Epikos

Epikos church was our second stop. It is a church operating under the umbrella of mission catalyst started off as an Adventist offshoot.


















They rent a space connected to a coffee shop from a church that meets on Sunday.  I loved this set up.  It made for a comfy feel. It seemed like few people actually spent time hanging out in the coffee shop...odd. 
 



















^Devanne liked it.

They served popcorn!



Don and Randy knew a couple of the pastors that work at the church so we spent some time connecting and learning their ethos.














 




Above you can see these scrims that they had LED lights continually cycling colors onto.  It was cool for about five minutes, but after an hour it was just exhausting. 

Before the service, they played this show of several slides about all the different ministries that the church provided and it was a little wild how many different church activities this little church of 160 were running.

The church seemed to model after Saddleback and I was surprised that even though they had all the colored lights expensive guitars and trendy elements, they brought songs and a service flow that was "contemporary" but ended up being a little outdated. They sang Your Love is Amazing and other church hits from the 90s.

















The service was nice and good and they said they have a 15% monthly growth rate, but something that struck me strange was this: each of the three pastors acknowledged that our group was Adventist and they each had a sharp little comment about how we need to leave the old outdated mothership (Adventist denomination) and join the Mission Catalyst movement.  The biggest benefit of this switch they say is that Mission Catalyst only requires 10% of tithe to be returned to the organization keeping most of the money local.  I can see how this would be cool, but I thought it strange that they enjoyed autonomy from the denomination, yet they brought a church service that wasn't all that radical and was completely possible within the Adventist context.

I'm not convinced that it is worth it to remove a church from the denomination
(the rich history, large network. . .) just to keep some money in the church and have a little more freedom. 

Even thought I don't really jive with their m.o., I did like Epikos and thought it was a great church!