Difficulty in finding a church I can truly belong to.

[JM]

If you find the perfect church, don't join, you'll only ruin it.

 

[JM]

The Presby church I visit from time to time is ARP. They allow confessional Baptists into membership.

http://trinityarp.org/

 

[Albion]

I don't see the PCA (of which my local church is a member) or the OPC fitting in very well with the OP's "Group B" -- or "A" for that matter, though there is greater variation in the larger PCA than smaller OPC.

You don't think that either of them is described by this line in the OP's overview of Group B churches?

"hold to some kind of a separatist stand applied to the larger evangelical body. I understand that there are many things wrong in the evangelical world but it is sinful to separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters who honor the Lord and His Word just because of some differences."

 

[MechPebbles]

You don't think that either of them is described by this line in the OP's overview of Group B churches?

"hold to some kind of a separatist stand applied to the larger evangelical body. I understand that there are many things wrong in the evangelical world but it is sinful to separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters who honor the Lord and His Word just because of some differences."

I think you're right. Presbyterian pastors, both in the US and UK, accused Timothy Keller of breaking his ordination vows for working with Baptists in The Gospel Coalition. When I first read this, I couldn't believe my eyes. I wonder how such people can claim that the fear of the Lord is in them.

 

[JM]

Ahhh, I never heard that. I've heard he is sliding toward Liberalism. Google his name with liberal and you can find many articles worth reading. His work Prodigal God was an innovation of interpretation.

 

[MechPebbles]

I can't find one either...

Agree. Agree. Agree. Eventually you have to stick to a church you can bear. That's where I'm at. My wife and I are part of a Sunday School class and I typically have to sit quietly. The longer I sit quiet the longer I really can't say anything. Just buying my time til church starts.

Doesn't it make you guys feel terribly alone? I look around me and I see Christians who are never unhappy with anything (except for personal slights). A few months ago, I was in a church and the lay elder, while preaching, said this, "When Jesus said on the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?', for the first time in history the Son of God spoke and His words failed to be fulfilled. This is because He had emptied Himself of His divine power when He came down to become a man." Other than his ignorance in not seeing that this is not a command, I was really shaken that a preacher in a supposedly Bible-honoring evangelical church could openly espouse kenosis heresy. I was so adversely affected, I made it straight home and started searching for a different church! Yet no one was in the slightest bothered. No comment was passed, no one stirred; instead, the congregation continued in its irenic, semi-comatose state.

Yet a lot of these people, while having little concern for theology, stay on year after year, building up relationships, serving faithfully in their little ministries. I know because many years later, when I return to the church, I see the same people toiling away and some of them are now deacons and some even elders. I, on the other hand, spending a significant part of my life with my nose buried in commentaries, theological books, theological journals and Greek grammar texts, have developed hyper-sensitivity towards the slightest deviation from orthodoxy and can't even stay on at a single church long enough to do any good.

Perhaps ignorance is not just bliss, ignorance is (eschatologically) profitable as well.

 

[Look Up]

You don't think that either of them is described by this line in the OP's overview of Group B churches?

"hold to some kind of a separatist stand applied to the larger evangelical body. I understand that there are many things wrong in the evangelical world but it is sinful to separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters who honor the Lord and His Word just because of some differences."

If we are looking for faults, we will find some. In every denomination, group, local church, and individual. Even in ourselves.

In the US, and I have some inkling more or less with parallels in the UK and Canada, the church (broadly speaking, and I think largely speaking in terms of Protestantism) seems to be falling apart floor by floor and pillar by pillar with promise of acceleration to come in younger generations. Francis Schaeffer said something about decline in the spiritual state of the US as a whole (if memory serves) shortly before he died in 1984 (assessing the 40 years prior to 1984). Or as one with Massachusetts roots, I have long bemoaned the fall of Puritanism (which always had its faults) into legalism confronting lackadaisical-ness into Unitarianism and anti-calvinism into secular naturalism and assorted paganisms (or whatever it is today). My non-Christian mother used to open her 3rd-4th grade class each morning with prayer and reading from the Bible. In a tax funded public school in Massachusetts in the early 1950s. With no ACLU lawsuit pending. Unimaginable today, isn't it? Not long ago in the US, calvinistic sermons were on the front page of public newspapers. In full. Historically its been a toboggan run in the snow, and here we are looking back up the hill wondering how we got here.

