Trinity Church

August 5 and 19, 2007

We began our "church search" two months ago now. Our first visit to Trinity was born not from a deliberate choice to begin looking for a new church home, but out of a frustration with where we were and a need to experience something different for a change. One of Jill's good friends had been visiting Trinity and invited us to go with her, so we accepted.

We had been to Trinity before - usually at Christmas time for their special dramatic presentations. Avery always says "Look! There's the camel church!" when we drive by it on the loop, for she hasn't forgotten that Christmas play 2 years ago where they brought a REAL camel into the auditorium during the play. Now this may be a dumb question related to nothing of any significance, but would your church allow a camel inside??? To me it may seem irrelevant, but it communicates something about the heart of this church - they are interested in communicating the message to people's hearts and are willing to go to extreme measures to do so. That is something valuable in a church.

I suppose that Trinity is the only church in Lubbock that might come close to being classified a "mega" church. I've heard their membership is over 7000, but that is difficult to really know without asking someone in the know. Either way, it is a big place with LOTS of people and that can be either intimidating or comforting - depending on your point of view. If you are not really looking for a church home, it can be nice to just blend in and enjoy a worship service without special attention being brought your way. On the other hand, it can be incredibly difficult to meet people in such an environment if that is what you are really after. It made me really wonder how you would become involved with a church like this and what the attraction is for the mega-churches around the country. Perhaps people enjoy being anonymous and coming to get a worship-fix on Sundays. That wasn't my overall impression of this church, but I did have to wonder how all those people could realistically be integrated and active into church ministry.

Our friend had told us how to find the children's department and we were able to get Avery situated very easily. She was super excited to see what was going on in their and having her friend Kaidance in class was an added blessing. We sifted through the mob of young families toward the "sanctuary" and were greeted at the entrance with a hand-out which outlined the morning's service for us. It was a nice full-color print-out with announcements, class descriptions, meeting times and places, etc. all inside. We found a good seat towards the middle of the room and settled there as we awaited the worship service to begin.

The musical talent at Trinity is pretty impressive, especially since we hadn't been to an instrumental service in quite a while. They have, on occasion, a full orchestra setup for special worship events that is extremely impressive. This particular Sunday was not really a special event, but they did have a stage full of guitars, bass, drums, keyboards and an assortment of other instruments. The musicians tuned up and eventually the worship leader and backup singers came onto the stage with a warm welcome to enter into worship together. They have two huge screens at the back of the stage with the words to the songs easily visible for everyone in the huge auditorium. The songs were very upbeat - some were familiar and some not - and the music had a very different feel to it than what I expected. There was a lot of Southern Gospel feel to it, more so that what you'd hear on contemporary Christian radio say. I guess I was expecting more of a rockish or folkish or refined sound. Anyway - it was good, uplifting and encouraging despite not being my favorite music style.

At some point during the service, we witnessed several baptisms. They have a baptistry behind the stage, like most churches of Christ do, and there was a deacon who escorted the white robed baptismal candidate, as they were called, into the water. It was interesting that the preacher took their confession, though he was 30-40 feet away from them and obviously watching them from a video screen as he faced the audience instead of looking at them directly. Once that was done, the deacon baptized them and everyone applauded. You could also watch the whole thing in larger than life-size on the two Jumbo-trons in case the real thing wasn't good enough.

That leads to my only real critique of the service. While the pastor was preaching, he was broadcast onto the two Jumbo-trons in case his actual size wasn't good enough. My mind bounced between the three images as the cameras struggled to keep up with his lightning paced stage crossing. I appreciate a speaker who moves around, but the camera chasing broadcast on the big-screens made it seem like a blur of activity. It was very hard to concentrate on the message and I wasn't really sure why his face needed to be broadcast like that anyway. I'm pretty sure even the people in the back had a clear view of the stage. It would have been much more helpful to have the sermon outline or Bible verses or things like that projected up so we could follow along. I don't really remember what the message was about, but that isn't uncommon for me. I'm not a big fan of preaching in general and rarely take much away from a speaker's message. Perhaps that is indicative of a spiritual deficiency in me - I'm not really sure. Either way, he wasn't a particularly gifted speaker but I do remember his message being encouraging. Not challenging, but encouraging - and maybe that is what you have to offer when you are speaking to a couple of thousand parishioners whom you probably don't even know personally.

While Trinity was extremely friendly - all the people around us made an effort to meet us - it felt like a really difficult place to get involved. I know there aer a multitude of small groups and classes to join, but that is all quite daunting in such a large church where we don't know anyone. Well, I say we don't know anyone. I did see someone there I knew from Broadway and one of my customers in the parking lot. But among a crowd of several thousand, would you ever really see them again??

The overall impression - a super church to visit. Great worship, great kid's program, on the ball place, but too big for us. We want to be somewhere that we are needed and can contribute to the ministry. I think there are plenty of folks at Trinity that can handle this without us.

See more at www.trinitytoday.com .