Back to Church, Part I: Keystone Church

After about ten years, I’ve started going back to church because it the kind of community that has always worked for me.

So far it hasn’t been a perfect experience. It’s a little awkward navigating my way into a new church community where I don’t know anyone. Before I left church, I was always a part of the music ministry and experienced church from the platform — rarely from pew. It’s very different to be anonymous in a congregation than being a *star* on the stage, but that’s a good thing.

So far, I’ve tried three churches. The first one is Keystone Church in Keller, Texas. It’s mission statement is “Leading everyone to experience a passionate life in Christ.” Services are contemporary, casual and just cool enough that the effort to be cool isn’t lame.

One of the things I’ve always said about going back to church is that I wish I could find one that just had praise and worship — no preaching. It’s interesting that I don’t care for the music at Keystone at all, but I could listen to the pastor, Brandon Thomas, talk all day long. He’s young, engaging, smart and his teaching has seriousness and depth.

I’ve been twice and watched and listened to Brandon’s talks on the Keystone Web site.

Keystone has a pretty good site. They do a really nice job with media (audio and video). They use Vimeo Plus for video, and it’s very obvious that in addition to loving God, this church loves Apple products. Since I do Internet TV for a living, I give them a strong B+ for what they’re doing with media. I’d like to see them stream services using Ustream.TV and make the podcast subscription option a little more prominent, but mostly, Keystone is getting it right.

During my second visit, people were encouraged to SMS questions. Brandon and his wife answered the questions at the end of Brandon’s talk. They even had the questions formated on a slide that matched the artwork from the teaching. It was effective.

Everyone is encouraged to fill out a card with personal information and prayer requests. I usually hate that, but since I’m longing to connect with a church community, I happily filled it out. No one contacted me and that’s either a good thing or a bad thing depending on what a person wants from a church visit.

Keystone clearly sees the importance of social media. They have a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account, a Flickr Photostream and a Blog. They have all the right pieces in place for winning in social media, but it doesn’t seem like they have a great strategy for social media. It’s all very promotional and not very relational. I feel like I can engage with Keystone through their social media efforts, but I don’t get the impression they are trying to engage with me.

I definitely plan to visit Keystone some more, but I’m not sure yet if it is where I should plug-in and get involved.

In Back to Church, Part II, I’ll talk about a church that does a great job engaging through social media, especially Twitter.