But is fault finding today really where we want to go with helping MechPebbles and the OP? Yes, it's discouraging. Apparently that's what we are called to face; even Joshua was told not to be discouraged once upon a time. When has the church in general terms not faced tares among wheat, doctrinal aberration, prolonged immaturity, besetting sins, and opposition?

But to answer your question again, no, the PCA and OPC does not seem to "fit[] very well" (see my words) into "Group B." That's just my limited experience and reading and in general terms. I have personal experience with faults within the PCA (aside from what has been mentioned above here) and even among reformed baptists. And if you are poking the sore reformed "gift" for schism, you are going about it the right way!

Also worth noting is that the West is not the world, nor is a few centuries a long time, nor will Jesus fail of His duty to preserve those the Father gave Him until the resurrection, nor cease to build His church until the Harvest. Meanwhile, it may help our spirits to look for the "some good" in the Jehoshaphat churches. And may God provide MechPebbles with a church he can live with.

 

[Albion]

But to answer your question again, no, the PCA does not seem to "fit[] very well" (see my words) into "Group B." That's just my limited experience and reading and in general terms. I have personal experience with faults within the PCA (aside from what has been mentioned above here) and even among reformed baptists.

Very well. I simply asked the question.

 

[JM]

Any church from NAPARC will hold a biblical line.

 

[Hieronymus]

Doesn't it make you guys feel terribly alone?

Yes,often it does...

I look around me and I see Christians who are never unhappy with anything (except for personal slights). A few months ago, I was in a church and the lay elder, while preaching, said this, "When Jesus said on the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?', for the first time in history the Son of God spoke and His words failed to be fulfilled. This is because He had emptied Himself of His divine power when He came down to become a man." Other than his ignorance in not seeing that this is not a command, I was really shaken that a preacher in a supposedly Bible-honoring evangelical church could openly espouse kenosis heresy. I was so adversely affected, I made it straight home and started searching for a different church! Yet no one was in the slightest bothered. No comment was passed, no one stirred; instead, the congregation continued in its irenic, semi-comatose state.

Maybe it's better to be lonely then, if that's the alternative...

Yet a lot of these people, while having little concern for theology, stay on year after year, building up relationships, serving faithfully in their little ministries. I know because many years later, when I return to the church, I see the same people toiling away and some of them are now deacons and some even elders. I, on the other hand, spending a significant part of my life with my nose buried in commentaries, theological books, theological journals and Greek grammar texts, have developed hyper-sensitivity towards the slightest deviation from orthodoxy and can't even stay on at a single church long enough to do any good.

Perhaps ignorance is not just bliss, ignorance is (eschatologically) profitable as well.

Nah, at least your faith is not dead or asleep.

 

[farout]

As you describe it I agree with you. Absolute power corrupts. Our non-denom church is actually run by a set of elders and deacons. It's big enough to also have multiple pastors. Personally, I think an elder-run church is probably close to how the NT churches were governed.

Even where churches are connected by a denomination for instance the Southern Baptist Churches. They are connected by what they themselves call "a rope of sand". This as I have witnessed it means each church decides if they will belong to the local group of churches called an "Association" and then a church can support the State SBC but not the local Association. Again each church can belong to either the local or state or neither but can belong to the National Cooperation SBC. But to be a SBC a church must belong to one of the three. There is no level that a church is accountable to, except by choice. Any of the three levels can refuse to accept a church for sever reasons. That "rope of sand" is not very strong it is all based on mutial cooperation. A pastor is pretty much a person of his own direction. Even in cases which I have seen in the last four years. A pastor has been charged with rape and fondling of teen's in his churches youth group. This man was on TV and in the papers, a large number of people tried to vote him out, but just narrowly stayed. The Association of churches asked him to step down, as well the association asked the church to vote him out. The church held steady and kept him. After so many left the church and funds were not enough either he left or was asked to leave, that was kept a secret.

