Kenmore Church of Christ

Good day to all my faithful follower(s)! I hope that everyone is recovering from that oh-so-bad Cavs loss Saturday night. What a craptastic way to end the best series anyone has seen in Cleveland in years. But oh well, right now you have the LeBron James of reverending here and we gots churchin' to talk bout!

This Sunday I decided to stick close to home and attend Kenmore Church of Christ, located in what would be the Mecca of Christendom, the suburb of Kenmore in Akron, Ohio (Barberton is Medina). Anyone who knows the Rev knows that he loves Kenmore. Fiercely. I'm also kind of a Church of Christ guy, so going here is like putting peanut butter and jelly together.

KCOC is located on East Ave, practically across the street Innes Middle School (Go Lions!). I've probably driven past it 10,000 times in my lifetime, not to mention walked past it every day that I went to Innes (sometimes I ran. I was a skinny kid, it was jr high, and there were bullies), however I have never been there. As a kid with my family, we always drove 15 minutes further to go to Southwest. I've always found that to be strange. . .

There are two parts to every church. The one that a visitor sees when they go to a church for the first time. And then there's the guts of the church. One that you can't really know unless you go there regularly.

Visitor part:

As I entered the building, I was greeted by about 50% of the congregation (there were only about 40 people in attendance) and everyone was very friendly. They weren't crazy pushy "You must come back!" but they were polite, asked where I was from (K-Town, sucka!), and what brought me there. Very nice and cordial. I felt welcomed and not awkward.

They were so nice, in fact, after the service, the lady sitting in front of me said it was nice having a deep voice singing behind her. Talk about being too kind! The Rev is many things, singer is not one of them. Terrific dancer is one of them.

My first impression was, wow, that's a lot of gray hair. The congregation is definitely aging and in need of some youth (more on that later).

The worship was headed up by a very friendly and well voiced lady (didn't have gray hair, guessing a dye job). We sang old skool hymns out of a hymnal, accompanied by a gray haired lady (no dye job) at the piano. I have to be honest, I have soft spot for the old hymns. Worship His Majesty and Count Your Blessings have a certain sound and feeling to them that I just love. No, it wasn't exciting or anything but it was good for old escuela.

Next up was the sermon, which was given by a guy who I believe is a part time pastor. His message talked about how through Christ, we are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:15-23). Dude was a good speaker with a good message. I liked it.

And as in all good Church of Christ's, next up was communion. As a wanderer with no place to call home, it's nice to go to a church that serves communion.

Guts Part:

So there were only 40 people in attendance and as I said, they all had varying degrees of gray hair. I counted maybe 6 people under the age of 30. I'm not exaggerating. The church has absolutely no youth. I can only speculate as to why the congregation is shrinking but I've heard it's partly to do with a change in demographic (Kenmore went from being a mostly white burb to a very mixed burb). Also, as I've seen, with any small church you run into personalities (old and young alike) and of people who think they know what the church should do. "Oh, and by the way, my grandma donated the money to buy the pews." kind of attitude. Church - you need to meet your peoples needs and be apart of them. All your buildings, pews, soundsystem, etc. means nothing if you're not meeting people where they are.

The good news is that they talked about possibly becoming the site for a church plant in the area. Oh how I would love this! When I read that in the bulletin and when the preacher talked about it, my heart started to jump! Let's just say that if KCOC becomes a church plant, your Wandering Reverend may have to settle down. . . but we shall see.

Overall, a good experience. Friendly people. Good worship. Great sermon. What more could you want? Apparently, some youth and vigor. I just pray that they make the right decisions regarding their future. There is some serious potential there if they can get it together.

That wraps it up for your Reverend this week. I'm considering doing a midweek write up about other things but we shall see. I'm not sure how much the world can take of my charm and wit. . . or how much patience people have for reading this online rag.

Until next Sunday,

Rev.