Living Hope Community Church

A brief history: Living Hope began in November 1993 as a small group meeting at the Fox Lake Town Hall. Two months later, they moved to Bethany Presbyterian Church in Randolph before moving back to Fox Lake in February 2003 and meeting at the elementary school. In 2006, they built the new and current building — their own place.
I’ve been my spending my summers in Fox Lake since I was just a dream in my parents’ eyes. I remember seeing this church built awhile back but never paid attention to it until my faith grew in the past couple years. When we found ourselves in Fox Lake last weekend, we wanted to visit one of the churches in town and selected this one because it’s the only non-​denominational church nearby.
Since it’s so small, there was only one weekend service. The service consisted of two worship songs, many announcements, a testimony of faith (I don’t think is the norm during a service), and the message. The service lasted a little longer than an hour, with the message only taking up the last twenty minutes or so. On our way out, we were greeted by a few friendly faces, which was nice.
Churches are hard to review since people have their own preferences, beliefs, and so forth. This is one church that didn’t really click with me. My husband and I both enjoyed the message, but we wished there were less announcements and more singing. The singing wasn’t as lively as it could have been (and the projected lyrics were a bit off) and we were overwhelmed by all the kids in the room! Although there’s a nursery, there’s no Sunday School (yet) so entire families were seated together. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s just not what I’m used to. Maybe the family vibe was weird because we don’t have kids of our own. Who knows; our three-​star experience might be someone else’s five-​star experience.
Living Hope has a few kinks to work out, but they’re small and growing in the right direction. It’s not too often you see a modern church in a small town like Fox Lake. I have to give them credit for that, and hope to see them grow strong.