We traveled a couple of cities down south from us to Los Altos United Methodist Church. We have attended this church serveral times to attend weddings but this was the first time we visited to worship here. Thanks to their well-organized website, we were able to navigate ourselves somewhat through a large church campus to locate the nicely laid out bulletin board with children program information containing our children's classrooms, 
but we had difficulty of locating the class rooms from the map and had to ask a lady passing by who happened to be the Children Program's Director. She kindly led us to the correct class rooms which were well marked on the outside and each class had teachers organized and waiting for the children to arrive.
Their Sunday School had a unique system where each of the grades 1st through 5th rotate going to different "stations." each week. And the above bulletin board shows which "station" to go to for each of the grades. For example, this week, 5th graders were in the Cyberworld God "station" where they used computers to carry out their Bible Study contents. Other two kids went to Elation Station and Goodnews Network. Elation Station is where they simply have some fun and play some games in a good sized play room, and Goodnews Network is where they actually make a short production based on the Bible Study theme during the class. All of these classes start with a praise and then the core Bible Study first and then they apply each stations' method in reviewing the content they just studied. This week, the theme was Anger Management. So in the Cyberworld God class, they used a computer program to search for cliparts to compose pictures representing when anger is managed well or not. Our kids enjoyed their own stations and wanted return for more later.
Today actually was the last day of these "station" centric Sunday Schools before they go into the sumemr break where they will have a more general Sunday School after the kids stay some portion of the adult worship. Consequently, the Sunday School volunteers were recognized during the adult worship service; they all came to the front and were thanked as a group. They have over 100 volunteers to have the weekly Sunday School running.
As much as the beautiful campus outside, the main sanctuary is simple and yet elegant with lots of natural light coming in from a side through a row of windows. Instead of having a large projector screens (or two) in the front, they placed about 40 inch flat panel displays throughout each sides of the sanctuary for projecting words and other multimedia presentations. The sanctuary is filled by music from a great pipe organ and we sang all the Hymns accompanied by this awesome instrument played by an awesome organist. This Sunday, they had a special choir from a local junior high school and that was quite special. I had get used to the pastors talking and preaching from either side of the stage from a small pulpit area instead of speaking from the center of the stage. The pastor gave the message of "Born Again!" based on John 3:1-17 where Jesus explains the concept of born again to Nicodemus. The key points of the message were:
- Being born again shouldn't be a one-time deal or should it be a big public event.
- Life is a journey and it needs continuous transformation.
- Don't miss God right in front of me like Nicodemus.
- God isn't providing us a life insurange to enter Heaven but to live a life to be born from Heaven continuously.
The 9:30am service were mostly attended by 40 to 60+ caucasians, and they were all very friendly. However the atmosphere of the members was not too keen to newcomers.
Website: www.laumc.org
Worship Times: 8:00am, 9:30am, 11:15am
No comments:
Post a Comment