A few weeks ago, someone called from the Silicon Valley's primary entertainment weekly paper the "Metro". He was writing an article about the emerging church and about churches in San Jose. San Jose is about a 30-40 minute drive from Santa Cruz. After we met, he and a photographer came over to our church's second gathering, the Sunday night one (we have a 11:00 AM and a 7:00 PM) in Santa Cruz . I wasn't there that Sunday, but we no idea until it came out last week when it came out that the article ended up turning out to focus primarily on our church. We were very surprised it became the cover story also.
The following week, the Santa Cruz "Metro", which is a sister newspaper of the other one picked up the story and turned it into an article for the version of the Metro in our town. The editor came to last week's Vintage Faith Sunday worship gathering and we had a nice chat afterwards.
You can read the on-line article here at the Santa Cruz Metro website.
The "Jesus" tattoo on the cover, I initially thought actually was fake and designed for the cover. But it turns out it is actually a tattoo from someone in our church that the photographer took the night he visited. (In the article you will also see a photo of the wonderful way the pews restrain people in the building we just moved into that I am fond of.)
It is an interesting and well written article overall, especially considering all that was covered by a secular newspaper. What I keep thinking about is that there a lot of people who read these weekly papers who don't go to any church nor are Christians. I hope and pray it is a good overall representative to all those outside the church in San Jose and Santa Cruz who read it. It isn't too often that you see the name of "Jesus" in large letters, even tattooed, on the cover of these papers.
