Day 8 - Headed Home

It was no problem getting up at 5:00 a.m. for Sandy and me, but getting the kids up at 5:30 was a little work. We had loaded the van mostly the night before, so all we needed to do was get dressed and leave. When we pulled out of Palm Springs, we had a mostly Interstate drive on I-10, I-210, and a few other highways.

We only had to stop once, where we ate breakfast at Del Taco, another hybrid Mexican-American chain. We all had breakfast burritos, then were back on the road. The temperature was a chilly 62 when we came through the mountain pass about 6:00 a.m. It was almost 80 in Palm Springs on the East side of the mountain.

In fact, the temperature stayed in the sixties in Los Angeles most of the day. It was quite a contrast to what we had experienced all week in the desert.

We were able to drive straight to Grace Community Church without getting lost.

(For more thoughts about church at Grace, see the additional entry below.)

After church, we roamed the campus a bit, then headed back to the airport. I had thought about driving to the beach for a few minutes, as we would be less than 15 minutes away. However, our past experiences in the rental car, shuttle, and baggage process had led us to believe we needed to allow plenty of time. We certainly didn’t want to be stranded in the airport, so we allowed 3 hours from the time we dropped off the car. Turns out it was about 1.5 hours more than we needed to allow. We would have had plenty of time to swing by the ocean or even stay for Sunday school at church.

After lunch at McDonald’s and filling the vehicle with fuel, Budget Rent-a-car was the next stop. It was five minutes from the time that we pulled in the parking lot until we were on a shuttle bus headed back to the airport. It was extremely simple and streamlined. One more thing: The cost of renting a van from Budget for one week ended up 30 dollars less than renting a van from Alamo for two days.

Midwest Airlines is a very small carrier in LA, with destinations only to KC and Milwaukee. That made the check in process at the airport very simple. They only had one flight out that afternoon, only seating 88. Our bags were checked and we were to the gate with over two hours to spare. So Sandy spent the time reading, Adam and dad played NBA, and Alex and Anna played GameBoy. It was very relaxing to just hang out in the airport, compared to the rest of our airport adventures this summer

The plane was delayed in arriving from Kansas City, so it wasn’t ready to go on time. We found out that we wouldn’t all be sitting together on the plane, so the seating assignments would be complicated for us. They had given us two seats together on the front row, two seats together in the back, and one seat in the middle. Adam really wanted to sit in the front row, so he and Anna chose to sit there together. Sandy stuck with Alex at the back (closer to the bathrooms), expecting him to sleep. I got to sit alone in the middle.

It turned out to be a great flight for all of us. Alex slept the first half of it while Sandy read through her book. Anna and Adam took turns playing GameBoy and reading. The flight attendant later told us that they were perfect and she was very entertained by them. I spent half the flight typing on the blog and then reading a spiritual formation. During that time, I listened to Charlotte Church’s album Enchantment. She is amazing.

When we took off, the pilot said we should make it home a little early, but they were watching some storms in Kansas. Turned out, those storms hit Kansas City right at the time we were arriving. We flew to the south (towards Joplin) and wrapped around the east side of the city, coming back to the airport on the north. Looking at lightning from the air is really interesting. Occasionally, we could even see a few people setting off fireworks. It was the scariest landing I’ve had for awhile, as we basically had to land in the midst of a thunderstorm. The pilots did well, I guess, and we made it safe and sound.

My seatmate during the trip was a teenage boy who was part of a group of 13 returning from a mission trip to the LA Dream Center, Matthew Barnett’s urban ministry. It was neat to hear some stories from their trip. They were a very well-behaved group of teenagers from Overland Park.

The only problem we had with Midwest Airlines on the whole trip was the baggage claim speed. Midwest's slogan is "The Best Care in the Air." They need to give some attention to what happens before and after you are on the plane. I would suggest their current slogan could be "You'll stand around when we're on the ground." It was about 45 minutes in LA to get our bags, and we waited the same amount of time there in KC. The flight landed at 7:30, and we finally got out to our van at 8:30.

