University Presbyterian Church

All right, so I didn’t really go to a new church this week, but only because of a weekend getaway I had with my church group from my home base of University Presbyterian Church. I’ve been going here for a little over 2 years and am enjoying it.

The church is huge and actually owns three land parcels. These include the parcel the church sits on, but unfortunately the church chooses to have a massive parking structure and two surface lots waste the majority of the other land parcels they own on the corner of 47th & 15th (at least a waste in my opinion since I almost never drive there). And even still, the parking on Sundays spews over into the UW parking lots because each service (there are 5 each normal Sunday) can fit probably 1,000+ people. Easter Sundays are just insane. The actual church is three stories and has a pretty awesome sanctuary with massive pipe organs which are frequently used for doctoral performances by the UW Music department.

My parking complaints aside, the church is awesome in every other way. There are some excellent services with very intellectual pastors gifted in public speaking. The soon-to-be-retired Senior Pastor Earl Palmer is an excellent speaker and typically gives very meaningful and funny sermons. There are traditional services in the morning and then contemporary ones in the evening and both are great. The most recent sermon I was at had Colossians 1:15-20 as the reading and as always Earl took this passage and analyzed it with scholarly precision and summarized the whole thing into a few important points w/ a few references to his favorite theological writers.

The real depth of this church is the wide variety of programs this church has to offer due to the wider base of resources available from the wide member base (5,000ish official and probably a few thousand more un-official) and their financial and volunteer contributions. There are tons of programs for kids and dozens of international programs the church participates in – and that is really the tip of the iceberg. There are small groups for all ages and even additional services for college students and young adults, both on Tuesday nights.

For a church of this size it can be overwhelming to some and it is fairly easy to be anonymous here. However, there are programs for every age group and every level of spirituality (either new believers or lifelong) that take that extra effort and time of trying out something new. At any given service you could be sitting next to some college students, business executives and retired elders – all in the same pew. For a place as big as this, the services are really just the introduction to the church, where if God may be nudging you, there is a small group or service opportunity just for you.