First of all, this marks the end of my NYC church search. I've seen enough churches here in the city and there's no need to look any further. I've rated all of them and given careful analysis.
Thus far, in the city, MeRF is the best. From doctrinal stand point, as well as fellowship-wise. It's located on 45th street, by 9th Ave. Renting an Adventist's church space.
Its denomination is United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA), which aligns pretty close to OPC.
The size is about 40-50. Two sessions for Sunday Services: Catechism at 10:30AM & Main service at 11:30AM. In the middle of the service (at least the main service), there's a welcoming everyone moment. More enthusiastic and longer than Redeemer's. It's ok, I'm not particularly fond of this practice, because first, you don't get enough time to know someone, secondly, it's kind of distracting.
Bible Study is on Thursdays (One Thursday of the month is replaced with Prayer Meeting). We did Hebrews and now we're doing Psalms. It's great, very reformed, conservative, if led by Pastor Paul Murphy. However, he sometimes sub it out to others. That's not a problem if it's done well, instead of just doing it for the sake of subbing, which is the case. The substitutes don't really come to the Bible study. Ritchie does well, since he's a seminary student, one can tell he cares about what he's trying to teach, though it's not as interactive as Pastor Murphy's, which is essential when this is a fellowship. And yes, I treat this as a fellowship while they might not because they would probably treat after service small talks as fellowship instead. But I think in the end, when people started to talk and jump in to initiate discussions, Ritchie was willing to throw away his lecture notes and engage the conversation. Kelvin on the other hand, threw in lots of verses from everywhere in the Bible like a concordance and that's about it. The other thing is it used to be announced who's going to lead the study but it wasn't so yesterday. I could let the last day announcement of Thursday Bible Study slide, but when it's like Redeemer, where we can't be sure or even are led to believe someone else is leading, then it's a bit disappointing. Good thing about Kelvin is his fundamental stands, which is good to some extend, given the state of today's liberal theology. But I may not return if it's him.
MeRF definitely has more connections to people in the Reformed circle than I've seen compared to other churches. By connection I include "practicing themselves", not just knowing people like in CCCNY. Eric walked with Cornelius Van Til (CVT), there's a student of WTS, there's no shying away from reformed doctrine discussions, etc.
So in the end, this taught me one thing about deciding to attend a fellowship/Bible study. There are 3 types, which are dependent on the wise use of God given time, and the attitude and preparation of the leader:
- Very rare, very good, the must-attend type. (The ones led by Pak Tong, etc.)
- Medium rare, so so, if I got time, nothing to do, I'll attend. (MeRF, etc.)
- Most popular, but a waste of time, going a bar is may actually be a better choice. (CCCNY, etc.)
Now that I've found Grace OPC in New Jersey where we've moved, MeRF may just become the church we would go if we're in the city.
Update: We've since Covid moved from Grace OPC Westfield to Bridgewater's PCA Grace Community Church, because the Westfield OPC church was just too fundamentalist.
As for MeRF, I would say I don't know that enough to comment more. I've mentioned the pros and cons.
One con I didn't mention, perhaps, was that administratively, I think they are rather poor at that: I was kicked out 2, 3 times from their mailing list, probably because we weren't officially their members, so I got tired of asking to be added back again. I joined that mailing list so that I could follow their Thursday Bible study schedule, since Sunday service's not possible with them anymore now that we are in Jersey, but I still commute to work in the city. The mailing list was crucial because they do sometimes cancel Bible study "unannounced" except in the Mailing List. And I have wasted many trips walking 20 blocks to their cancelled Bible Study from my office just because I wasn't on their mailing list. So, probably this is in the category of caring. Which is important for a church, but not the top of my list of what's crucial.