Wilcrest Baptist Church

As you have all probably noticed, it has been quite some time since I posted a blog about a church visit. I settled down at First Baptist Dallas, and I am now partnering with Hickory Tree Baptist Church. However, over the past couple weeks I have been visiting my family in Houston over the holidays. This past Sunday, I attended Wilcrest Baptist Church with my brother and his family.

To avoid burying the lead, of all the churches I have written about, this one is “The One.” Obviously this is just a preliminary assessment, but this is the church I would be most interested in going under the hood and seeing what they do to bring in people, to build the people who are there, and to send out people.

The first thing that struck me is the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural dynamic of the church. In fact, the church describes itself as a multi-ethnic congregation that trains missionaries. Back in the late 80’s and early 90s, the church was primarily white and was dwindling as the neighboring communities underwent white-flight. But they called Rodney Woo (Ph.D., Southwestern Seminary) as pastor, and he led the church through a transformation: the church more than doubled in size, and now represents more than 40 nations. (Woo wrote a book on the experience, titled The Color of Church.)

The flavor of the worship was quite varied: the first song had a Jamaican jive, the next had a sort of Zydeco feel, the next had a contemporary praise-and-worship sound. Our pew was the only non-integrated pew in the building since my family alone took up the entire row. There were songs I didn’t know, and there were songs I did. But over-all, it felt different. It is hard to describe that exactly: it didn’t feel like anyone was being pushed into a mold. It seemed like there was a specific attempt at having something for everyone.

While I really appreciated the multi-cultural character of the church, the deal was sealed when their pastor (Jonathan Williams) began to preach. He was preaching over the Great Commission, He asked all the typical, general questions (what are the reasons to participate in missions) at the beginning of his sermon, but when he moved to the text, his sermon was structured according to the participles—love at first sight. This is the first of my blogged-about-church-visits where the sermon was structured around the syntax and structure of the Greek.

No church is perfect (and if it were, it wouldn’t be after I joined!), but this church definitely caught my attention. If you are ever in Houston, I would highly suggest visiting this church.