Live Oak Community Church

September 9, 2007

Live Oak is a pretty new congregation located out on South Frankford Ave in Lubbock. It's set on some native grass pasture with big live oak and mesquite trees all around the property - hence the name, I guess. I think they said the congregation has been together for about 10 years. I had been looking at their website http://www.live-oak.org/ and was impressed by what I saw there. They seemed to be very community oriented and have a lot on the ball. Perhaps its wrong to judge a church on their website, but in today's world that is certainly your first impression of a place you are visiting for the first time. It shows a lot about the leadership - if they are concerned enough to take care of the little details like a website, they are probably taking care of the big stuff too. Didn't Jesus say something about that to the disciples one time?





One of the things that attracted me to Live Oak was their theme for the season called re:discovering church. As you can read on the advertisement for the series, it seemed like Live Oak was re:considering how to do church and that is very appealing to me right now. I thought it was very possible that some really cool things were going on here and we needed to be a part of it. And perhaps there are - how do you figure that out the first time you visit a place?
We drove into the parking lot and looked for the way in. We followed several people who went in a side door, hoping someone would show us where to go. No one did - no one even greeted us when we came in. We were in what was obviously the kids department and so we asked someone where the 3 year olds go after not seeing an obvious sign. The lady looked at us kind of strangely and responded that she certainly didn't know. We saw an information desk down the hall in the foyer so we headed down there. We asked the girl working at the desk where the 3 year old class met. She didn't really know either, but thankfully Adam, a red headed guy that looks like a certain movie star whom I can't recall his name, popped out of nowhere and said he'd be happy to escort us to the right place. He'd overheard that we were visiting for the first time and did a great job of telling us about the church and what was going on. He introduced to the teacher and we got Avery all signed up. Turns out he was the associate pastor, so I guess he was doing his job that morning!

We headed back to the dimly lit sanctuary for the worship service. We sat kind of in the middle back of the room and had a good view of the stage. Their auditorium was interesting - it was just a metal building shell with all the beams, cables, lights, etc exposed but painted to blend in with the walls. It was a very good attempt at building an economical meeting center and I rather appreciated their effort at good stewardship. The room was arranged a little differently - it was rectangular like a basketball court and the stage was on one sideline about mid-court, so the audience was positioned around the jutting-out stage in a U shape. The service began when the band fired up and called us to worship with "Join the Song." Adam the Redhead offered the welcome address and we transistioned into worship with "Send Me," "Better is One Day," and "Amazing Grace." Then they had a drama group of 4 women give a neat presentation on the Mission of Live Oak, which is leading others to Christ.

We then we watched one of the coolest things I've seen in a church yet - a video presentation of their huge baptism celebration from August. It looked like they met at a community pool, or maybe someone's backyard and had a big cookout. At somepoint, the baptizer got in the pool wearing his swimming trunks and t-shirt and it showed about 18 people giving their confession of Christ and being immersed. It was REALLY cool and I was quite teary eyed by the end. What a GREAT way to celebrate people's commitment to the Lord by having a party and testimony time and getting baptized as a community of believers. There were totally new Christians in the group, a few kids from the congregation, young people and older people. It really reinforced the church's mission as evangelism as each person told how they came to Christ and to be a part of Live Oak Community Church. We were both very moved by the moment and reinspired about the tranforming power of Jesus in people's lives.

The pastor got up after a song and I was pumped to hear his message about re:discovering church. He told us about his recent trip somewhere or another and finally got the message. I was already kind of lost at this point - his voice was very monotone and he just stood behind the podium, which was on the floor where you couldn't see him very well. Anyway, re:discovering church was all about sailing ships, apparently. He told us that Live Oak was sailing seven ships and how important it was to maintain the fleet and be a captain and swab the deck and other nautical type stuff. Now I've lived on the ocean and have some grasp of things nautical, but he was losing me fast. I couldn't see it coming - couldn't imagine what ships had to do with church until the pictures of the boats on the screen got labeled:

• Worship
• Discipleship
• Stewardship
• Membership
• It was so cheesy I can't even remember the other ships.

Needless to say, I was rather disappointed. Not only was the premise a really poor attempt at being creative, it was flatly delivered and utterly uninspiring. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh in retrospect, but I wasn't impressed - perhaps I'd built it up to much in my mind. When he finished talking, that was it. No dismissal prayer or song - we were free to go. We lingered around a bit and took our time to go get Avery, hoping to meet some of the members. No one noticed us. So, picked up our little girl, who had a fabulous time, and hit the door.

Sorry Live Oak - we won't be coming back. We didn't find things to be "altogether different" in that church, at least not when it comes to welcoming strangers. I hate to judge a church on one visit, but it's awfully hard to come back when your first experience isn't very positive. It really made me think about our role in reaching out to visitors at whatever church God finally leads us to. There is that one chance to attract people and the church must make that first visit a really good one in order to attract new folks.