Church Review- Fairhaven

Church Review- Fairhaven

September 1, 2013 at 12:34pm

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to travel to Colorado for vacation. I drove there with my 2 daughters. If you have never been to Colorado before, you might think to see mountains as soon as you drive into the state. This, of course, is a fallacy. It takes a few more hours of driving before you get that exciting view. Soon enough it happens, you drive over a small hill and once you crest the top, there they are, far off in the distance. You can spot them because of the snow covered tops.
Honestly, this is what I thought of when I first stepped into the sanctuary at Fairhaven. Many... uh, "snow-peaked caps. In case you don't get my drift (please appreciate the snow pun) I am trying to say that for a second I thought I had stumbled into an AARP meeting. Yes, I am getting close to that age, but I still have almost a decade. Part of the reason this was my first thought is probably because of the very young age of the last two churches I visited. Wellspring and Daybreak had more young people than a Macklemore concert.
(He's a rapper, in case you are from Fairhaven and are reading this)
Please, don't get me wrong, this is not a criticism in the least. Merely an observation. I finally found where the AARP crowd goes to church in Jenison!! I could not help but whisper a few of these thoughts to my son when we first found our seats, causing him to giggle inappropriately a bit. It was not a problem as no one around us could hear him anyway. Ok, Ok. Enough of the old jokes.

Fairhaven has a very large sanctuary compared to the other churches I have visited. It could probably seat about 1500 people. I might be a bit off as guesstimating crowds has never been my specialty. It is a newer contemporary building. It is quite a large complex but seems to be dominated by the sanctuary. The worship was contemporary with a mixture of guitars, drums and a piano. I noticed that there were hymnals in every pew but we didn't use them Sunday morning. The crowd was very participatory. There was some hand clapping and a few raised hands during worship. Of course clapping and raising hands would be a bit out of place at any other part of the service...

After praise and worship one of the associate pastors cam out and did the announcements which were a bit lengthy. To be fair, they were welcoming back a few missions trips, which is always a nice thing to see.

There was the obligatory 30 second meet and greet time and I got to shake a few hands. The people seemed friendly enough during this time. As I mentioned in an earlier review, it is not easy to gauge the friendliness of a church during this 30 second portion of the service, but I am glad when churches do this. It is so easy to go to a church, especially a larger church, and just disappear. It is interesting to look over the dozens, or hundreds of people attending and wonder why each one of them came to church that morning. Did they come with a need? An expectation? Out of obligation? Guilt? And more importantly, how many of them will leave having had a positive experience?

There is a lot of complaining being done that too many people go to church with a consumerism mentality. But when you present the church service in such a way that a "product" is being offered, how else are people going to view it? It is kind of like criticizing people for not going to a restaurant because they don't like the food. The restaurant is offering a product and you may or may not like it. However, the motivation for going to a church is much more complex as I have just stated. But I do think the church needs to re-examine what they are offering and how they are offering it. People will keep church hopping and looking at the church in a "consumeristic" way when the church stops presenting what they are doing in a that way.

After the greeting time the the senior pastor, Tom Elenbaas came up to speak. I have to admit that he had me pretty quickly. He started by talking about the book "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge. I am a huge fan of this book and of Mr. Eldredge. One of the key elements of the book involves the idea that each man has received a wound in the core area that defines us and that wound is usually given by their father. It is a powerful book and i encourage you to read it if you haven't.

Tom talked about how we each have a deep cry to be loved, for approval, especially for me. There is such power for a young man to hear "I am proud of you" from their father. When we do not receive this approval, we end up doing all kinds of things to obtain this. It can lead to a drive for success in careers, in our families, it can drive us to addiction and all sorts of crazy things. It even drives what we wear to church on a Sunday morning. We desperately need to know we matter.

