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| - Met the Pastor, Chris Roussin, today in a small get-to-know you setting after the second service they call, Starting Point. Several other newbies joined us in the café, where people gather before services for hot coffee and fresh donuts. During this particular get together, we were treated with delicious Papa John's Pizza...us church people love to eat!
Side note: The coffee was exceptionally hot, which means it was brewed right there, and the donuts I had last week were fresh and a great selection from crullers to long johns, not those day old cake donuts that were being tossed out...oh, and the pizza? Freshly delivered from a pretty reputable pizza place, too!
So, Lincoln Heights passed my food review, but it's really the people that kept me coming back. The "church" (not necessarily the building) is big enough to offer child care and a pretty good sized youth ministry, but not so big you feel invisible. Yea, I get wanting to feel invisible but as a mature Christian, I know the importance of being connected. Church shouldn't be about what we can get out of an hour of worship and inspirational talk, but what we can give back to a body, which I see as the real "church".
The vision of LHCC, a non-denominational Bible teaching, Jesus believing church is simple. Lead, Love and Launch where the launching part is to plant a new community church within 5 years. This takes leadership and an active congregation ministering to the lost and broken and bringing them into a fold of loving people...I think we all can relate to someone that could use some lifting up, if not ourselves.
Feel free to come in flip flops, which Pastor Chris was wearing today. It's a bit uncomfortable for me to be a part of this laid back modern culture, but it's encouraging at the same time, for I get the impression that this congregation is truly welcoming the "others" that feel pushed out of traditional norms of the highly conservative "church".
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