Base Church

I went to the Base Church not knowing what to expect, but already predisposed to not be its biggest fan.  Base started because of a schism at my church (it took place a couple years after our last schism.  We were a schism friendly church), the new teaching pastor we had hired left after six months on the job to plant Base 5-minutes from us.  It's hard to say we took this news with outstretched open arms, but instead as the stiff rebuke from a guy you were dating (Amen) only to find out he was messing around with your friend the whole time (Amen) and guess who's now engaged--WHILE YOU WERE DATING!

No.  It didn't leave a bitter taste in our mouths.

So (Amen) walking into Base (Amen) I didn't expect the best.  I also expected to recognize a few people (not the pastor (Amen) our guy had left awhile back...to start a new church) (Amen) but that wasn't the case.  It seemed most--if not all--the people from the original schism had left.  I was a little disappointed (Amen) but time to turn over a new leaf (Amen) page (Amen) or whatever people turn these days.  So (Amen) I listened to the hour long worship set--filled to the brim with great "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs of Matt Redman (Amen) Louie Giglio (Amen) Chris Tomlin (Amen) and David Crowder and two (Amen) not one (Amen) altar calls! (I'm of the opinion Churches's don't sing enough Thrice or Sufjan Stevens.)  This church meant serious business when it came to pleasing the Lord (Amen) and they weren't gonna screw around.

Then Pastor Meyers took the pulpit to start his sermon (Amen) and he called out to all spirit-filled Christians in the room to rise up and take a stand for God (Amen) and let Satan have it.  He was the archetypical Pentecostal evangelist: using Amen to replace the comma (Amen) and threatening to speak in tongues.  And then I thought, why do Christians have to be weird?

Amen as a comma?  What does this do to the notions of grammar?  Amen splits?  Speaking in tongues? I know I'll get a lot of flack for this--but speaking in tongues has always been weird to me, and I've never bought that it was the language of the angels.  Or whatever.  I know it's biblical, but I tend to subscribe to the side that thinks it means something else entirely then babbling in Church.  But all these add up to make the Church experience really weird.  It's almost comical--it was hard not to laugh at the Amen-Comma--I grew up in a non-denominational church where we didn't believe spiritual gifts meant blabbing in tongues, a person behind them to interpret so we all knew what the hell they just said (has anyone ever stood up and made something up?  I'd love to hear the story).  Christianity is an inherently weird religion--we believe a guy (who is simultaneously God, God's son, and man) came to Earth, died, and then was ressurected after three-days.  Weird comes with the territory (and also for the other religions that have similar fact patterns).  But Ithere is a difference between being weird in a good way--the universiality and importable nature of the Gospel, the call to love others--and being weird for the sake of weirdness--speaking in tongues, the  Amen-Comma, and prophesizing.

Not all of Base was bad, Pastor Meyers is extremely engaging and fun to hear speak.  He has the southern preacher vibe with his call and response, actually asking questions in church and expecting a response.  And the people are genuinely nice people, but they do seemed to be preoccupied on one thing: a new building.  They currently meet in a building that could seat 80-90 comfortably.  They only had 30-45 people there when I went (and some of them were visitors).  My old church has an auditorium that seats about 300.  And in our heyday we had two services with a full auditorium.  Now the church has 60 members on a good day, with a building swallowing them up in debt, and they're looking to move.  The preoccupation with getting a modern looking building seems odd, when this old-fashioned Church building is working fine, and offers plenty of room to grow.  Plus, we put to much stock in our real estate as a Church we forget to focus on the real estate outside, the community, the needy, and the helpless.

This wasn't a bad church, just not my kind of church.  If you're into the weirdness, and can stomach the slight obsession with a bigger building (and maybe join the segment expressing concern against a move?), it's a nice community and could be your thing.  It's just not my thing.

Best moment of the sermon?  When Pastor Meyers opined:

“I never like it when someone leaves a church and says, 'I left there because I didn’t like what the Pastor said,' or, 'I left that church because I didn’t like the direction they were going.'”

No one filled in the new guy, did they?