Monadnock Covenant Church, Keene, NH

January 8, 2012 (Sunday 2)
Monadnock Covenant Church
Pastor Garth McGrath
90 Base Hill Road
Keene, NH 03431
603.352.6816 

Church History: Monadnock Covenant Church was founded in 1994. Meeting initially at Pilgrim Pines Conference Center in Swanzey, within a month they moved to a more permanent location, worshiping at the Symonds School. Land was purchased and once a building permit was eventually obtained, construction began on what was to become the Monadnock Covenant Church. During this time, membership grew steadily from less than fifty parishoners to over 200.

Affiliation: Evangelical Covenant Church (278,000 members)

Visiting Monadnock Covenant Church seemed like it would be a nice juxtaposition to last week’s visit to the First Congregational Church in Rindge. The Church itself is very modern, and its affiliation, Evangelical Covenant Church, is not even two centuries old.

Sunday’s Service: The service began on time: a powerpoint style presentation that was projected onto the stark white wall behind the altar counted off the minutes and seconds until the scheduled start, which consisted of three songs performed by a small group of musicians and singers. The powerpoint presentation displayed the words to the music, allowing the congregation to join in.

After the music, departing Church member Tom Bielecki was introduced and spoke about his history with the Church, which was both heartfelt and interesting.

Garth McGrath, the senior pastor of the Church, chose Romans, Chapter 12 as the focus for his sermon, beginning with an open ended discussion of whether, as one makes decisions that affect their own lives, it is possible to discern the will of God in such matters. Pastor McGrath went on to note that Paul’s letter to the Romans is one of the few examples of scriptures that assert the possibility of being able to discern God’s will.

Beyond that, McGrath framed Paul’s message here, exhorting the reader to right conduct, to live a life of spiritual worship, each in accordance with his or her own individual skills and attributes. It served as a gentle push to encourage church members generally to lead more spiritual lives.

My Thoughts: The greeters that welcomed me to service seemed like genuinely nice people, and they made me feel very welcome. Like a lot of Churches with growing membership rolls, the service was quite modern. Lyrics aside, the music shared more with modern acoustic pop music than it did with more traditional devotional music. The sound system and powerpoint-style slides were managed from an electronic soundboard and computer housed in a U-shaped control center at the back of the Church. The sermon was interesting, in spite of my own generally negative opinion of Paul.

Romans, which appears first among the Pauline letters in the New Testament, was likely the last of those written that can be attributable to Paul. Pastor McGrath’s sermon built around Chapter 12 will likely result in a closer read of Romans on my part, as I found the passages covered during the sermon quite interesting. The pastor was engaging and I found his sermon both timely and relevant.

That said, for me the technology seemed to act as a bit of a barrier between the congregation and the message. A number of people, perhaps even a majority, did not seem to be particularly attentive, and I was surprised by how often people around me got up and left briefly for no apparent reason.  When the closing music began, a number of people headed for the doors in order to beat the traffic; I assume these are the same folks that leave concerts before the encore. Bottom line, many aspects of this experience seemed to me more like a corporate team-building exercise than a Church service.  Of course, it is entirely possible that my opinion here is influenced by my own preconceived notion of what a Church service should be.