Week 1 Wrap-Up

Date: Sunday 01/18/2009 
Church: Santa Barbara Community 
Service: 10:00 a.m. 

After arriving roughly five minutes past ten, I was surprised to see that there was not much seating left in the building. The church itself had elevated ceilings and was decent size maybe fitting about three hundred. Since I was late, I opted to sit in the back corner where I saw a few open seats. I later learned the reasoning for this particular section being the most vacant which I will later explain.

Music is a very important factor to me, therefore this is something I look forward to hearing and could even be a big factor in choosing the right church for me. Unfortunately the music selection at SBCC was short, slow and overall not too great. Regardless, I quickly put that aside and was eager to listen to the sermon. Once the music ended, they had the opening statements and then of course the greetings. I met a man named Jim and his wife. While his wife was talking to someone else, I chatted with Jim and told him it was my first time at SBCC. He looked about 35-40 and was very friendly and welcoming.  

This week’s sermon topic was about abortion. One of the main pastor’s was doing the worship and he opened it up with a five minute clip of the life of a baby beginning with conception to actual birth.  

(Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2l1-kvKomg)

This is a very applicable topic to my life, because I have always been somewhat torn between pro-choice or pro-life. I realize that abortion is wrong and reprehensible, but I also think that in certain circumstances in which a pregnancy conceived through rape, it should be the woman’s choice whether to go through with having that person’s child. Through the sermon, I made to disregard any biased opinions I had toward abortion and just listened to his lecture as if it was the first time hearing about the topic.  

“We must love, what god loves.”

He offered seven reasons why abortion is evil:
1. Our genetic makeup
2. Physical makeup
3. Legal consistency (some states it is legal, others it is not)
4. Personal sovereignty 
5. Viability (how many weeks after conception) 
6. Irrelevance of size/age
7. Irrelevance of cognition

“God values life and so should we.”



Two goals to achieve in relation to abortion:
1. convince the unconvinced
2. wakeup the untroubled 

Here are some additional things we can do:

1. Understand the times in which we life, stay informed.
2. Pray to god to awake the conscience of our nation.
3. Talk about these issues with people. Speak about the unborn as people.

This concluded the sermon. I found out throughout the sermon that I must have seated myself in the new born section. Little babies were crying consistently throughout the service which I found a little distracting. Overall, interesting topic and pastor did an efficient job captivating my attention through videos, pictures and slides. I also learned that SBCC partakes in communion every single week. I did not participate. The follow up music was again slow, soft and dull.

After the service ended I stuck around a while and picked up a photo directory. I looked up the college leader’s name and searched around church to talk with him. I patiently waited as he talked to some people, but he seemed to be in high demand because many people were talking to him. As I was waiting, I man about 40 years old came up and chatted with me for a bit. I was telling him a little about myself and told him I was waiting to meet Mike. He then introduced me to Mike the college leader and I talked with him for a bit. I let him know I would be showing up at his house on Thursday night and he indicated he was glad that I took the initiative to come church all by myself. 

Final thoughts on Week 1:
Everything went pretty well considering the different factors. The pastor did a good job on a very important topic in our time. I can not fully say my opinions on abortion completely changed, but the sermon definitely had an impact on me. As I left church, I felt good and proud that I actually went out and did it and felt quite welcomed.

Pros:
-Nicely designed church
-Friendly and welcoming people
-Good sermon w/ good speaker

Cons:
-Slow, dull music
-Babies crying were a little distracting

Passage of the week:  
Ephesians 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.”