HUGE

I wish I counted how many times Aubrey or I said something along the lines of "Oh my gosh, it's so big," "This is huge," "Where are we?" To say that Willowcreek is overwhelming is a bit of an understatment! (By the way that's a picture of the Chapel just so you can get an idea of how big it is if you've never been there!) Even turning into the parking lot I felt like I was going to Six Flags, curvy roads that lead to parking lots for thousands.

I really did not know what to expect, I had never been there before (Aubrey had.) The picture of it in my mind was that of the Allstate Arena or the Sears Center... and let me tell you it sure felt like it! There were times I felt like I was on a school field trip with the coffee shop, food, court, and the bookstore. We got there a little early to make sure we got parking and to explore a little bit (and of course we wanted some coffee!!) The church is really cool. The student areas are awesome and seem like a fun place to be. We found out there ther are around 5,000 students and it takes about 1,000 volunteers to run it all... and they are ONLY 90 short! Pretty incredible if you ask me.

As we were sipping on our Frappes in the main "food court" area there were huge screens that had a countdown till when the service started, at about 10 minutes to go we decided to make the trek into the chapel.

We found good seats close to the front. The worship was great! Both Aubrey and I really enjoyed it, probably because we haven't been to church in over a month so it was nice to worship with such a large congregation. Since yesterday was the 10th anniversary of 9/11 the service focused on that, which I though was a good reminder and a way of remebering what happened. I think we both really liked Bill Hybles as well, he was funny and clear and he kept our attention (which sometimes at church is difficult.)

Aubrey and I both have notebooks that we are going to bring with us to the different churches so we can take notes on the church and the sermon. We have some main categories for "scoring." But to be honest I don't remember all of them even though I came up with them so we'll have to talk about those in a different post. But the last one was "Overall Experience" and this is where we both are going to rate the church 1-10.

I'm not too surprised but Aubrey and I both gave Willowcreek a 7 out of 10. We both pretty much had the same concerns: the distance, our other church was about a 1/2 hour away and sometimes we would skip church because we didn't feel like driving. Also, if we ever really wanted to get invovled with anything with the church it would be an extra trip out there and I'm not sure how well that would work. Another concern of ours was definatley the size, its HUGE tons of people, it would be easy for us to blend in and we both felt it might be hard to get to know people when you see so many different faces every week. Something we agreed about was that Willowcreek would be a church that we could say "Let's go to Willow this Sunday." Just as something different, change it up a bit because we both did like the service and worship we just aren't sure if it'll be our new home church.

Thanks for reading our blog so far and being apart of our journey.Be sure to check back soon... Aubrey is gone these next two Sundays so I may do just one Sunday by myself, because I want her to be there so we can make the decision together.