University Temple United Methodist Church - Seattle, WA - October 27th, 2013

      The University Temple United Methodist Church is a church I've been meaning to go to for a while. It is a beautiful church I pass every time I visit University of Washington. The church sits right across the street from campus and on my visit up to Seattle I planned to go with a friend who I've done church visits with in the past.

      What I knew about the church before hand was that it was highly involved in social justice in the area. It hosts a needle exchange to help addicts recover, a thrift shop and coffee shop that is extremely cheap and made for those who have little, and at one point they hosted a GLBTQ Church in their building. Suffice to say I had a lot to admire going into this.

    Well I was not disappointed, though there were two things that turned me off from the good I experienced. The first was the greeters felt too eager. It was hard to really just have time to self and let everything sink in, since there is a lot to see in the church...most churches this big and this beautiful tend to be High Church churches like Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran. Every greeter greeted me more than once and even asked if I could wear a name tag. For a guy who likes being anonymous during these kinds of things, that was not something that was all that comfortable. 

    The second factor was money. In the talk about the churches goal for what they needed to raise a main focus was on how generous the congregation was before most of the members went up to give their pledges, this does not include the basket being passed before the sermon. I know churches need money to support themselves, but they've never mixed very well to me. 

      There was a lot of positive though. The message was Christian while at the same time remaining universal. The premise is confronting the Burning Bush within yourself (Holy Spirit, confronting ego, etc.) you can be transformed and that it is difficult. He talked of his own experience with this doing street ministry for drunks and homeless and how God forced him to confront his prejudices and grow through them and become more Christ like in the process. I liked it because confronting the truth about ourselves is how we grow. Weather that is an outside being inside of us, or just us facing ourselves is beside the point, the outcome is the same when truth and honesty are involved. It was one of the best sermons I've heard since doing this blog. 

      Lastly, the music was beautiful...there were many songs that I knew from Handel's Messiah, to Our God you Called to Moses and Joyful, Joyful we Adore Thee. I do like all the good the church does, and it was an overall great experience with a wonderful friend. 

 

Mars Hill Church (U-District Campus - Seattle) - October 31st 2010

          Mars Hill Church is a Church that I have heard a lot about. It's pretty young, currently going on it's fourteenth year of existence since Pastor Mark Driscoll founded it. The Church has grown quickly and has expanded all over Washington State. What are the beliefs of Mars Hill and what was their service that I attended on Halloween like?

     First I want to describe the feeling of the U-District Campus of Mars Hill. The Church was a mixture of old and new. There were stain glass windows and from the outside the Church looked like a Chapel. Once inside though, it was much more modern. There was a large screen from which Driscoll's sermons were posted and lyrics for songs. It was like being in a Church mixed with a movie theatre. The Church quickly filled up and I understood why in the announcements they were splitting the 10 o' clock service into a 9am and 11:15am service to make the building a no longer a fire hazard. There were mostly young people in the audience and the one guitarist in charge of music was one of my friends from High School.

     The beliefs of Mars Hill are more in line with Calvinism. God's love plays a part, but God's judgment is one of the large themes. The rode to Heaven is seen as a narrow road, and any bit of straying from the Bible and Jesus is the road to Hell without confession of disobeying the Bible. I disagree with this perspective since I think the essence of the Bible gets lost in the dogma. I do think it is one of the roads to living virtuously though. Even though I think that path is not a path for many people, including myself...and it is a path that has been used to abuse power and oppress in the past and the present.  

     The church was very much built upon the Pastor who had founded it. Though there was a Pastor the U-District Mars Hill Church, we would not be hearing him preach. The other Churches were the support for Mark Driscoll's pulpit. This reminded me of the early Churches  in the United States during the Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening which were built around the personalities, perspectives and charisma of their leaders. In that way Pastor Driscoll functions like a modern day Joseph Smith. I don't like this very much because it becomes a suppression of ideas when only one person's ideas control what a book full of myth and mysteries holds. The mysteries like in any story, are there to be discovered, and revealed, not to be controlled.
 
       The sermon that we watched televised by Pastor Mark Driscoll was about bullying and how to defeat bullies (not giving them power) and how a person will go to Hell for an Eternity if they do not accept Jesus as their savior. Which was how he defined "blasphemy to the Holy Spirit." I found the sermon about bullying prevelant and good. I saw how it applied to many situations and of the importance of standing up for oneself and beliefs.
       The part about Hell also made sense as far as Pastor Driscoll's interpretation of Jesus's word meant too. I disagree with it, cause I believe any person believer or non-believer can live virtuously, even if they will always be messing up. Accountability to self and those you love be it God, family and friends is something that goes beyond Christianity and is part of living virtuously.

       This was my first Hellfire sermon. For a hellfire sermon though, it was pretty chill. The theme of religious bullying applies to Mars Hill as it does to any group...and I hope Pastor Driscoll realizes that. Any person who believes that their interpretation is the world of God is setting themselves up to be a bully. As was said during the sermon "Relationship with God is personal." Which I see as applying to all religions and their relationship to the Divine and their quests for Virtue. Any leader can be a bully in any organization, and that's what any group no matter what religion they are, needs to watch out for.

    At the end there was a call by the Pastor for anyone who wanted to be saved to come forward during communion. Like Generation Church I watched the many faces pass me by and was happy for them. They have found a way to be accountable to God and themselves as I have found mine. I was blessed to visit and I was grateful for the sermon shown and attending the Church with my friend Sarah.