Yesterday we tried out the north campus of Bethlehem Baptist Church. This is John Piper's church. There are three campuses. He is at each one every third week and the other two weeks, you watch his sermon on video. This is obviously a little weird, but I think it would be something we could get used to. We decided to try out BBC because we thought it would be a little more traditional, great teaching and more focused on the Bible. We were right on all accounts.
- The teaching was great. Piper doesn't mince any words and just preaches through the scriptures.
- Traditional? Out of the 8 songs that they sand during worship, four were the following hymns.
- "Thine is the Glory"--Budry/Handel
- "Standing on the Promises"--R. Kelso Carter
- "Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven"--Lyte/Andrews
- "Day By Day and With Each Passing Moment"--Skoog/Sandell-Berg/Anhfelt
- The Bible. The whole service was focused on the Bible. They read about a chapter of scripture that the teaching was based on. They quoted scripture throughout the worship. It was good.
3 comments:
I was listening to Alistair, Amanda's old pastor, today on the radio and he was talking about the importance of joining a church. That's been an issue at my Alpena church and so I listened closely. He said that he had spent some time with some Christian men who during the course of the conversation said that they were not members of a church and didn't intend to become members. They were regular church goers, loved Jesus, and were somewhat involved in service in the churches they attended but felt strongly that they would not go through the process of membership. He was discouraged by all of it and went on to teach about the importance of finding a church, committing to it by becoming a member, and then finding a way to serve there. I followed Don's lead in all of that. He, like you said, believed that we wouldn't really feel like the church was ours if we didn't commit to it and join it! It's kind of like a marriage...you choose your mate prayerfully and carefully, sign the license, commit to that person before God, and then try your best to make it work. There aren't any perfect mates and certainly no perfect churches...filled with sinners saved by grace...but it looks like the one you visited Sunday is a good one. Speaking of Waterford Community Church, I just looked in my Bible and I had written something that Pastor Whisenhunt said one Sunday over 20 years ago. Here it is.
4 MARKS OF A GOOD CHURCH
1. fellowship
2. teaching from God's word-edification, preaching
3. worship
4. evangelism
Then he added this...methods may differ! That still makes sense to me. I'll be praying as you search for the right place for your precious family. As Don always said, "I know you'll do the right thing".
I got quite a kick out of reading about Mary Jane Strader. I also thought she was so cool and Steve Johns was definitely the babe at WCC. I almost left a message on her blog but chickened out.
Tricia
I also enjoyed reading about the Strader/Johns family. It was fun that she mentioned her mom and quoting scripture. It made me think of her teaching Tricia's SS class and giving little ceramic dogs to the kids who memorized a psalm.
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