So even denominational over sight is limited, or might not be even be accepted. Basically, in reality it is the responsibility of the churches Deacons or Elders to oversee and assist anything between the pastor and the members or the other way around.

 

[Albion]

How do I find a church I can belong to? Even the Reformed Baptist Church, what I would consider to be a theological custom-fit for me, is firmly entrenched in Group B.

Getting back to your OP, I keep wondering if every one of the many Baptist conventions falls into either Group A or B? I don't know enough about them all to be able to say myself, but it seems that there would be at least a few that are not exclusionary merely because they're traditional. No? None?

 

[MechPebbles]

Yes,often it does...
Maybe it's better to be lonely then, if that's the alternative...Nah, at least your faith is not dead or asleep.

LOL!! You must be the first person to say anything positive about me in this regard. Thanks, brother.

The way I see it, though, there is a self-defeating problem. It goes like this:
1) I love God's Word. I spend a lot of time studying it.
2) God must have put that love in me.
3) What do I do with it? I use it to develop heterodoxy-phobia.

Every time I read the parable of the talents, the final condemnation strikes terror in my heart.

 

[MechPebbles]

Getting back to your OP, I keep wondering if every one of the many Baptist conventions falls into either Group A or B? I don't know enough about them all to be able to say myself, but it seems that there would be at least a few that are not exclusionary merely because they're traditional. No? None?

The only Baptist churches in my area with traditional worship are the two Reformed Baptist churches. All the others have loud rock bands. So loud that I frequently feel physical pain in my ears.

 

[Hieronymus]

...but it's a parable...
It means i.m.o. that who has been given a piece of faith (gold = talent (a coin)) should do something with it, or it is wasted.

 

[mikedsjr]

The only Baptist churches in my area with traditional worship are the two Reformed Baptist churches. All the others have loud rock bands. So loud that I frequently feel physical pain in my ears.

Are there Lutheran churches?

 

[Albion]

The only Baptist churches in my area with traditional worship are the two Reformed Baptist churches. All the others have loud rock bands. So loud that I frequently feel physical pain in my ears.

Sigh. Yes, that is what I feared.

We hear from a lot of people on these forums who are in the same "fix." What they want in a church actually is obtainable...but not where they live.

By the way, I don't think that Hieronymus is the only person who's read your post and thought that at least you have your faith and it's a strong one. The "thing" is, though, that we hoped we could identify a congregation to go with it.

 

[mikedsjr]

The church i was previously at, I worked the lighting. Yes, it was a mega church. Before the new sanctuary, the main sound guy kept the db around 90. At the new sanctuary, the hired a new guy and he brought it up to around 100-102db. His philosophy was he was sorry you couldn't take it, but there were plenty of churches around. Only a small minority complained.

 

[mikedsjr]

I don't mind the modern music. I like it. I don't typically like the lyrics. I have been known to be reprimanded by the worship pastor for facebooking how many minutes went by before the first verse was read in sermon time. I guess publicizing 20 minutes went by is a bad thing?

 

[Look Up]

LOL!! You must be the first person to say anything positive about me in this regard. Thanks, brother.

The way I see it, though, there is a self-defeating problem. It goes like this:
1) I love God's Word. I spend a lot of time studying it.
2) God must have put that love in me.
3) What do I do with it? I use it to develop heterodoxy-phobia.

Every time I read the parable of the talents, the final condemnation strikes terror in my heart.

Granted this is not much of an answer given your need, but it may help. Could you survive a church, but exercise your gifts and training on CF or otherwise online? Maybe start or join a blog, garnering a diaspora disciple group rather than, face-to-face, teach Sunday school or small group discipleship group? Granted there are a lot of oblivious or resistant or unwilling folk out there, but could you perhaps supplement disciple making online among some who might listen to you?

Or is switching jobs and moving to an area with a church you can live with an option? Or at your present location (or elsewhere) focusing on evangelism and starting your own church?