It has been a while since we first tried out St. Andrews Lutheran Church in Eden Prairie. We decided we would take a peek because several of my children have had lovely experiences going to preschool there during the school year as well as Vacation Church School in the summer time.
We walked in to the church and immediately found someone who could direct us to the nursery. We told several people this was our first time in attendance and were a little surprised at how very unwelcoming they seemed to be. No one came to our aid to help us find the right places for our kids, no one gave us any information about the church itself, no one really made any welcoming gesture at all actually.
It is not that people weren't friendly enough, they just didn't really seem to care whether or not we had a good first experience in their church.
When we finally found the nursery for our baby, we told them it was our first time at the church and even in the more intimate setting of the nursery they didn't make any effort to help us check our little ones in correctly. It quickly became apparent that if a welcoming atmosphere was what we wanted, this was not going to be it.
As for the service itself, it was pretty typical of the Lutheran tradition. The only thing I really remember taking away from it was that the minister preaching that day needed to take some sensitivity training classes. The number of times she referred to a person she was talking about in her sermon as a "crack baby" was striking. Perhaps I am more sensitive to those types of things having a nephew who had to detox as a baby in the birthing ward due to a mother making poor choices during the pregnancy, but from what I can tell, most people don't like to be labeled like that continually, especially from the pulpit. But, she seemed young so perhaps it was just a maturity issue.
Anyway, I know many people who attend St. Andrews and love it there. We just found it to be a little too unwelcoming and perhaps a wee bit Social-Club-like.
We may try it again with the new minister coming in but it is low on our list as far as I can tell!
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