This was easily the best part of the sermon. It was obviously from Tom's heart, something that he believes in deeply. Something that has deeply impacted him and changed the way he literally lives his life. He also touched on how we take this deep longing, this deep need for approval to other people when we don't take it to God or find it in him. I loved the fact that he admitted that HE had a deep woundedness and probably always will. Tom then started talking about a very interesting topic: failure. He told a personal story of how he failed during a diving competition and how his father responded to it. How he screwed up on a dive, painfully, and how he didn't want to come up from being underwater. And his dad nailed the proper response. It was a huge moment in Tom's life. We so need to know that we are loved and accepted, especially when we screw up. We call this grace. How to we get to be called children of God when we are such mess-ups? How does Scripture address this?

Sadly, he then transitioned to his "prepared" sermon. It wasn't bad at all but it paled in comparison to the power of what was coming from his heart. To be fair, he did say that they talk about that topic a lot at their church. As a first time visitor, I was hungry to hear so much more about that topic instead of a message that was decent but well traveled road if you have been to church for a few years. It was centered on the book of Acts and had to do with making a difference with your faith.

There was an entertaining moment early in the service when an alarm on Tom's cell phone went off.

After church there was the familiar milling about of people as they scattered to jump on whatever plans they had for the day. This can be a much better time to see how friendly a church is. Well, it is if you are going to a small church. At a large church nobody knows if you are new or if they just haven't run into you before. My son and I went to the welcome center. We were a little disappointed that we didn't add to the coffee cup collection...

Fairhaven was a solid church, with a big congregation and building. The worship was solid and fairly traditional in a contemporary sort of way. This is the type of church I attend. I think it would behoove them to be a little more visitor focused as some of the other churches we visited have been.

Solomon’s Porch - Jenison, Michigan

The reason I am writing this review instead of Dave is that it is about his home church. In the interest of keeping things objective, it is best for a review to be done by someone who isn't a member or regular attender. I read Dave’s reviews on other churches and thought it only fair for his church to get one, so I volunteered.

I have visited many churches over the course of the last thirty years. In Bible school, I did a bit of church shopping, looking for a place to call home, and summer ministries put me in plenty of others. When Karen and I travel to visit family we go to church with them if our visit has us there on Sunday. Other opportunities for ministry in various churches have arisen over the years as well. Throw in some weddings and funerals, and other special occasions, and it adds up. So, other than the octagonal shape of the sanctuary, Solomon’s Porch doesn’t look much different from other churches of its size and age. The building has been around a while, but it isn’t ancient and it is well kept. There is a little entry area off the parking lot where you can hang up your coat, and then there is a main narthex where there was a nice coffee bar where we had a choice of regular, flavored (Michigan Cherry), or decaf. Tea was also available. We already had coffee at home, so we skipped this.

We were greeted right away by a friendly lady who knew immediately that we were visitors and asked us our names and if we were from the area or just visiting from out of town. We chatted with her for a couple minutes before heading into the sanctuary to find a seat. I would guess that it seats between 300 - 400 people and it looked about one third full, so finding a seat was not a problem. A couple in the pew just behind us  knew that we were newcomers and also greeted us warmly. A minute or two later another gentleman approached us and asked if we were visitors, introduced himself as Chuck and welcomed us to the service this morning. It wasn’t until after the service started that we realized he was the pastor. That actually made me happy. If you’ve ever run into the kind of pastor that want’s you to know they are the pastor, you realize why this is cool. Also, kudos to the church in general on being aware of new people in your midst.

The order of service was not hugely different from what we are used to either but there was one notable difference. If I were to classify the style of service, I would say “mostly traditional with some effort to modernize.” There was a seven member worship team: A drummer with a standard drum set, another percussionist with a set of congas and some smaller instruments, an electric bass player, a lead guitarist, an acoustic guitarist, a keyboard player, and a vocalist. They only lead one song, at the start of the service. I found this a bit unusual. Most churches in the circles in which I find myself do the majority of their singing before the sermon, so this was different. Not bad, just different. Next there were some announcements, and then the offering was taken. After that, some guy in a tie got up and it was all downhill from there. I am kidding. It was Dave. He recited the lyrics to the Rolling Stones’ song I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. It was amusing to hear the words without the music. They don’t have the same impact, that’s for certain. I’ve done similar things myself, so I figured it was the intro to the sermon, and so it was.

