastor-friend of mine at a small (very small) non-denominational church in smalltown Lebanon, Oregon (near Corvallis). The regular pastor there is Ted Gillett, also the regional director of K-Love radio in the Northwest.
~Peter

Church Survey
RiverSprings Church
Lebanon, Oregon
Fill-in Pastor: Me
Attended: June 25th (& July 2 & 9)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Was the building easy to find? If you drove, was it hard to find parking? How about the exterior or interior signage – what would you do differently?

The building is a downtown storefront shop. Cute. There is a portable sign they place in the flagpole hole along the sidewalk that points people to the front door.

What were your very first impressions? How did you feel? Nothing is too trivial

The first time I came to RiverSprings was to preach - I hadn’t visited before. My wife and I walked in and were immediately greeted by several kindly elderly people (probably early 70s). They immediately hugged us and told us how excited they were to have us visit.

I noticed very quickly… just about everyone here was elderly or at least comfortably retired. Ted (the pastor) had told me to do something very “postmodern” and “provocative”…

“If you like McLaren, preach from The Secret Message of Jesus, they’ll love it!” He said. Was he serious?

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

As you observe us “do our church thing”, what goes through your mind? Are you able to understand why we do what we do? Do we seem sincere?

These people were definitely sincere. Though the room was a pretty basic office building with roundtables and chairs set all the way around them (like Len Sweet’s SoulCafe Gillette told me), they seemed to treat it as a very special place.

There were cakes and pies, brownies and cookies covering a table at the front. Coffee, tea and juice were served. It was like going to gramma’s house and getting force-fed desert!

What do you think about our rituals (we call it a liturgy or a program)?

No rituals here. Very relaxed with a lot of chatter early on. Over the next three weeks, the general lack of organization or “ritual” was palpable. And this church has been around for over 5 years.

THE MUSIC

What did you think of our music? Did you enjoy any of it? Was it boring?

The Music was all pre-recorded and played off of a sound system. The words were projected on the front wall via PowerPoint.

I couldn’t help notice the sweetly broken, out of key voices of several older men around me, trying to keep up with the K-Love era pop-worship CDs. It was an oddly beautiful sound.

THE PRAYERS

What about our focus in prayer? Did we ‘major on the majors’?

One of the women, 60ish, just had her newlywed husband of one year die. One of the men announced that we needed to pray for her, and the whole room came together to surround her and pray. It was very sweet as she quietly cried and held the hands of two women near her.

THE TALK

Well, shucks. I was just pretty darn wonderful.

kidding!

But it was amazing as a 27-year-old man, to speak in front of a group of “my elders,” and be listened to, valued, and encouraged. I didn’t enter into the endeavor as a “teacher,” and I told them that. Their experiences outweighed any Biblical training I may have under my belt. I rather attempted to convey my own spiritual worldview, flavored with a McLaren-ish “Kingdom of God” message. I then asked for their thoughts and reflections so that we could share and learn from each other.

Many churches I’ve been to are so demographically separated that such an atmosphere was totally foreign to me. It was wonderful to share spiritual communion with my brothers and sisters of a far-removed generation.