A few years ago, while we were on one of our trips to see her family in LA, my wife and I visited a local church on Sunday morning during their normally scheduled worship time. This was a church that was affiliated with two networks which we were familiar with. Both networks exist to help churches meet a common cause. The first network is devoted to the cause of church planting, the other network exists to help local churches reach their community. We were excited to attend what we thought would be a meaningful worship service.
Well it turns out it was meaningful – just not for the reasons we expected! When we arrived, we were surprised at just how sparse the number of people in attendance was. When the pastor got up in front of the room, we expected to hear a call to worship. We instead discovered that we had not walked into a worship service but a congregational meeting of a church which was about to close its doors.