Worship at Westminster- Minneapolis Nov 4,2007

So I finally worshiped at Westminster, following the suggestions of my mother, and others to check it out. When trying to decide where to go this week after not having worshiped in a church for a while I stumbled upon two things on the Westminister website that caught my attention. First I saw that Meghan Gage the associate pastor for children, youth and families are giving the sermon. I had lunch with Meghan back in September to talk about youth ministry in the Presbytery and had talked with her at the middle school Clearwater retreat a couple of weeks ago. It is always fun to hear someone preach that you know. The second thing was it was Children's Sabbath Sunday at Wesminster, I have heard of churches that celebrate this Sunday but am not sure if I have been to one before. I was a little Surprised that Meghan was preaching as I thought she would be up at Clearwater with her Senior High group for the second fall Sr High retreat, so I emailed her to double check if she truly was preaching this week. She confirmed that she was and suggested that was not a "typical" Sunday at Westminster. My sense is a "typical" Sunday worship service is ok, but I enjoy when things are different and I wanted to experience Children's sabbath Sunday even if it was not a "typical" Sunday. So with that introduction on how I chose Westminster this week, on to my thoughts about the service.

I read on the website how to get to the church and where to park for free downtown, after passing the parking ramp entrance I circled around the block and found a place to park in the ramp. I followed people from the ramp into the church and was very impressed by the signage and the music coming from the sanctuary which led me where to go. I was a little late and caught the tail end of the processional hymn. This is a unique Westminster spectacle that seems a little high church to me. The Sanctuary is very bright and grand, but after a while you tend to feel it a comfortable place of worship and forget a little about the size and wonderful architechtial details. I think the use of dimming the lights at various times helped with this feeling. One thing that was different at this worship service being Children's Sabbath was a time for adults. A representitive sample of adults were invited to come forward instead of children and the middle school youth led the time. It was neat to see some youth I met just a few weeks before, in this leadership role. One youth seemed familiar to me during the retreat and seeing her this morning I remembered who she was. It was Anne W. who when I was at North Como danced in the aisle during worship as she felt moved by the music. Her dad taught middle school Sunday school at North Como and her mom was very warm and welcoming to me when I first started attending North Como.

Following the time for adults there was a moment for stewardship and the pastor ( I think it was Byron Thompson) had two young people help him and talk about what ways programs there are part of benefit from stewardship pledges and then about what pledges are. Both children gave great answers some expected and some unexpected. I thought this was well done and a nice time in with Children's Sabbath Sunday. Following three scripture readings ( why three?, are these all of the lectionary texts this week?) Meghan invited children forward to join her for the sermon ( not the children's sermon). She did a wonderful job of sharing with the kids that she was going to be using art they might not all be able to see and reading a story with great pictures that they might want to come see after the service. I also liked how she shared that this time was going to be longer than the traditional children's time and they were free to go back to their seats with family if they wanted to. Meghan shared a great story about a girl who lived in the US and her grandmother lived in Palestine. The story talked about how this girl had great experiences while visiting her grandmother and then wrote a letter to the President saying she chose peace. During the story kids added pieces to the art work and then at the end Meghan described each piece (how each involved kids and then together they made up the image of Jesus). Following the sermon was the offering, then came communion.

I was curious about how they do communion as all churches do it the serving of the elements a little different. If St. Luke's communion was chaos this was the complete opposite, very orchestrated. I watched in amazement as the servers all moved to their starting spots and waited until they all got to their place then started serving. then after serving they met their partner and walked in pairs up to the front of the sanctuary.

while I enjoyed the service a lot I am not sure if is a place I would worship week to week, but could see myself going back from time to time. my mother says she enjoys worshiping there because it feels like home, I think this makes sense because it feels somewhat like her home church in Bismark. While I have nothing against a more formal/high church service it does not feel like home to me. I think this is because of my years growing up at Valley and the informality/suburb church feel it had. I noticed at Westminster that all of the male ushers and male elders all had suits/sportcoats and ties, I felt a little under dressed in my polo shirt and work khakis.

After worship I stopped in the fellowship space and saw a set of twin boys I had met up at Clearwater, I taught them how to read minds. They seem like great youth and one of them is very interested in baseball, when I saw him today he was pretending to be batting.

One thing I thought about today is if in writing this blog of my worship experiences, leads me to not truly worship and enjoy the experience as I think more about what I want to write about from the visit. On the other hand maybe I am more observant and pay more attention to things I would not if I was not writing about it in this blog.

I also think a big part of finding a church home is finding a place that feels comfortable, like home. When I started this journey I was not anxious to find a new church home, but am starting to think I would like to find a church home to attend most Sundays and spend one or two Sundays a month visiting other churches. A sense of being grounded but also experiencing other churches.