Mike Mason’s Story

Mike Mason has served as a Watchman (security) at Experience Church for several years. We sat down with Mike so he could share his experience about why he and his family decided to come here. Take a look at why they love their church.

“Before we went to this church, we were looking for a church home. We moved up here from San Antonio Texas when I was in the military. We came a couple of times, and liked it, but we also tried out different churches too. After trying out different churches, our girls were like “They were mean to us and it didn’t have that home feeling.” So after hearing their feedback, we were like, “Well let’s come back to Experience Church and try it.” When we came back, we literally walked through the doors, and Pastor Dennis said “Hey, where y’all been?” Then Pastor Lori came up and gave us a hug, and remembered our names.

We kept coming back to the church for multiple reasons. One of those reasons was when I was little, I grew up in Chicago. We lived in the suburbs, but my family still wanted to go to a church in Chicago. So for us, it was an hour and a half drive from our house to our church. I was like, “No, I’m not doing that for my family because if the kids want to go to a church, have friends, and actually be able to hang out with them, it needs to be in our community.” So there is definitely a geographical aspect to it.

Then every time Pastor Dennis has given his opinion on something, it’s actually based in the bible, not personal belief. I get tired of listening to pastors do an entire sermon when they’ve never touched on one book of the bible, they’ve never prayed about it, or they’ve never expressed anything Biblical in regards to the sermon. I was like, “I can go listen to a motivational speaker, and not have to deal with that.” So there’s definitely the Biblical aspect to it. If you ask Pastor Dennis a question like, “What was that topic for?” He can give you the name, verse,  book of the Bible, and half the time, he can quote it depending if it’s The New King James Version, or if it’s the old version, and then tell you which translation of the bible is going to be a better understanding for you to grasp it. So for him to be able to do that definitely helped in regards to that.

Both my uncle and aunt are pastors of their own churches in Chicago, so I’ve had church a lot throughout my family. At one point in time, my uncle was pastoring his church, my aunt was pastoring her’s, my grandmother ran the Sunday School department, my aunt ran the entire choir, my cousin ran the entire youth choir, and my mom helped with Sunday School classes. I was at the church maybe 4 to 5 times a week, for 3 hours a day, everyday, for the first fifteen years of my life. This made working very challenging because I would work till 11 PM, then would come home and have to get up at 5 AM to drive the hour plus to church. So I wanted to make sure I didn’t have that here.

If you’re going to take away anything from coming, it’s that it’s a legitimate feeling of family when you walk through the door. Whether people remember your names or not, they will remember your face, and it’s going to be an experience that you’re going to remember. I’ve gone to mega churches, I’ve gone into smaller churches, and sadly enough, some of the smaller churches had the same feel as a mega church. It was, “You’re here to give us money, go away and don’t ask questions. We don’t want your input. We are not interested.” I’ve had that many times and I don’t like it. So I definitely want people that come here to connect and find out where they fit in, but making sure that they have a servant’s heart. If you don’t have a servant’s heart, then this isn’t the church for you. So that is something I would like someone to take away from being here.”