Welcome Message
Continued...
If you come in a car, you should be able to park on Brazil fairly close to the church and we do pay for a guard to keep an eye on the cars. As with most car guards in the city, when you leave he would never turn down anything from a dime to a 50-cent piece. There is a small parking lot if you feel more comfortable with that. Keep driving past the church on Brazil and take the first right and then the very next right (about 50 yards later) and head back down the little hill. Just as it starts to level off you will see open metal black doors on the right hand side. We have a guard keeping an eye on that lot, as well as the cars on that side street (Calle San Francisco).
If you enter from Brazil you will walk right into our sanctuary (where the actual service happens). If you come from the San Francisco side you will walk through what is called “The Fellowship Hall” and head up the stairs into the sanctuary. There should be some friendly people (greeters and/or ushers) to say hello, answer questions and hand you a simple bulletin explaining some of the highlights of the morning and the upcoming week. There should also be a green sheet inside it if you want to take notes or would like to leave some information to have one of us contact you. By the way, if English is not your first language we normally have copies of that morning’s full message available to try to help people grasp the lesson.
There is a nursery downstairs for babies and toddlers (up to age 4). Turn left at the bottom of the stairs and look in the first door on your right and you will see a bright orange room and some loving people to watch your wee one(s).
During both services, children age 5 through sixth grade have an option of attending EFCito (Children’s Church). We normally invite them to make their way downstairs about twenty minutes into the service. They will have a much more “age appropriate” church experience. They will be waiting for you downstairs after the service.
You’ll see people wearing pretty much everything on Sunday morning…from shorts or jeans and flip-flops to suit coats and fancier dresses.
We encourage people to bring their own Bibles (if they have one) but we also have Bibles available in the back of the pews and many of the verses we refer to will be shown on the screen up front.
We consider our music to be “authentically blended” – which means we cover pretty much the full spectrum….from time-honored songs to some of the most recent releases (performed using a wide array of musical genres). We strive for musical excellence while placing our primary focus on the truth and content of the lyrics. Barring power failures or technical gremlins, the words to the songs are always shown on the screen.
By the way, the total service runs about seventy minutes. We try to keep the teaching portion around 25 minutes.
At the end of almost every service we pause to see if anyone has joined us for the first time or the first time in a long time. If someone wants to slip out unnoticed, we totally understand. For anyone who wants to be met, we simply ask him or her to stand and give us a name, tell where he or she is from and what he or she is doing in Quito. (It is actually one of my favorite parts of our services because we get to meet people from literally all around the world – from long-time diplomats to college-age students backpacking across South America.)
If you have any questions or concerns before visiting, please do not hesitate to ask. If you do come and check things out you need to know that we are well aware that we are all in a process of transformation and we are constantly learning – as individuals and as a church. If something happened that puzzled you or bothered you (or something that particularly connected with you) we would love to know that, too.
Passionately,
Len Kinzel
Senior Pastor
