Familiar Ground

Today we visited Brookwood Church - a place that many random strangers we have met here(including the dogwood love story lady) suggested we try out. The church was oddly familiar, with a coffee shop, bookstore, children's pods - even the worship center looked very similar to Second's. Friendly people greeted us and directed us where we needed to be. The only difference and HUGE difference is that there are no Sunday School classes - they do small groups instead at some other time during the week. I'm not sure if I love that idea - but again, we are being open minded to differences in the details.. not differences in our beliefs. We also thought before hand that this church was possibly a non-denominational church (because of what someone told us), but that is not true (however, we were okay with it either way). It stated in the bulletin that it is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. The pastor is very casual and relaxed. His messages are very scripture based with a sense of humor on the side - he doesn't have the same profound affect that Dr. Young has, but really, who does? Nevertheless, we liked it and more importantly, we left with a message and an assignment! He gives realistic ways to implement his teachings throughout the week.. pretty practical!

Again, Audrey had a blast in childcare - an interesting and high tech thing they do is assign you a bar code on a sticker - she gets one with her name on it and a code and we each get one with our names and the same code. When you are leaving the "pod" a scanner lady double checks that you did in fact take your child.. kinda neat. Oh and another thing is that they have coffee and donuts (no charge) before each service...YUM! They have three services and they are all very contemporary: 8:30, 10:00 and 11:30. We are going to contact someone about small groups and try one out just to make this large church feel a little cozier.. we know the drill :) Second has taught us well how to not get lost in a big church... We'll keep ya posted on how our "church hunt" goes! :)