ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

The very first thing I said as I stared at the staff home page for DeerGrove Covenant Church was, “Honey, this pastor is hot!”

Paul zipped right over to the computer and peered at the screen from over my shoulder. “Okay,” he said quickly, “You can go to church there.”

I actually had no idea where Palatine was when I first found the church’s web site. TheEvangelical Covenant Church denomination is on the list of egalitarian churches at the Christians for Biblical Equality web site, so I visited their official homepage and was delighted to find a list of Covenant churches pastored by women. Why don’t more egalitarian denominations have these? (Probably because they know their lists would be embarrassingly short…) I think such a list is a great way to promote women in ministry. I began visiting the web sites of all of the Illinois churches on the list to see how far away they were from my home in Vernon Hills, and the church in Palatine was the last one on the list, so I was delighted to learn that Palatine is a mere twenty minute drive from my apartment.

I e-mailed Pastor Melissa and asked about visiting, and eventually I talked with her on the phone as well. She was pleasant to talk to, understanding of my interfaith family situation, and very good about answering all of my questions. I had never really studied the ECC before, and she says that the ECC is very good about promoting and encouraging women in ministry.

Here are the details about DeerGrove Covenant Church and the ECC which are relevant to my search:

So I dropped Paul and Harley off at Paul’s church this morning, then drove down to Palatine to visit DeerGrove. Pastor Melissa had given me a heads-up that the service this morning would be a little bit different because the youth group was running it. I said that was fine; I used to be a youth leader and had seriously considered becoming a youth pastor.

To give you an idea of what the service was like, I’m going to reproduce the program here,sans full names:

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This morning in Corporate Worship:

Lord’s Prayer

Worship through Song

~ Your Love, O Lord

Welcome and Life of the Church

Testimony

~ Lizzy M.

Slideshow

Worship through Song

~ I Have a River

Lord’s Prayer with response

Sermonette*

~ Margo B.

Worship through Song

~ Come, Thou Fount of every Blessing

Lord’s Prayer with response

Worship through Song

~ We Are One in the Spirit

Prayer and Offering – Ben M.

~ Love

Challenge

~ Breezy M.

Lord’s Prayer with response

Benediction

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The service opened with the junior high students reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and this was referred back to several times throughout the service, which gave the service just a touch of liturgy. Songs were led by a worship team consisting of people playing keyboards, guitars, and percussion, but the songs were announced in the program beforehand and interspersed throughout the meeting. All of the other churches I have attended have done a longer session of singing at the beginning of the service before switching to announcements and speaking, so this was different for me. Old favorites such as “Come Thou Fount“¹ were mixed with contemporary worship music such as Third Day’s “Your Love, O Lord,” which I thought was lovely. Towards the beginning of the service, one of the teens presented Pastor Melissa and her husband Frederic with a gift and invited the congregation to come up and lay hands on her and pray a blessing on her.

The junior high speakers were wonderful. They were passionate and energetic and completely prepared for the talks they gave; some of them were even better than some of the professional speakers I’ve heard. I can tell they have a great youth program at DeerGrove. Also, having attended a complementarian church for the last 14 months, I’d forgotten how great it is to have both men and women involved in directing, leading, and speaking at Sunday meetings. What a difference it makes! Complementarian churches really are missing out.

I was especially struck by the feeling that the structure of the service was rather LDS-esque, with the songs interspersed throughout the meeting and lay members being asked to run the service. My husband said the same thing when I first told him about it. He joked that they must be copying the Mormons, but I think there’s a better explanation for it. Take a look at this tree showing how traditional Christian denominations have branched out:

Covenant is an offshoot of the Pietist and Lutheran branches, and Mormonism has long taken its Sunday meeting cues from 19th century Protestant pietists. So it’s not that the Covenant denomination copies Mormonism; Mormonism copied the ancestors of the Covenant. As far as structure of worship is concerned, they’re distant cousins. Personally, I think that’s kind of cool, and could work very well for my interfaith family.

The last thing I noticed was that children ages 3+ stay for the first part of the service and depart for the children’s classes at the * in the program. That’s probably a good arrangement in that it lets the children and children’s workers participate in at least part of the main service, but it could be problematic for me since my daughter is so rambunctious. However, she already sits through her father’s entire service on his Sunday mornings, so we could theoretically work with it on the two Sundays she comes to mine.

Last bonus about the ECC: two members of The Fray are members of the ECC (lead guitarist Dave Welsh and drummer Ben Wysocki). That’s got to count for something.

Overall, I really enjoyed the service at DGCC and I think it could be a good fit for my family. If none of the other churches I’m exploring work out better, they’ll definitely be hearing back from me. Who knows, maybe I’d make a better covenant pietist than a broken Pentecostal.

Next Sunday, it’s time to visit Willow Creek North Shore!

UPDATE: You can hear the sermonette that was preached by Margo B. here.

[1] The version of the song I’m linking to is by LDS a capella group Inside Out and it’s my favorite version of the song, so check it out.