Visiting the West Philly Vineyard

Sorry for the lack of  content in my posts over the past week.  Last week was a big mess with VLI midterms and me getting sick for 2 days.  Fortunately I'm done with the tests and I'm feeling much better.

So this Sunday I took a page out of Jim and Casper , and visited the West Philly Vineyard Church with Susan, Barbara, and Justin.

I've been going to the same church exclusively for almost 10 years now, so it was really interesting to go to another church simply with the intention of observing how another church does things.  I figured I would write down some of my observations and share them with you.

First off, I was glad to see it was actually in West Philadelphia.  It's in the University City section of the city on the corner of Baltimore and 42nd Streets.  Its a minor peeve of mine (very minor) when places that aren't actually in the city say they are.  I was worried that it might be a suburban church just outside of the city, but it wasn't  This place was as West Philadelphia as Will Smith himself.

They meet in an old church building, so its ambiance is really neat.  Its a thoroughly modern experience surrounded by the memory and feel of something much older.  Its the kind of thing that you could never plan, but it gave it a very nice feel.

When we got there, they did one worship song first, and then did the teaching.  Apparently their setup is to do one song, then a teaching, and then do the rest of worship afterward.  I thought it was an interesting format, because it allowed you a chance to process and respond to the teaching during worship. Also, doing the teaching first gave Brad all the time he needed to make his point  There was no rushing to get things done before it was time to go.  His teaching was really good and in pretty in depth.  He had notes fill in the blank notes in the bullitin that you could fill in as he went along, so it kind of kept you focused.

Another thing that was different that I liked was that they had a choir.  When you say choir, I have a very particular picture in my mind of what that looks like.  Usually, I start frothing at the mouth and flash back to my childhood at Grace United Methodist in Millsboro with me wearing all the robes and getup (just kidding, I actually really enjoyed that time in my life).  This was something different though.  They simply had 5 people bunched together under two overhead mics just worshiping.  It was really cool.   I thought it was a great way to get people involved in leading worship.  I wonder if we could do something like that at our church.

I have a lot more things I could write, but I'm amazed that you've actually read this far about the experience, so I'll wrap it up.  Overall I had a great time there.  The people were friendly and welcoming.  It was definitely the kind of church that I would love to go to if I actually lived in the area.