Or, “How Many St. Paul Churches Can We Worship With in 24 Hours?”
As part of my Leaders in Mission: Renewing Worship in the Missional Community class here at Wartburg Seminary, I spent last weekend in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a class field trip worshiping at four different churches.
Our first worship experience was at Wooddale Church, a large non-denominational/Baptist/Evangelical church. They have three campuses, and are eagerly anticipating opening their fourth. The worship style was very evangelical, with the majority of the service led by the worship band, who were located front and center on the stage playing Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United music. We were at the Saturday evening service, and the pastor’s message was recorded for use at the other campuses on Sunday morning.
The highlight of this service for me was definitely the message. Pastor Dale Hummel on Twitter was starting a new sermon series titled #WeAreFor highlighting what the church is for, rather than the message the world so often hears about what we as the church are against. Although I missed any mention of the church year season of Lent in the service, I love how all-encompassing the sermon series was–it has a website, my bulletin had a #WeAreFor window cling, and the ushers even had #WeAreFor t-shirts!
I’ll admit I was curious what the theological content of the message would be, particularly from the perspective of a group of final-year Lutheran seminary students, and in my opinion, it was excellent, both in content and delivery. You can watch it here. Here are some pictures from Wooddale (which my computer really wants to auto-correct to “woodpile”). Note the (unused at our service) giant organ that dominates the room!
After the service at Wooddale, we went out for dinner at Buca, an amazing family-style Italian restaurant chain in the Twin Cities, which features a strong Roman Catholic decor theme.
On Sunday morning, we started our day with worship at Christ Church Lutheran, an historical German ELCA congregation known for the architecture of their building and their traditional liturgical worship.
Our third church was St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community. Their motto is “We welcome you wherever you are on your journey” and they live that out as well as any church I’ve ever visited. They were described to me as a home for “misfit Catholics” in the Twin Cities, and I believe it.
This was my favorite worship experience. We attended one of their two “Gym Services” located in, obviously, a gym. The service was packed, the music and the sermon were excellent, and all were welcome for communion. Also, this is the only permanent (they’ve been worshiping there for 48 years) church worship space I’ve ever been in that has a disco ball.
Our fourth and final worship experience of the weekend was Humble Walk, a mission congregation of the ELCA. Humble Walk is a community currently meeting in a Jewish nursing home, with a very emerging church, almost hipster sort of feel. Worship included a sermon from a seminarian at Luther Seminary, a discussion/coloring time, and communion.
