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
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