Church Search 2005: Completed

We have a winner (we think).

After lots of prayer and wrestling and such, we’re pretty sure that God wants us to be part of the work he’s doing at Grace Central Presbyterian Church. We just resonate with what’s going on there.

I’m glad that the search is pretty much over. It was a real struggle to even get up the gumption and desire to go through the process of trying to find a new church. The phone calls and e-mails to church offices to find out more . . . the website surfing . . . the actual church visits which were sometimes great and other times horrible . . . worst of all, the inevitable comparisons to our church “back home”. It’s been an arduous and annoying process.

Plusses and Minuses . . .

+ Solidly reformed (PCA)
+ Young, as in the church isn’t 90% 60-and-up
+ Young, as in this is a newly planted church
+ Retains traditional reformed liturgy (confessions, creeds, antiphony, etc), but progressive in their approach to it
+ Weekly communion
+ Hymns (mostly RUF arrangements!)
+ Excellent, expository preaching
+ Pastor has excellent taste in music and describes himself as an “aging hipster”, though he’s only 32 or so.
+ He preaches primarily from the ESV.
+ He also blogs.
+ Very arts-oriented (the pastor has a BFA degree, as a matter of fact).
+ Intentionally located in the Short North district of downtown Columbus . . . rich in culture, spiritually bankrupt.
+ Aims to serve the “religiously disenfranchised”.
+ Gives money to Christian aid, relief, and justice services and ministries.
+ Planning to establish an “indigenous mercy mission” to serve Columbus.
+ Zoë likes the kids.

- grape juice only
- exclusively sings hymns . . . so no more praise songs from Sovereign Grace.
- paedobaptism (but we obviously knew that was part of the Presbo package, so meh . . .)

+/- Meets at 6 PM
+/- We’re still adjusting from WillowContemporary-style worship to Reformed liturgy. We love it, but we sometimes miss the former as well.

We did promise Amy’s mom that we’d wait to hear the guy preach who’ll likely become her church’s pastor before we made a firm decision, but if God’s pushing us in Grace Central’s direction, then that’s it.

(BTW, speaking of paedobaptism . . . Greg actually mentioned and explained that a little bit in his sermon tonight. What he said really makes a lot of sense, though I still have my disagreements with it. We plan on being teachable, though, as long as we’re under this church’s authority . . . just as I’d expect any paedobaptist to be if they joined a credobaptist church.)

So anyway . . . yay!