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There was standing room only the first time College Church tried a question-and-answer roundtable format in its Sunday evening service, and the crowds never thinned throughout the 14-week series. One church member described the experimental services as a cross between Meet the Press and The Late Show with David Letterman. It was serious, it was fun, and the people in the community are still talking about it.

"I don't think there was a life in our church that wasn't touched," says elder Harold Smith, who served as emcee. "It was a movement of the Holy Spirit."

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Pastor Kent Hughes felt led to depart from his expository sermon series on Genesis and explore some pressing cultural forces assaulting our society: hedonism, materialism, and sexual conduct among them. Hughes knew the sermons would raise questions, and he wanted to provide answers. After the morning services, worship attendees turned in their questions on yellow cards. Hughes and a team of elders and pastors sifted through them in the afternoon, and in the evening service led a discussion.

"The questions were hard hitting; we threw out the easy ones," associate pastor Marc Maillefer says. "People were on the edge of their seats. You could feel the energy in the room."

The room was the church's new fellowship hall, called "The Commons," where more than 500 people packed in from the first night. They were seated in groups of ten at round tables. With only water and jellybeans for refreshment, the table groups tackled tough issues. First, Hughes and the panel answered questions from the cards, then the people at each table discussed the issue.

"I was nervous initially, but I got over it as I started talking," church member Phyllis Ten Elshof says. "The discussion was relevant, especially when people shared their experiences. Such stories are the lifeblood of the church."

The evening follow-up to the morning's sermon gave each Sunday a primary thematic emphasis. "People liked having a single focus," Maillefer says. "It seemed to linger in their minds and hearts throughout the week."

The subjects were serious, but the atmosphere was friendly, even family-like. "The sessions were as much about meeting people as discussing areas of our lives that needed to be rededicated to God," Ten Elshof says. "Every Sunday night, we got to interact with at least ten people we hadn't known before."

Smith agreed, citing intergenerational involvement: "We had senior adults and middle-age couples and college and high school students all asking questions and talking together. We met in the 'family room' and we were family."

The roundtable discussions were repeated in the spring with every seat filled as Pastor Hughes returned to his study of Genesis, and they began making plans to return to the "family room" this fall.

For more information, contact www.college-church.org.

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