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.