St. Andrews Presbyterian Church

What are services like?
It seems like a lot of churches are into “contemporary worship,” using pop-culture music to make church seem less “churchy.” I can understand that - many people think the church is irrelevant and disconnected from real life. I think how our approach differs is in our understanding that Jesus Christ didn’t sanction either high-culture, folk-culture, or pop-culture. His desire was for people to hear and believe, to receive reconciliation with God and people. We try to use music and worship elements that communicate truth, beauty, and goodness. Our services probably “feel like real-church” because we use a lot of the older, historical forms. We’ve just found they often bring truth, beauty, and goodness out very effectively – historical Christianity expressed to a new generation.

What is the community like?
The challenge is always to keep words and deeds joined together. We’re always asking, “What can THIS congregation offer to this community, South Florida, and our region?” We’ve found that a lot of our members have practical skills and the heart to help folks struggling financially or with life-controlling vices to take steps toward becoming helpers. Few people want to be perpetual victims. Eventually they hope to move from negative, to neutral, to positive and be used by God as instruments of healing for others. Messed up people who get grace and healing are often the best instruments to help others. We’ve also found a number of people in our congregation with advanced degrees in education and theology. We’ve been able to deploy men and women to bring training to parts of the world starved for education. Among those areas have been Moldova, Ukraine, Haiti, the French Caribbean, and several African nations. Christianity is exploding in these places with believers who really believe, but the clergy in these “cutting edge” regions is mostly untrained. in our medium-sized congregation we have eight people who hold a Masters of Divinity degree from top-notch seminaries. That’s four years of college plus three full years of graduate work – and we have media specialists and teachers galore. What a shame to hoard all this when developing countries are in crying need. We’re amazed at these human resources and looking forward to continued service to these strategic regions.

What if I'm not a Christian?
You are welcome here! We’ve found that secular people and spiritual people, church-goers and the irreligious are all big sinners. Religious people are often the worst because they have high standards for themselves and for others. Because we constantly fail to keep those standards – even when we “do the right thing,” we often discover that our motives are messed up. So, because we constantly fail we constantly need fresh applications of grace. This is why we don’t believe the Gospel is for “them” – we know we need it just as badly as anyone else. We don’t have one message for outsiders and another message for everyone – we have one message for everyone: Face your deep need and get the outrageous love offered in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.