Metro South Church - Trenton, Michigan

Church Field Trip # 23

For the benefit of my brother and a few of my friends who live in Southeastern Michigan, I've been digging on the web for a modern, relevant church in their area for the past few years. Metro South Church (MSC) was the one and only church that I could find online that seemed as if it might meet my criteria for "relevancy." Michigan is by no means a part of the Southern Bible Belt, but the religious culture is, for the most part, too traditional for my own personal tastes. This, all the more, makes Metro South stand out on my radar. For the record, I grew up in a church in Southgate, MI called Bethel Baptist, and during my latter teen years, I attended the First Baptist Church of Temperance, MI. (My little brother actually attended Metro South a couple years ago at my suggestion and he complained that it was too loud. I refrained from punching him in the face for such a blasphemous statement.)

I had a great time at this church despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside and I was sick to my stomach from eating White Castle Sliders at 1 am the night before. Metro South started only 7 years ago in the home of Pastor J - a moniker of his own choosing - (Jeremy Schossau) with 25 people. They've now grown to over 800 people each weekend in two services. In March of 2007, they moved into an old FoodTown at the corner of Van Horn and Fort St. and overhauled the space in 90 days, at a cost of $300,000 with the help of only volunteers from the church.

Aesthetically, this was the most comfortable, modern, and coolest use of church space that I've ever experienced. This church proves that it is not about how much money you have, but how you choose to creatively use that money. According to Pastor J, their financial giving averages $9 per person, compared to the national average of $25 per person - though, admittedly, these figures are probably only significant to the pastoral readers of this site. Want some more numbers? How about the fact that their fourth annual Trunk or Treat this past Halloween drew more than 4000 people in attendance. Or the fact that this church of 800 has more than 300 teenagers in its youth ministry.

Two weeks ago, MSC opened their new full-time cafe, Baxters. It is inspired by Panera Bread and Starbucks, and the church opened the cafe as an effort to build community. Let me be clear in explaining that this is not some coffee bar that the churched propped up in the corner. It is a full-functioning cafe that could indeed compete with the likes of Panera Bread. Part of the church's entry lobby is their store, Journey. I've never seen a church sell merchandise like this. They had at least 5 racks of clothing - hoodies, beanies, t-shirts, kids' clothes, even infant clothes - that were all emblazoned with graphics reminiscent of brands such as Affliction, Hollister, and NOTW. More importantly, almost none of the merchandise carried the actual name of the church, though a small number of them had the church website located near the bottom in small print. I like the fact that they are giving preference to creating merchandise that you might actually want to wear rather than a blatant form of advertising.

We weren't there long before we ran into Pastor Jeremy and he proceeded to give us a 15 minute tour of the place. This personal tour hosted by the pastor was great, but I did think it was a bit out of place. We soon found out that Pastor J had preached for the previous 51 weeks, and he had decided to hand the teaching duties over to someone else that day. He also informed us that the band would be stripped down and acoustic for the morning. As I said about the G12 church we attended a few weeks ago, when the second string preaching and worship are out of this world, it just makes you want to come back for the full experience - and this was the case with MSC.

The worship was great. Though stripped down and acoustic, it was still very loud and engaging, a good thing in my book, despite what my brother may think about it. I think they played almost 6 songs, including about 10 minutes of announcements by Jeremy (on his day off).

The guest teacher was Terry Flint - he's the assistant principal at Grosse Ile High School. (Interesting factoid: One of my mentors, Mr. Gregory Loselle, is a teacher at that very same school.) He concluded their current series: Metro at the Movies. He taught on The Miserable Life, using 4 separate 4 minute video clips from the movie Les Miserables. It was a great approach to teaching. As a matter of fact, we've only seen a preacher "chop up" his sermon with video in this fashion one other time - at LifeChurch.tv with Craig Groeschel. Pastor Jeremy confirmed this, stating afterwards that he often uses this "LifeChurch.tv" approach to teaching by breaking up his sermon with video clips of himself teaching certain points in different locales.

The four clips that Terry showed us from Les Miserables:

1. Jean Valjean is shown hospitality by the priest and then proceeds to jack him up and rob him blind.


2. The priest, in turn, ransoms Jean Valjean's soul for God by forgiving him of his sin and giving him a chance to "become a new man".


3. Jean Valjean shows grace to a street prostitute, showing that he obviously learned his lesson from the priest. He tells the street prostitute that, in God's eyes, she is a beautiful woman.


4. The nemesis of Jean Valjean, Javert, finally learns his own lesson: try as he might to uphold the law, he can never be perfect. The only thing that can overcome this dismal state is grace.

Flint clearly delivered the Gospel in a compelling manner, referencing such verses as:

Ezekiel 36:25-28, Matthew 10:39, Rev. 3:20, Prov. 14:12, Num. 32:23, and John 14:6.

Here are a couple notable excerpts from the sermon:

"The grace of God never makes any sense. It defies logic."

"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."

"Even in our redemption, our past seldom dies easily."

"You have to commit fully in order to get the benefit from having a relationship with God. You have to surrender your life completely to Him."

"Is life change really possible? Is it really possible to be like Jesus? What does it really take to change?"

After the service, we peeked around and found the indoor skate park that Jeremy had mentioned during his tour. Another church first, to be sure. They had a half pipe, a handful of rails, and also a handful of ramps as well as a bunch of helmets and extra skateboards laying around. I know that it sounds too good to be true; too suspicious - that we should write it off as an exception because this church was in another state and in another culture. But I am serious when I say that this church was awesome.

As a matter of fact, there may have only been one noticeable drawback, and even that would be debatable. We brought along a friend of ours who is not a regular church attender. She really enjoyed herself, but she did admit that she felt a little uncomfortable when the offering bucket passed by. I, myself, though not uncomfortable, was surprised to see that this "postmodern" church had not opted for "stationary offering boxes" that are less intrusive upon visitors. This isn't a criticism, just an observation.

Follow-up: We received a personally written email from Jeremy.