Church Shopping

Before Matthew and I even got to Pensacola, something we had been thinking about and talking about was finding a church. This has been very important to both of us as we know that we will find a lot of community through a church just as we found through Crossings. So far, there have been three churches on our radar - either through people telling us about the church or us driving by it. We had heard a lot about a church called Olive Baptist, so that was the first church we tried when we got settled in. It was a nice church. I think on average a little over 2,000 people attend each Sunday. We went to a Sunday School class and "big church." The people were really great, but we soon realized that we probably weren't in the correct "life stage" Sunday School class, as couples in the class had multiple children (we met two women who were on their 4th child, wow!). Everybody was extremely nice though.

Then just yesterday we tried Hillcrest Baptist church. We ended up only going to the main service yesterday which we really liked. The church was a little bit smaller than Olive Baptist, but still a good size. The church seemed traditional, yet up to date on their technology (which was refreshing). The worship was good and we really liked the teaching from the Senior pastor. He taught directly from scripture and focused his sermon yesterday on 1 John 1:1-4. It was a good sermon and I felt like I had learned something by the time we left. The building was nice too. We found out from a lady at the info desk that they had just build a new addition to the church. It's really nice with a coffee shop and bookstore. It reminded us a lot of Crossings - just a scaled down version.

The third church we haven't been to just yet. We're going to go next week. It's actually a church in Gulf Breeze, not Pensacola. That's not a far drive, probably just like 20 minutes. We know about this church because Matthew knows the pastor from growing up. It's called Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church. We're anxious to try it out as we've heard really good things.

One thing that has been so interesting for us in trying out all these new churches are the denominations and some of their practices. I'm not really concerned about what "denomination" we are.....which is probably why I liked Crossings so much. Either way, we just want to find a church where we can connect with other believers, learn more about God and his teachings and serve. We're excited to see where God takes us.

In case you're interested, I placed the links to all these churches websites below. It sounds silly, but church websites are very important to me - I can learn a lot about a church from their website. For example, before we had moved here, I googled Pensacola churches. One churches website came up and it had a light purple background with a scrolling marquee at the top of it. The font looked ancient. It was all very telling to me. Some may think that's silly, but a church's website really would make or break it for me as to whether or not I'd visit. So, with that said, I hope you enjoy these websites below:

Olive Baptist - http://www.olivebaptist.org/

Hillcrest Baptist - http://hillcrestchurch.com/

Gulf Breeze United Methodist - http://www.gbumc.org/home