Driving home, we had quite a light-show from the lightning. We stopped in Liberty for a quick meal at McDonalds, then drove home through the country (210 –> 10 –> 24). We pulled into Moberly about 11:35 and had everybody to bed by midnight.

Fortunately, Monday was a holiday and we took it very easy. But the kids were up at 7:00, pulling suitcases out of the van and dragging them upstairs, just so they could get out their new toys to play with. We were thankful to be back in a cool, rainy location after 8 days of heat.

So goes another installment of Following the Finchers. We may sneak in a trip to Michigan for a few days the first of August. Until then, let me know if you have any questions or areas of discussion from our trips. You can use the comment button or e-mail us here: dfincher@cccb.edu.

Addendum – Reflections on Grace

I just realized that I probably don’t reflect on grace enough, generally speaking. But I’ll work on that on my own time. On Sunday, July 3, we were predestined to attend Grace Community Church, where approximately 8,000 people worship on a weekly basis. I am being somewhat serious about being predestined to worship there, because I have followed the ministry of John MacArthur for over 17 years now, so it would only be logical that if I were in the LA area on a Sunday morning, that would be my preferred place to worship. The fact that the time of the service perfectly corresponded with our time to depart Palm Springs and our flight from LAX convinced me that God had sovereignly decided this was where we should attend worship services this morning.

I know you’re wondering if we ended up seeing John MacArthur preach . . . I’ll save that for later in the blog. While that was one area of my interest, whether or not I heard him, the character and flavor of the church was something that I wanted to get a grasp on. Keith Ehresman told me that when he was hired at Madison Park Christian Church in Quincy over 20 years ago, they sent him out there to spend some time observing Grace church and get some ideas for MPCC. I can see why. This church has a lot going for it, and a long track record. The church houses a Christian school, ATS accredited seminary, is connected with a Christian college, and even has their own publishing house (Grace Books International). In some ways, like Saddleback, Grace functions as what I would call a “Paradigm Church” (ala Willow Creek). Many churches have tried to emulate that pattern of Grace church and with good reason. It’s hard to argue with success.

So many things I could say about Grace church, but let me start by what I won’t talk about. They are doctrinally fundamentalist, which makes them strongly in favor of Biblical inerrancy. They are congregationally independent, being technically non-denominational, although they definitely have Baptist leanings. The church is Calvinistic, non-charismatic, and dispensational premillennial. Let me just say that if you are a visitor specifically looking for that type of church, you won’t find one any stronger than Grace. In this blog, I won’t address my feelings about their doctrine. Suffice it to say that I have always patterned my preaching after John MacArthur, and I own over 100 books that he has written. I feel pretty comfortable discussing “Grace doctrine,” but that’s not my point here.

Instead, I want to look at the church from the perspective of a visitor. Specifically, what would a young family like mine find when they came to visit for the first time. They may or may not enjoy the doctrine, but I don’t think that decision will be made on the first visit. My point is that even if the church’s doctrine is perfect, the issue of the first-time visitor’s experience will ultimately determine if they return for another helping. From the pulpit, the preacher said, “We love visitors here at Grace Community Church.” My purpose is to see how visitors would love their experience.

I’ll follow the same outline as my reflection on Saddleback.
1. Getting Situated – GCC is located on Roscoe Blvd near Burbank, right between I-405 and 170. It is in an older area of LA, with buildings everywhere. Behind the church is a residential area, but the church itself is located 1 mile off the freeway on a 5 line street. However, the street was being refinished and some people were parked illegally on it, making traffic horrible. Fortunately, we arrived 15 minutes early, so we didn’t feel rushed. Finding a parking spot wasn’t difficult, but it was a good thing, because there was NOBODY to direct traffic. I just decided to follow the car ahead of me, which worked out fine. I assume a person familiar with the neighborhood would have known how to handle the parking lot. But no place was marked visitor parking, and there were lots all over the place. None of them were even marked as church parking, although I safely assumed that they all were.

Out of the car and we were walking towards the church.

