Why I love 2 Rivers Church

Today’s church service was a good example of why I love 2 Rivers Church.  But first, a little background information for those who are not familiar with 2 Rivers:

Our services are about 1:45 minutes long, the first half is praise and worship, then we have intermission so kids can be taken to sunday school, then we have teaching of the Word.

During the praise and worship, anyone who feels they have received a word from God is encourage to use the open mic to share this word with the congregation.  “Order” is kept by the pastor, who screens these messages and limits them to a reasonable number.  As a church we believe that God is always wanting to communicate to us in various ways and thru various people, and so I think it’s exciting when someone shares a word they have received because it is an expression of the movement of the Holy Spirit.  These “words” can be words of wisdom, knowledge, exhortation, prophecy, encouragement, it really varies, but it’s interesting that there’s always a common thread between all of the words shared, a message for the Body of Christ.

Our church is also very big on sharing testimonies because it allows others to be encouraged by what God is doing in our midst and brings him glory.

Anyway, this morning we had 3 words shared (2 of which where from adolescents, which I also think is way cool), and we had 2 testimonies.  This is a little more activity than normal, so the starting time for the pastor’s teaching was later than normal, late enough that he considered not doing the teaching he had planned at all and instead saving it for next week.

But then Pastor Tom said something that I really appreciated, he said, ” ah what the heck, it fits into the message”, meaning: time may be short, but I should go ahead and do it because it’s in line with what God is doing this morning.

Usually when a pastor refers to “the message”, they’re talking about their message, the sermon they prepared and planned on preaching.  In this case, Tom was referring to the message being ministered by the Holy Spirit.  Pastor Tom was demonstrating his desire to lead a church that is led by the Spirit, not by him.  That’s pretty cool.

In contrast, we once visited a church where a couple of testimonies where shared following the praise time.  The pastor said, “wow, those were great testimonies.  I wish we could do spend the entire morning talking about what God has done in our lives.”   Then he proceeded with his sermon.  Becca and I looked at each other and asked “why can’t he?”  Sure, you wouldn’t want to do that every week, but it was as if this pastor believed that there was a magic formula somewhere that stated that church must include [his] teaching.

I’m glad to be in a church where people come expecting to have an encounter with God and our own agendas are not the most important thing.

-Nate