Let me start off by saying: We are not church shopping.
We are very content with the
community of friends that God has provided for us at
Wheaton Bible Church. However we also have some friends who are pastors/preachers in the area and so recently we have visited a couple of churches to hear them preach.
Both of our experiences were absolutely amazing. Mitchel Lee a pastor at
Community Fellowship gave a great teaching on a Psalm and how it shows the Psalmists' realization that he NEEDS to be meeting with the God fearing believers on a regular basis. Todd Wilson talked about how we can become
disillusioned when we face trials. Both of these guys are absolutely dynamic speakers... not only are they dynamic, their teaching is overflowing with the Word of God. We absolutely loved hearing from each of them.
As we sat there in a new church listening to a different pastor I was reminded of the power of exposing yourself to multiple voices, multiple teachers. My church holds firmly to the more traditional approach where the Senior Pastor preaches 80-90% of the time. It seems that in many churches there is a rising tide of teaching teams where a group of pastors does the teaching not just relying on one individual. I attended such a church in college and absolutely loved the multiple voices speaking into my life.
It provided depth to my knowledge, the kind of depth that can only be found when you are not limited to hearing the Word of God from one point of view. Even when that point of view is absolutely rock solid there is great benefit to hearing it from multiple tongues.
Churches that I have seen using this approach are: Bethlehem Baptist (my mother in-law's church), Fellowship Bible (where I attended in college), Community Fellowship (Mitchel Lee).
I hope our church moves in that direction and we increasingly hear from Rob Rienow, Chris McElwee, Ted Conaris, and even some lay speakers.