The first building you see from the parking lot is the auditorium, with lots of doors opening right to the sidewalk. No foyers needed, because this is California. They have a campus courtyard, beautiful sidewalks and other places to gather outside, making the foyers unnecessary. I walked up to the first open door, tended by a handsome fifty-something man wearing a suit. I asked him where we needed to take the children. His response: “I’m not sure, somewhere on the other side of this building.” Perhaps we had picked the wrong parking lot for families. Later I found a parking lot that would have given us a much more welcoming first impression. But I later found out that they have a “Courtyard” for first time visitors where all of this information is supposed to be located.

Unfortunately, none of the people I asked (three ushers and a couple of ladies manning tables) could give us directions to where all three of our children went. We finally got bits and pieces of information and explored long enough that we found the right places. I took the two oldest kids to their locations (both upstairs in separate buildings). The buildings were closer to the sanctuary than at Saddleback, which made it easier. Sandy needed 10 minutes to finally track down where Alex was supposed to go. Several people told her wrong and she waited at those rooms, only to be sent somewhere else. Please don’t consider me to be critical, because I’m not sure I can tell a first-time visitor at UA where to take three different children. But I would have expected at least the ushers to know, or at least to tell us where we could go to find out.


I waited outside of the worship center where I could hear the prelude through the door and waited for Sandy to come back. We sat down about 2 minutes late, but hadn’t missed much besides the prelude and the opening prayer.

One further note: There are about 8 buildings on Grace’s campus. Seven of them are labeled with the very unhelpful signage of “Building A”, “Building B”, etc. This is most unhelpful because no visitor will no that building F is for early elementary and building G is for someone else. Our three kids were in three separate building. (Saddleback also had separate buildings, but at least they were signed helpfully: “Children’s Ministries Building”, “Nursery Ministries,” etc.)

Evaluation: Visitors without kids would have an A-, just because of the traffic complications. The lack of clear directions and no one to give accurate information would drive a first-time visiting family batty. At the time, I thought a C would be a good rating, but when I found out later they actually had a Courtyard for visitors that I walked right by, it made me feel a bit better about them. They just need to train their people to send visitors there. Grade: C+.

2. Campus / Facilities – The facilities are between 15-35 years old. There is remodeling going on with their chapel right now. It was adequately fenced off to keep people out of the construction zone. The campus is not as large as Saddleback, but fairly big. The seminary has its own separate facility, which appears to be the newest building on the campus. The worship center was completed in 1977, but it’s still very attractive. It seats approximately 4,000 at one time. They have 2 Sunday morning services, and an alternate Sunday night service for teaching and music. There was also a college / young adult worship service taking place in the gymnasium, but we didn’t look in on it.

Of course, the remodeling project made the campus look less than its best, as did the construction on the street in front.

The parking is very spread out across a busy street and all around the campus. There aren’t nearly as many green spaces as at Saddleback, but it still looks well-maintained.

Evaluation: Construction means progress, so I wouldn’t grade them down for that. It’s a very utilitarian campus. The bookstore was small, but nice.

There was lots of room for stroller parking, which is a plus considering the long walk from the car. We didn’t use ours, but probably would have had we known it was available. Grade: A.

3. Children’s Programming – I’ll allow Adam to comment on the kids programming. He liked it much better than Saddleback, and said that Saddleback was more like a Christian activity, while this church was a real Bible lesson. He was sorry he hadn’t taken his Bible, because they used it a lot. Luckily, they had extras in the room, which made him happy. He came away with lots of notes from the lesson. The teachers were all friendly, and they all followed the same lesson. This is the coolest thing . . . in the bulletin (“Grace Today”), there is an outline that is followed by all of the kindergarten through elementary. The point is to give the parents review questions and discussion starters with the kids. All of the children loved the Bible teaching and said it was very interesting.

No play time in the kids programming . . . even for Alex’s class. When we arrived at the end, they were sitting in a circle, listening to a Bible story. Four teachers in the room (2 men and 2 women, apparently husband-wife couples) kept the kids in perfect order. We saw no one crying, being wild, or talking in any of the three classes. They looked like they were in school.



Each of the teachers told us how glad they were to have our kids, and the kids were very pleased to have gone. Alex and Anna said they liked both places, Adam said that Grace was way better than Saddleback. It was certainly different than Saddleback.

