Last night while in vacation here in Orlando we went to Northland: A Church Distributed for their Saturday night worship service. Here are my thoughts:
- Forgot how much I love going to Saturday night worship services…we used to do that at Saddleback…always a great way to end a day.
- I wanted to visit this church when I worked for Purpose Driven but never got the chance. The Senior Pastor is Joel Hunter, the brother-in-law of Mark Beeson from Granger Community Church which I spoke at before and visited again this past summer.
- Interesting that 2 people from the same family pastor 2 of the top 20 largest churches in the US…wanted to see what they did or did not have in common.
- One of our core values at ExponentialChurch.tv is that it takes all types of churches to reach all types of people…that was very evident seeing Northland’s campus and style of ministry.
- Whereas Granger and Exponential go for the more cutting edge contemporary side of things, Northland is a bit more traditional in their look, sound and style.
- Now you may look at the picture on this post and go…that looks pretty contemporary to me, but as our staff was recently discussing, the word contemporary has lost it’s meaning because it now covers such a wide perspective.
- In other words a lot of churches that pull out a guitar and sing a few “praise choruses” advertise that they have a contemporary service. On the other end of the spectrum would be churches where it sounds, looks and feels like your at a rock concert.
- Nothing wrong with any of those or the myriad of styles in-between. All that to say that even with the cool tech stuff, Northland probably falls at about a 5-6 on the contemporary scale.
- Ok…let’s back up and take this from the beginning…
- Driving in, it was one of the more confusing parking lots to navigate that I’ve ever seen. Every time I thought I figured it out, I didn’t and so we ended up parking in the back in a grassy area. Now leaving was a different story. Because of all the circles, it made it easy for the huge crowd to be able to leave.
- We walked around to the front…have I mentioned the mid 70’s weather yet on this trip? Haha…for those of you who keep up with me on Facebook and Twitter you know what I’m talking about.
- We explored what used to be their old building which is now used for youth, offices, etc. Neat to see where they were as compared to where they are today.
- Inside the main building the first thing that jumped out was how nice it looked…think lobby of an upscale hotel or museum. Dark woods, tile floors, huge paintings on the walls. Very formal feeling…also noticed that lots of people were dressed up or at least in business casual…guess who stuck out like a sore thumb in their jeans and t-shirts?
- Before I go any further…let me be clear that we really enjoyed our time at Northland. Everything was done with excellence although as I’ll note, a few things did make me cringe.
- Ok back to the lobby…had a very nice Cafe and Bookstore that many people were taking advantage of before the 5PM worship service began.
- Walked into the main auditorium and WOW! One of the largest I’ve seen and trust me that’s saying something since I’ve been to most of the largest churches in the US.
- Love that like at Granger the rear screen is edge blended for the entire width of the stage…so many cool things they can and did do with it.
- Weird though that the two side screens are literally perpendicular to the stage. Couldn’t see any other way though without taking away from what they had.
- Alright now to two cringe things…the service started with 15 minutes of announcements. I hate announcements and I try to keep them as short as possible, but that was ridiculous and especially as the first thing…after all you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
- To make it worse they then had any one that was a first time guest stand up. Wow that’s an old-school move and even as a pastor I was embarrassed…imagine what an unbeliever who reluctantly agreed to try out church would feel like.
- Of course I say that as someone who is passionate about using worship experiences as an outreach tool. For a church like Northland, it was obvious by many things that worship services are more for the already convinced…again nothing wrong with that…just giving you my perspective which is neither right nor wrong.
- Once the music started …FYI the worship pastor looked like Danny Gokey…it was done with excellence and as I mentioned before, they were able to do some cool stuff with the projection screen.
- The songs were essentially modernized versions of hymns and some older praise songs but again with fresh arrangements.
- Joel Hunter’s message was about abiding in Christ.
- Even though I look at the worship experience with a critical eye when visiting elsewhere, my main mission is still to worship and grow in my relationship with Christ…the message spoke to me in a variety of ways and I’m thankful to Joel for using his gift so God could speak to me.
- His style of speaking is like that of a wise grandfather just telling stories to make his point.
- As I mentioned earlier the focus seems to be on those already who are following Jesus because at multiple times he said, “Oh well you all know the story of so and so in the bible”. Helped to save time, but again an unbeliever would have been very confused.
- The best part was the response song after the message. The female vocalist did a tremendous job and Northland’s use of lighting for dramatic effect was perhaps the best I’ve ever seen in a church. Great job…very moving.
- That was it…I for fun decided to take the Visitor Card which they handed us when we were standing up to the Welcome Center to see what they did or gave to first-timers. The answer…nothing. Just a “thanks for coming”. Hmmmm…the embarrassment without a “pay-off”…weird.
- All in all, I can see why this church is popular…excellent worship service and from what I could gather very active missionally in their community and the world.
- Final verdict…completely different than Granger…bet the Thanksgiving conversations are interesting between Mark and Joel. Personally I lean more the Granger way, but again, it takes all types of churches to reach all types of people.