Copper Creek Church

 October 15

An environmental group called Faith in Place hosted its annual Green Team Summit at various faith groups around the Midwest this past week. Faith in Place defines itself as “People of diverse faiths and spiritualities leading the environmental movement to create healthy, just, and sustainable communities for all.” The Champaign-Urbana group met at Copper Creek Church which sits on ten acres, four of which are dedicated to Prairie Savanna. Cool! So after attending a Green Team session there, I decided on a Sunday visit.

The church set itself off as distinctive from the first notes of the worship team led by a couple of talented soul singers:  Ain’t No Mountain High Enough was followed by Signed, Sealed, Delivered and then We Are Family! Huh? Am I in church? Pastor Scott introduced himself and explained that this was the last message of this year’s Soundtrack series. This week, Motown. The series has been presenting music from secular artists and taking a deeper look “into their lyrics through the lens of scripture.”  (A check of the website shows they focused on Hamilton a few weeks ago.)

Announcements followed, with mention of an upcoming jazz festival featuring the music of Ella Fitzgerald. Offering baskets were at the doors.

Then the worship songs. The decibel level was pretty loud for my comfort, but the sound was great:  keyboard, guitar (or maybe a bass?), drums and a saxophone! One prayer song featured the line, "wasn’t holding you up, so there's nothing I can do to let you down."

At this point there were maybe 50 to 60 people in the auditorium which obviously could hold three or four times more, but this was the early service. There’s another at 10:30 which is also the hour for kids church. There's a youth group too. Each weekend kicks off with a Thursday evening service.

Taking Stand by Me as musical theme, this sermon asked whether romantic love songs could be appropriate for our worship of God. They can be sung as prayer, right? Consider Romans 8.38-39, Psalm 51, I John4.7-8, 16, and 12, especially verse 12. Let’s move beyond romantic love, with its “valentines and unicorns,” to sacrificing love, the love of Jesus. And let's not look just at our need for the Father to stand by us, but at our need to stand by a friend. Consider the flipped line, “When you’re in trouble, won’t you stand by me?” “Love anyway . . . despite the fact that we can all be jerks at times. 

The service concluded with everyone invited to the communion table:  the gift of God for the people of God. Congregants walked up to take a piece of the broken bread and dip it in the cup before we sang the doxology.

Given that the church name offers no clue, I asked a woman as I went out, what denomination this is, expecting it to be non-denominational. But, nope, it’s Presbyterian. That surprised me. Copper Creek, part of the PCUSA, is open and affirming, “. . . here to create a home for those who have given up on church,” says the website. “If you’ve got questions and doubts, we do too.” How many churches would admit to that?