Evaluation: Having the kids in three separate buildings was a bit confusing. One of the other confusing things was that the class was so large, they split each grade up by LAST NAME for the younger two. And the two sections weren’t really close to each other. I can understand why they would do that for members, but it was odd that they did it for visitors. There was very little security for the parents. Alex had a safety pin with a number on his clothes, and Sandy was given the corresponding one as proof to pick him up. For the other two kids, there was nothing. We dropped them off, said hi to the teacher (wouldn’t have had to do that) and left. I wonder how a visitor who had never been to church would respond? It didn’t bother me, because I trusted them. I don’t think an unchurched visitor would mind having their kids exposed to so much Bible, since that is ostensibly why you bring your kids to Sunday school. I’m sure they would be impressed with four adults in the room and the well behaved children. Grade: A-, only for the confusing locations and lack of security.

4. Worship Music – The most striking differences between Grace and Saddleback can be seen right here. After reading MacArthur’s books, I am confident that this church is vehemently anti-Saddleback in the worship style. And it isn’t even a charismatic issue, because I wouldn’t call Saddleback charismatic. Instead, it’s more of an issue of the purpose of worship music. Saddleback uses worship music to appeal to the contemporary tastes for popular music that most visitors have. Grace uses a much more formal, “church music” style of worship.

For instance, the 10 minutes before the service feature the organist playing a medley of songs. She was very talented and I heard not one wrong note. Then the orchestra comes to the platform, about a dozen people. There’s a pianist, three percussionists, and eight brass players (no strings or flutes on this day). Everyone on the stage is wearing either a suit or a dress (three women musicians). Then comes the 90 member choir. Wow! Unbelievable sound.

Dr. Koutz would be impressed, and I certainly was. Clayton Erb is the worship minister and he had clearly crafted the entire music from start to finish. There were choral responses to prayer, instrumental interludes, a choral call to worship, and special music accompanied by the orchestra. All of the music were hymn-texts with the exception of two mid-eighties Maranatha choruses.

For a video of part of the worship music, click here.

Another huge difference between Grace and Saddleback. Not only were the drums missing, but the screens were missing. MacArthur is clearly anti-projection screen in his writings. He believes that it dumbs down the congregation. While Saddleback had three projection screens and two jumbotrons, Grace had nothing. The songs were in a printed sheet that was part of the bulletin. I see one big advantage of this approach: It gives the visitor something to take home and remember the names and texts of the songs by. There are some disadvantages as well, but I won’t go into them here.

The music was done with pure excellence and very high attention to detail. The music minister was in the middle of it all, conducting the choir and orchestra, conducting the audience, and even conducting the special music. He was in charge of the evening service as well. I can’t imagine how much work it takes for him to pull it off every week.

Evaluation: A visitor who has been to church in a traditional setting will feel right at home and be impressed with this music. A person who has never been to church before would probably find it stiff and boring, far too formal. I really think Grace is looking for the former, but there are a lot more of the latter. Grade: B for being culturally irrelevant.

5. Sermon – As soon as I grabbed the bulletin, I found out that the speaker for the day would be Rick Holland, one of their associate ministers. Obviously I was disappointed and wondered if we had just missed MacArthur on this particular Sunday. Fortunately, I found out that he was given a 3 month sabbatical for the summer, so I didn’t feel too bad about that. Everybody needs a break. I don’t know how often this has happened at Grace church, but in 34 years of preaching, I’m sure it hasn’t been very often.

Since it wasn’t MacArthur, I won’t overanalyze the sermon. Here’s the skinny: 42 minutes long, the text was Acts 20 and Paul’s sermon to the Ephesian elders. The preacher is a younger guy, under 40. He did a lot more reading than I expected, and had more illustrations than I am used to hearing in MacArthur’s sermon tapes. He also had a larger text, while MacArthur typically looks at one to three verses in a sermon.

