Living Hope Community Church

These are good formats to go for someone that has never heard about Jesus, or are afraid of going to a real church and just need to listen to some good Christian music along with a little rant/ramble on stage, but that's about it. These are typical churches that have sprung up all over the place. Sadly too many people use them as a replacement for a real church. You may end up just watching a video screen rather then a real person preaching. The messages are typically lacking in any substance, and very little of the bible get's read, some of the tangents discussed have nothing to do with anything at all. The sad truth to it all these days though, too many real churches limit their operations to only short bits on the weekends. Filling in the gaps, such as with LH during the week, it's entirely a case of the fact, there is nothing better going on, so where there should be something in place, people are stuck with a counterfeit. It's a classic case of big business in play here, and clearly they are leading the pack in that area. There is real money to be had for anybody that want's to create their own, and many clone operations just like theirs out there. So, all in all, use it as a place to hang out, but don't at all consider it a church, and put your filters on to disseminate through what's being taught, not all of it is even the truth at all. Pros: Good Music Cons: Not a lot of substance to their message more

I've never went to a church before attending Living Hope Church, for the first six months it seemed to be so much more than what I expected a church to be. The music was loud and good, everyone was casual in jeans and t-shirts. (even the lead pastor!) Living Hope did a good job at drawing me in and making me feel at ease. I went from being scared and nervous going with my fiance and a good friend to going by myself. After a few months, I decided that I wanted to learn more and sent a request to join a lifegroup after a few emails with the lifegroup director I just stopped hearing from her. After talking to my fiance I found out that he had the same experience before we got together. after 3 months of not hearing anything I sent a letter to the lead pastor and actually got a call from his wife who told me that they have had a lot of problems with this. She promised to help and the next day I got a email with 2 options for groups. 1 was a group for people older than us by 15 years, the other wasn't even meeting any more. My fiance sent a couple emails asking if we could start a new group and while we didn't have experience leading groups we could offer our house as a meeting place. Again we didn't hear anything. During this time I was still attending services and I had started noticing a theme of asking for money sometimes they would even send the offering twice in one service. After a year of attending services I stopped going, I took myself of the email list. No one noticed, no one missed me. I had just been another face in the crowd, which might be perfect for some but I wanted something with a more personal connection and sense helping in the community, to me Living Hope has set themselves high up on a pedestal but under it all they are just another church who got too big too fast and now are money hungry. Pros: passionate sermons, excellent music Cons: too big, not easy to to be a part of more