Local Church Discussions - View Single Post - Trying to find a good church in AUSTIN TX

GraceAlone · 07-14-2021, 02:52 PM

I was Unregistered #2, but I've now registered as requested. :-)

Re: Austin Stone. I've visited there a couple of times. In my personal opinion, it matched what @Trapped said: "I visited one church whose teachings I was blown away by, but the decibel level of the music about rattled my heart in my ribs, so I couldn't stay there." In other words, the teaching was excellent and very Bible-based, but it felt too much like attending a performance (loud music, flashy visuals, etc.). But that's probably a matter of personal taste. I do have several friends who attend there and love it. They seem very serious about missions, etc. (And in fact, one of our friends who's an elder there has confirmed that the "immersive-ness" of the experience is very intentional.)

Also in response to Trapped responding to my earlier post: You made some great points about the "deal-breakers." I'd like to clarify that as we started to visit various churches, most of the things on our "essentials" and even our "would be nice!" list were positive rather than negative. Here were a few:

1. They need to uphold the authority of the Bible and the purity of the gospel.
2. There needs to be the presence of the Holy Spirit in their worship.
3. They need to affirm the essential items of the Christian faith and not add anything else as essential.
4. There should be transparency and accountability in the leadership.
5. We'd like to see opportunities for the members to serve the church (and the city!) in various ways where we can plug in.
6. There needs to be a practice, not just a claim, of humility and oneness with other believers in the city.

So actually, we didn't have a long list of essentials, and we were careful to avoid a consumer mentality, but these things were what seemed important to us through prayer and reading the Word. We wanted to be sensitive to the Lord's leading, but we also didn't want to trust our subjective feelings without checking for certain external factors.

Unregistered #1, I hope the discussion has been helpful to you. Feel free to private-message me if you'd like to know more.

07-14-2021, 02:52 PM	#14
GraceAlone Member Join Date: Jul 2021 Posts: 46	Re: Trying to find a good church in AUSTIN TX I was Unregistered #2, but I've now registered as requested. :-) Re: Austin Stone. I've visited there a couple of times. In my personal opinion, it matched what @Trapped said: "I visited one church whose teachings I was blown away by, but the decibel level of the music about rattled my heart in my ribs, so I couldn't stay there." In other words, the teaching was excellent and very Bible-based, but it felt too much like attending a performance (loud music, flashy visuals, etc.). But that's probably a matter of personal taste. I do have several friends who attend there and love it. They seem very serious about missions, etc. (And in fact, one of our friends who's an elder there has confirmed that the "immersive-ness" of the experience is very intentional.) Also in response to Trapped responding to my earlier post: You made some great points about the "deal-breakers." I'd like to clarify that as we started to visit various churches, most of the things on our "essentials" and even our "would be nice!" list were positive rather than negative. Here were a few: 1. They need to uphold the authority of the Bible and the purity of the gospel. 2. There needs to be the presence of the Holy Spirit in their worship. 3. They need to affirm the essential items of the Christian faith and not add anything else as essential. 4. There should be transparency and accountability in the leadership. 5. We'd like to see opportunities for the members to serve the church (and the city!) in various ways where we can plug in. 6. There needs to be a practice, not just a claim, of humility and oneness with other believers in the city. So actually, we didn't have a long list of essentials, and we were careful to avoid a consumer mentality, but these things were what seemed important to us through prayer and reading the Word. We wanted to be sensitive to the Lord's leading, but we also didn't want to trust our subjective feelings without checking for certain external factors. Unregistered #1, I hope the discussion has been helpful to you. Feel free to private-message me if you'd like to know more.