There was no post for week 6 last week since we were out of town for the weekend. So now we come to week 7. Yesterday we visited Maranatha Bible Church for the second time. I gave quite a bit of detail when we last visited, I’ll just note a few updates here.

First Impressions

• Took a slightly different route to get there this week and hit all the lights green… and it’s a quick little trip from our house. 6 or 7 minutes, max.
• The place was definitely fuller this week than last time we attended. We parked on the street a few houses down from the church.
• Having now visited twice, we look familiar enough to some of the Maranatha folks (especially the ones who we’ve faced off against in church softball) that you can tell they recognize us and are this close to saying something to us… but none did.

Music The regular music leader was back this week. Just looking at her (a short, grandma-aged woman who reminded me a lot of one of my college calculus professors), you wouldn’t expect that she is an aggressive, guitar-playing music leader. But she is, and she was excellent. The closing song after the sermon was Victory in Jesus, and while I might’ve resisted the very last almost-end-and-then-do-a-slow-drum-fill-into-a-final-final-chorus thing, it was just so much fun I can’t really complain a bit.

Children’s Ministries No real updates here. The girls had a good time.

Sermon Pastor Aaron was trying to crank through two chapters of Isaiah (34 and 35) in the space of 45 minutes, and he did a great job. Very much enjoyed the sermon.

People/Observations

• Had a nice chat after the service with the youth pastor, Thad. He had been reading this blog earlier this week (Hi, Thad!) and said he enjoyed it. He told me he had read my “church search” posts on the other church we visited, and then went to read the one about Maranatha. And while I might’ve expected him to hope that I’d give a good review, what he told me was actually not that at all. “Please, find some bad stuff,” he said. “That way we can take it to people [here at Maranatha] and say, ‘Look, we need to work on this…'”. I thought that was pretty cool. Always thinking about improvement.
• Ran into a couple more folks that I knew from other places but was unaware that they attended Maranatha. That was neat.
• The service ended a bit early this week because they were holding their annual meeting directly after the service. They planned on electing two elder candidates and one deacon candidate.

All in all, it was an enjoyable Sunday morning. Good to be back in the house of the Lord after being out of town last weekend. Becky and I haven’t really discussed the church search any more since yesterday morning, so I’m not sure what our plans are going to be for next Sunday or following Sundays. Much prayer and discussion will be involved, I’m sure.