Glory Be and Hallelujah!

I miss my home church back in Illinois while I winter in Florida.  It's a great, nondenominational relevant church I found in the early 80's.  It started in a movie theater, a bunch of 20-somethings who felt a calling to establish a new church, and grew to a megachurch on a megacampus.  I was immediately drawn to it, because it was contemporary and the pastors quoted from books on psychology and relationships and personal growth that I was reading for my Masters in Counseling.  It wasn't all the "religious mumbo-jumbo" from my youth.  They made Christianity real for real people in the real world.  If you have any interest in seeing it, click here:   http://www.willowcreek.org/   And here is part of their Christmas Eve service (watch out....someone needs to teach this guy how to pan so the viewer doesn't need Dramamine!)

There is nothing that compares to it in size or format here in the Panhandle, but when I visit my son's family in Atlanta every month or so, I am treated to a similar spiritual experience at a smaller, but very Willow-like formatted church called North Point Community Church.  It isn't nearly as large as Willow Creek (although it does have several different campuses in different cities like Willow does) and I like Willow's Promiseland facilities and activities for the grandchildren better, but I have to say that although Willow does have a sense of humor, North Point's seems even better!  At the Thanksgiving service, they did a "pre-Christmas" message and started with three young men singing the Alvin and the Chipmunks song that includes the refrain, "Alvin wants a hoola-hoop"....you know the one.  Well, they sang the first verse in their normal voices, but then the second in chipmunk voices and they sounded exactly like the original recording!  We laughed so hard we cried!

Here's what they did at their Christmas service a couple of weeks ago (it gets really cute, so watch the whole thing):

I just love how happy they are every time I've been there and how they get us all to laughing and loving one another's company!