Church visit: Bryn Mawr Presbyterian November 25

A country church in the city, this was my overall impression of this church. Even thought this church is located just outside of North Mpls. I had never seen it before or thought about visiting it. Last night as I was thinking about where to worship today, I looked at their website and realised it was close to work, so not to hard to find and not to far to drive to. The only things I knew about it were that Jamie Schultz was the pastor who I heard preach years ago when she did her neutral pulpit sermon at Plymouth for the Byrn Mawr church ( don't think I was working there at the time, just happened to visit Plymouth on that Sunday). Also I knew the Cedar Lake Seven group came out of Bryn Mawr and that it was a small church. Today when arrived ( late, which is something i need to work on) I was surprised at how many others were arriving at the same time, maybe I wasn't late and the service started later than I thought, entering the church I was greeted and handed a bulletin and realized there were in the middle of announcements, I was late but had not missed much. The announcements were done by members standing up where they sat and giving their announcement from there, it was a small enough space this worked for the most part, one person asked a speaker to speak louder and repeat what they had said. The size and feel of the space was almost country church like, and the fact that there were about 75-100 people there added to this feeling. The lay worship leader was not at a lectern and seemed to have more freedom and involvelemt in the service than most lay worship leaders in Presbyterian churches have. He even did a nice quick reflection on rights of passages and related it to a young man who was turning thirteen this week and his father invited him to carve the turkey this year. There was no prayer of confession, but instead a prayer of honesty, I like this slight change in wording. Singing the hymns I noted they do not have the blue Presbyterian hymnal, whats up with so few churches that use this hymnal? Being Christ the King Sunday the first hymn was a familiar hymn, think the title might have been different than I was used to and it bugged me that the hymnal changed the words "Crown him" to "crown creator" maybe the PCUSA hymnal is not gender correct enough for this church. Jamie did a nice job with the time for children talking about Christ the King Sunday and how " Christ" is not Jesus's last name, but means anointed one. I expected her to speak in gender neutral terms after the hymn, but she used him, and he when referring to Jesus. Her Sermon expanded on Christ the King Sunday and it's role as end of the church year and tied it in with the end of the calendar year. It was a good sermon and was nice to hear someone preach about Christ the king Sunday in this way. The offering was unusual in the sense that as small as the space is the plates did not get passed down rows, but people were able to reach them on the end of the rows even if seated in the middle of the rows. The Doxology while it used the three parts of the trinity, did not have father, son, but instead Creator, Christ and was a more upbeat tune than I was used to. The worship leader asked for prayer requests and people raised their hands and shared and then he did a nice job of repeating them for all to hear. During this time a woman lit candles( votives) on the communion table from the communion table candles for each prayer request, this reminded me of the Catholic prayer candle tradition and seemed a little odd. Instead of a prayer following this time, we sang a song in response. The lord's prayer- they had Father/mother on the first line, to me this a bit much and is going a little too far with pc language. After the service i introduced my self to Jamie, we have talked on the phone and via email but had not met previously. I also talked with clerk of session who approached me as I was talking to Jamie. She shared that she was impressed with he number of people in worship on the Sunday after thanksgiving and that while they are a small church do not have a lot of Gray haired people and have a lot of children. I asked how many live in the neighborhood as on their website they describe themselves as a neighborhood church. She did not know but guessed 50%, my sense is it is higher than this. while I think the size and feel of the church building reminded me of a country church, I think there is an energy there that shows it is much more than that. I do feel however that from the announcements to the prayers of the people it feels like a close knit small community which might be very appealing to some and hard for others to feel welcome.