Friends Langley Vineyard

church art
Originally uploaded by iBjorn.

Friends Langley Vineyard was the church of choice this week. I heard about it just this week, so I thought it would be fun to check out. Supposedly at one service they had movies playing during the music time. Nothing like that this week though. Singing did last for almost an hour though. And since it is just about their 20th anniversary they sang a lot of older songs, older being 1988-1994. They were also all Vineyard songs, but I knew a couple of them. One thing I have noticed at the two Vineyard churches I have been to is that they the kids just run around during the music time. Some of them are dancing in circles with each other. Others just run around or hop up and down. While it can sometimes be distracting (everyone wants to watch the cute kids), it is neat to have the whole family there to worship and the kids become used to worshiping with the adults. The sermon went on for quite a while too. I found it interesting though that the pastor didn't read any scripture for the whole sermon. He talked about a couple stories and paraphrased them from memory, but he never recited any scripture. This was a little discouraging, but there were still many good thoughts. He also liked to have people raise their hands in response to his questions. This he did repeatedly throughout the service. It also seemed like he kind of went with the flow and didn't really have a very structured sermon. After the sermon there was a call for people to come forward and give some kind of testimony to what had been talked about. One guy came up and gave a quick story. This was also done at the other Vineyard church I had been to. It is kind of neat, because it allows the church members to get to know each other better, and many people can relate to the stories that people share. The ministry time followed and was when things got a little different from what I am used to. Healing for the sick, speaking in tongues and all that stuff. There was quite an emphasis on speaking in tongues. The pastor's son even got baptized, and from the questions he was asked, it seemed that the reason he was being baptized was because he was hoping to receive the gift of tongues. I found this to be very interesting. I did like all of the art that they had in the church though. Especially these paintings they had on the metal posts on the stage. Most of the people there had young children or their children had left the house. There seemed to be a gap missing of teenagers and their parents. There was one older couple there though, but overall a lack of the over 65 crowd.
This afternoon I talked online with Jenny for quite awhile. And I don't mean chatting, I mean really talking. She found this application called Skype that lets you voice chat for free. It works pretty well, amazing considering she was on the other side of the world. You should try downloading it. It works a little better than AIM (AOL Instant Messanger), in my experience, but still not as good as the phone. If you get it my user name is BjornEide, and you can add me as a contact.