River 47

On moving day, a neighbor out for a run stopped by to talk to me and my dad. He said he was a naval officer (just spent 2 years in Iraq) but he was also the pastor of a local church called River 47 in Orange. I haven't found a church since leaving NewSong so I thought I'd check it out this morning.

Coincidentally, River 47 is also an Evangelical Covenant church, like NewSong, but the congregation is very different. I was basically the only Asian in the entire building which is a huge change from all the churches I've attended. NewSong is probably 95% Asian and the name of my first church (Chinese Community Church of South Bay) requires no further explanations. I did see a ~4 year old Asian girl but she was surrounded by white people (parents/grandparents) so I'm guessing she was adopted. There was ~300 people at the beginning; when they let the kids go (<3rd grade), it was down to ~200... lots of kids.



The service was an hour and 15 minutes with the sermon being only 30 minutes long. The worship was contemporary but a bit slower than NewSong. The team consisted of three vocalists, an acoustic guitar, bass, keys, and drums. There was also a VBS presentation/song at the beginning. I think the theme ocean/cruse based so some of the helpers were dressing in Sailor Moon like costumes/uniforms... very weird. The pastor saw me and came over to greet me before the service. He said I looked familiar but he couldn't remember so I told him about our 3 minute conversation back in January. The sermon was the beginning of a new series on the book of Romans. He is basically going through verse by verse which is very different from NewSong.

I'm not sure yet if I'll go visit again. I left NewSong because they focused way too much on feelings and social justice, plus everyone was so young. River 47 seems to be more family-types but I felt a bit conspicuous being the only Asian in the congregation.

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Here is a 14 second video clip from my iPod nano. I wasn't really trying to record anything specific... it was more of a camera test.


Resolution: 640x480
Video: 2.67Mb/sec H.264
Audio: AAC 44.1kHz
FPS: 29.97
Length: 14 sec
Size: ~4.6MB