The Seattle Church Seeking Landscape

In case you didn’t know, the church plant Heather and I had been going to more or less since we arrived in Seattle – Christian City Church Seattle – had to close its doors a few months ago. This was our second time in a row playing a significant roll in a relatively new congregation (before coming to Seattle we were heavily involved with Newsong CC in Westford, MA), and we were pretty well exhausted, so we’ve been taking it easy for a few months, taking a bit of a sabbath from throwing ourselves into “big church”. But now it’s time to get back out of our shells and be a part of something bigger than our own preferred circle of friends (our “organic church”, if you will).

Now, my tastes in church are pretty unusual, in that I don’t see a dichotomy between good theology and felt experience. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a church where either was taken as far as it should be, and that makes it really hard for me to be content in a church that settles for doing one moderately well at the expense of neglecting or abusing the other. We need to know God truly, and we need to connect with Him intimately, and what I really want to find is a church that is growing in the practice of doing both.

Having said that, it shouldn’t surprise anyone out there who knows the Seattle church landscape that we’re having a rough time finding the right one. A few of the contenders we’ve had the most experience with:

Mars Hill Church – Heather says I have a total man-crush on Mark Driscoll, and she’s probably right. For my money, he is far and away the best bible teacher in the country right now, and I’ve borrowed more than a few sermon points and presentation patterns from him. That said, his congregation (I’ve now visited three of their campuses and Ballard multiple times) is consistently standoffish and disengaged when it comes to worship singing. (I’m reminded of a church in Boston that I wrote about years ago.) Now, Mark said just last week (skip to 7:58 in the video) that he wants for his congregation to get more expressive/involved/engaged in an encounter of worship in their services, and he seems really sincere and serious about it. But he’s said that before – several times – and, in visiting from time to time over the course of the last three years, I haven’t seen any movement (literally or figuratively) to speak of on that front.

Blue Sky Church – Our contender with which we have the least experience and about which we have the least information, my admittedly underinformed impression is something like this: A Vineyard breakaway (because apparently the whole VCC movement has gone at best soft-egalitarian and at worst anti-complementarian) that seems to have its theology straight (albeit more minimalist than I like – no doubt a product of their Vineyard roots) and seems to want to have engaging worship experiences, but seems to lack the kind of catalytic culture-building leaders who can actually shape a congregation that gets into that sort of thing.

Christian Faith Center – Casey Treat’s multi-campus (Federal Way/Everett) church. We visited a few times and watched their TV show a few times, and I have a lot of friends who are former CFC-ers. Their worship is earnest (if a little dated), but when preaching on “faith” Casey sometimes seems to almost bend himself (and his text) over backwards to get it around to the “what’s in it for you” angle. Now, I do believe that the Bible makes promises that we need to know about, but if I’m not sure if my senior pastor is keeping the first thing first (God’s Glory at All Times in All Circumstances Regardless of My Blessed or Unblessed State) and the way-down-the-list thing way-down-the-list (He will bless you abundantly), it does a number on my confidence in his ability to be a shepherd after God’s heart.

The City Church – whose leaders are friends with some of the Christian City Church guys. I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen of the youth ministry (Generation Church/Judah Smith), although I’ll grant there is probably some doctrinal inconsistency in there to be wary of. But I can’t go to youth church anymore (if you’ve had a beard for more than a decade, it’s time to get out of youth group) so I have to look first at my experiences with their “main” services, and my main complaint is that I’ve yet to hear a message – live or on TV – that makes me uncomfortable enough with my own sin to actually want to repent of it. Maybe it’s Wendell’s personal politeness or maybe it’s an errant theological politeness, but it fails to grab my heart and demand my allegiance to the God who made me.

Lots of Little Churches – there are plenty of church plants out there that haven’t cracked 100 (yet, or in a long time; many never will, or never will again). The last three churches I’ve been involved with have been in this category, the last two for Heather. While I admire and cheer for what these guys are doing, we need to find someplace where we can seek some help from an existing, established, credible ministerial infrastructure without immediately getting recruited to help build it. I need to recharge with a taste of the innumerable multitude shouting “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and unto the Lamb” in a way that yet another clan of 50 simply can’t offer.

I write these things not to rip on any of the above churches. I think all of them have something worthwhile to contribute to the Body of Christ in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. I guess my main point is that, as a war-wearied and theologically savvy church seeker, it’s hard to find a church that’s publicly honest about their weaknesses and areas they need to grow. I think Mars Hill comes the closest on this point (having seen more public apologies from Mark Driscoll than from every other Evangelical leader in America combined), but I’m also worried that they’ve just got so far to go in figuring out what it means to encounter God in a corporate setting that it will quench something that’s always been really important in my Christian walk.

P.S. – There are other churches we’ve considered and even visited which I won’t mention in the interest of being charitable. Let’s just say “I want to be around winners, so I go to X church” commercials turn us off almost as much as idolizing Rob Bell, transmogrifying the gender roles debate from a Biblical issue into a “justice” issue, or bling pastors preaching bling gospels. If any of those sound familiar, sorry, I’m probably talking about you. Big things matter, and those are all either big things or they point directly to fundamental big things that allow/cause them to happen.