First Day of Church

Sept 20, 2009

Today was our first visit to the church which I had chosen to minister too. North Cowichan Alliance Church, A recent church plant which meets in a school in the nearby city of Duncan. Believe it or not, I was not nervous at all! I was rather excited about going today. It started with a quick sit-down with the retiring Pastor, Marvin Croswell. He explained to Jenna and I the specific needs in the church some of which are musicians, techies and a sunday school teacher. All they had today for a worship band was a guitarist/vocalist, a djembist and a bassist, so I am eagerly waiting to start playing with them. They have a music meeting on the 30th which they will discuss the future of the praise and worship at North Cowichan Alliance. The sound system there is also bare bones. They have no means of connecting the keyboard to the console and they usually use the old style overhead for the words so one of these days I'm gonna help them with the tech side of things. Ok, enough with the tech already...In attendance today was about 60 people, mostly young families just like back at home, with a couple of elderly people here and there. The whole service was non-formal, the worship was enjoyable. The sermon was about Abraham in Genesis Chapter 24. I liked the sermon because instead of the average sermon where you pick a subject refer to different parts of the Bible, Pastor Marvin used Genesis 24:1-20 As the sermon. The two main points were stepping out in faith, as Abraham's servant did and going beyond expectations as Rebekah did in the passage.
After the sermon, Pastor Marvin invited both Jenna and I over to his place for lunch. While there he explained to us the general situation of Vancouver Island. There are many Natives here that are unchurched and this is one area they would like to expand in. Over the past little while they have been trying to minister to a younger congregation and to do this they prayed for a younger pastor and Just recently God granted their request! Slowly, Pastor Marvin's son Joel will be taking over the church.