Church Shopping--Signs of Life

My 35 year old son was just transferred to Raleigh, North Carolina, for nice promotion in his work for a large mutual fund company. I visited last weekend to see his new digs, see the communities of the "triangle" of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, and gladly give it all my paternal blessing. Since he has had little to do with church since college but continues his interest in things spiritual, I asked if we could hunt up a church to attend on Sunday. He agreed. We immediately rejected the little church on the corner near his apartment which looked pretty "closed up and uptight" and had on its signboard something about pleasing God by following "His" commandments--strikes two and three! Not surprisingly that church has no website. But there are lots of other Presbyterian Churches in Raleigh, so we looked them up. Looking through the eyes of a 30-something, most of them looked pretty "stuffy" with late middle-aged white men in leadership (not that there's anything wrong with that) and what looked to me like "business as usual/the status is quo" church life. Now understand we're both coming from a pretty progressive point of view so some things jumped out as objections pretty quickly.

Only one church showed what I call signs of life on the web site. North Raleigh http://www.nraleighpc.org shows a picture of an appealing woman pastor, an unusually interesting mission statement and goals ("a vibrant spiritual life" for example), and descriptions of programs that went beyond the usual everyday couple and family oriented church programs. It's not in Dan's neighborhood, but we were willing to make the half-hour drive for the level of interest the website generated. We were not disappointed.

• The building is fresh, attractive, welcoming, and well-maintained.
• The service was relaxed but thoroughly Presbyterian, which Dan liked.
• The sermon was clear, interesting and pretty gutsy (she tackled the "women keep silent in church" admonition of Paul),
• and the congregation of about 150 that morning included a full range of ages.
• They even took in four new members and with some children in tow on that Summer Sunday!
• The pastor who is very confident and easy with people promised to contact Dan based on information he gave on the registration pads,
• and a few members greeted us after the service.

I think he was impressed--not an easy test!

If you're looking at your own congregation, check to be sure there are "signs of life" all around, especially on the web if you want to attract the young folks.