I was surprised at a few of his shortcomings, including regular mouth noises and some mispronunciations of the words in the Biblical text. Otherwise, he was smooth and confident. He referred to Greek, geography, history, and parallel passages. The title of the sermon was 4 Dimensions of Spiritual Leadership, which were Authentic example of ministry, Selfless commitment to the gospel, Faithful warning about error, and Confident trust in God. I didn’t really hear anything that I disagreed with in the sermon. The best line of the sermon that I remembered was “Sometimes people make Jesus a part of their lives instead of the point of their lives.”

While I was pleased with his overall handling of the text, I was more pleased to see the response of the people during the sermon. Most everyone I saw was reading along in their Bibles and taking notes. If you forgot your Bibles, no problem . . . . NASB Bibles (!) were located in the pew racks, right alongside the hymnals. I saw nothing distracting or disrespectful from the people in the audience. Rick Holland kept our attention for the entire time, although Sandy said she thought it seemed long towards the end.

The sermon ended with prayer and no invitation song at all. I found it humorous that after he finished the sermon, he had a closing prayer. Then he had everyone stand up and dismissed us with a benediction. Two prayers by the same person within one minute is a little different. In fact, the service at Grace contained at least five prayers that I remember. Saddleback had one, just at the close of the sermon. There was a brief mention that if anyone was interested in responding to the gospel, counselors were available at the front, and please come after everyone is dismissed. They definitely do not follow the revival type model of invitation. (Membership involves attending a class, being baptized, and being given the right hand of fellowship. Several dozen new members were pictured in the bulletin from the last month’s class.)

Evaluation: The sermon was a good mix of exposition and illustrations. Primarily it was intended for Christians (how to be a good spiritual leader), although it really wasn’t explained how it applied to our lives. There was a comment on the bottom of the note page that each Christian is responsible for personally applying the Scripture to their own lives. I took that to mean the preacher is not responsible for that. It certainly wasn’t explicit in the message. I’m not sure what a visitor would think about a sermon which is primarily Biblical facts and historical information. The Holy Spirit is certainly able to make the application and conviction take place when the Word is preached. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one, but I can’t forgive the tasting sound and mispronunciations. Grade: A-

6. Atmosphere – Everything about this church says, “We are serious about giving you God’s word.” Signs on the door instruct people not to talk during church. There was no clapping for anything (contrasted with Saddleback’s polite applause after just about everything). The dress was formal, and most every guy I saw had on a button up shirt, with ties on over half of them. I was wearing a polo shirt, and I felt underdressed. Modesty was the rule of the day for all, and I saw very few body/facial piercings and no tattoos. In fairness, I was at the adult service, and they probably had fewer than the college age or teenage service might have had.

The entire service was fairly long (1:30), which makes it hard to be silent and attentive that whole time. However, once the service let out, it seemed a bit more relaxed as people were walking around campus. Our family went by the Courtyard, where Adam loaded up on donut holes. No one at the Courtyard said a word to us, although we were obviously visitors.

Evaluation: I think a visitor who came with someone would be fine. A visitor who came alone might feel neglected. I would expect several people each week to come by themselves, as one of their primary forms of “advertisement” is the “Grace to You” radio program on the radio around LA. It’s not hard to imagine someone hearing the sermon on the radio and driving to check out the church. Unless they have been part of a church before, the atmosphere will be seriously intimidating. If they aren’t with a friend, I’m afraid they will feel ignored. Grade: B

7. People – There were a variety of ages and ethnic groups represented at the church. I didn’t see many children in worship, but there were teenagers through senior citizens. The Sunday school teachers were very friendly. The ushers were very friendly. No one else stopped to talk to any of us. The few people we tried to obtain information from had good intentions, but didn’t really go out of their way to help.

There was no greeting time during which you could even say hi to someone. In the middle of the sermon, they sent the ushers to deliver a booklet with a tear-off form for all first-time visitors. Maybe two dozen or so indicated that they were interested. The people all looked like successful families and couples.

Evaluation: I expected a little more friendliness, but they were about the same as Saddleback, with a bit less opportunity for interaction and opportunity to get to know people. Grade: B+

Overall, we were glad to visit Grace and felt mostly positive about it. The overall grade of B+ is more because of the limitations in the getting settled phase than anything else.

Next time: Day 8 - Headed Home