Pastor Chuck Swanson, the man who introduced himself to Karen and I simply as Chuck earlier, preached from Luke 12:13-21, a.k.a. The Parable of the Rich Fool. That’s the one that starts out with Jesus warning about greed and tells the story of a guy who gets a bumper crop so large he doesn’t have space in his barns to store it all, so he decides to tear them down and build larger ones, then take life easy for a few years. In the end God tells him that his life is over that night and everything he has hoarded will belong to someone else. Someone else who couldn’t get “no satisfaction”. He made a couple more tie-ins with modern culture, referring to Gordon Gekko, and making a rather surprising reference (censored and thoroughly disclaimed) to Fight Club. He was very careful to make sure we knew he was not recommending the movie due to its graphic content, but he compared Jesus’ words in verse 15 “be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” to Tyler Durden’s line: “You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your (stupid) khakis.”

He also used the following quote: “Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. (Darn) it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very (upset).”

Direct Fight Club references in a pastor’s sermon. I’m impressed. Some may say too easily so, but being used to pastors who would deny all knowledge of this movie if they had any, I like that he wasn’t afraid to use this illustration. His sermon wasn’t all pop culture. He also used several personal examples that made it clear that he isn’t speaking as someone who has arrived. Greed affects everybody, even pastors. He also had some object lessons for us. Three helium balloons two flanking the stage and one tied to the pulpit. He wrote things that people covet on each and cut their strings to symbolize the need to let them go. Now the one on the pulpit annoyed me throughout the sermon because it was partly in the way of his face. In my head I was saying “use more string or less string, but get it out of your face,” but he kept preaching like they didn’t bother him at all. This was, it turns out, by design to point out that attachment to stuff is one of those things that others can see in us easier that we can see it in ourselves. Also, it distracts people from hearing our message when we don’t do anything about it. So, maybe it annoyed me, but he  made a point, and I won’t soon forget it.

After the sermon, and the prayer, the worship team came back up and we sang a modern arrangement of Just As I Am followed by two praise songs. The musicians were all very talented and played well. I enjoyed the music, but it felt odd to me to do so much congregational singing after the sermon. I was tempted to dismiss it as just my prejudice because it’s not what I’m used to. I also wondered if there could be more to it. You see, singing early in the service helps me clear my head for the worship and gets me ready for the message. Yet, I followed the message this morning just fine. I think probably it is because it shifts my thinking away from what I just heard. Message is over and now we’re going to do some singing. Not that gathering up my stuff and heading for the parking lot makes me more contemplative, but after being dismissed, I do have the option to sit for a minute to absorb what I just heard. If songs are being led, particularly if it is being done well, I feel compelled to participate, and by the time I do leave my thoughts are even further removed from the lesson. Or, maybe I am just being whiny because they don’t do it my way. So… not my preference, but not a major sticking point, either.

After the service, two other people we did not know introduced themselves to us and asked us about ourselves. And after a few minutes of conversation, we headed out to the truck. Karen, noted on our way out, that nobody who spoke to us asked about our jobs or about kids. For Karen, this is a good thing. We have been married for twenty-eight years and don’t have children. Not by design, it just happened that way. We have long since come to terms with it, but in Christian circles, whenever you meet a new group of people, it seems that is always one of the first things people ask about. I get it. It’s a point of commonality for most people, but when you don’t share it, there are always more questions: “Don’t you want kids?” “Can’t you have kids?” “Why didn’t you just adopt?” And, then you have to patiently explain things that people with children don’t have to explain. We’re used to it, but I have to admit it was nice not to have to do it this time. I know that if we went back often, eventually, it would be necessary, but this time, it was nice.

To sum up, this is a place I could easily come back to.