New Life Church

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We really liked our Church in Nashville.  It was small, small group focused, personable, and had great musicians and singers.  The main worship leader was a great writer and we sang many original songs.  There were many people there our age and they were having babies at the same time we were.  It was really fun.

Then we decided to move to Columbia.  It was the right move, but there was some trepidation on our part.  It took us a while to find Hope Baptist and we were not enthused about trying to find a new group.  We had a 3 ½ year old and a 1 year old in tow, so our focus was on them.  Getting ready and going to Sunday Morning Church was quite a production.

Bunny trail…

We have never been drawn to “established” congregations.  We always seem to be attached to a group that is in “transition.”

Nashville: Belmont Church was in the midst of a huge building project when we were there.

Nashville: Hope Baptist Church was sort of an “itinerant” congregation focused on small groups.

Columbia: New Life Church met at the community College and the High School when we first started attending, and yes, they went though a big building project.

Newton: The Community Alliance Church went through a massive building program while we were there.

Des Moines: The Vineyard Church shared space with another (Lutheran) church.

Kansas City: Metro just moved into a permanent facility.

(Does that say something about us?)

Anywho…

We started attending New Life Christian Church.  New Life was an intentional multi denominational congregation.  The pastor, Larry Clinkenbeard, had a heart to build relationships throughout the community and county that crossed denominational, theological, and racial boundaries.  The church met on Sunday mornings at the High School auditorium.

Our first Sunday there I recognized the worship leader from Belmont Church.  I used to play pick-up basketball with a group of guys from Belmont and Rick Evans was one of them.  He had been the youth pastor at Belmont and was now the youth pastor at New Life.  He was also the default worship pastor as well.  In short order I was playing Keyboard and singing with the worship band.

I really liked the vibe.  Pastor Larry is an excellent teacher.  He was so insightful and was not “brow-beating” at all (which I really appreciated.)  There was an eclectic mix of people in the congregation.  There were locals who had lived in Columbia all of their lives.  There were lots of transplants from Michigan because of the Saturn plant.  There were transplants from Tennessee and around the south.  And there were people like Amy and I who had meandered to Columbia.

Larry spearheaded an annual multi-church worship event.  Several churches from (at times) opposing backgrounds would come together and perform a choir-based performance usually centered around Ron Kenoly-like composition (a little bit funky, a little bit old school, southern/black gospel choir-friendly songs.)  Larry seemed to be able to get folks to cooperate and that annual event was big, well attended, and had a level of musical excellence.

One of the by-products of those events (in my opinion) was the introduction of songs by Lindell Cooley.  Lindell Cooley had been in Nashville as a Worship Pastor.  He was a soulful singer and piano player. He could mix Bruce Hornsby, Billy Joel and Jimmy Swaggart honky-tonk licks into a song that could touch a wide variety of hearts.  Vineyard Records released several live recordings of his worship sets.  Those live recordings happened to be from The Brownsville Assembly of God.  “Brownsville” ended up sending us for quite a ride.

chris

For more info about New Life Church: (Website is gone...not sure what that is about?)

For more info about Lindell Cooley:
http://www.mmi-inc.com/

For more info about Ron Kenoly:
https://ronkenoly.com/