princesstatyanna
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Were you always Baptist?
- Thread starter NIrelandGillian
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I grew up in the non denominational Campbellite church. My experiences with that denomination were not very pleasant. They tended to dwell on end times. One service was spent on talking about the big computer in Brussels and how we would get the Mark of the Beast by 1990. That was in 1978. They also talks about earthquakes and how California would drop off in the ocean as part of God's judgement when I was a small child. I lived in Southern California at the time. So when I left California I left that church. I spent some time in the Assemblies of God, but got some of the same nonsense. So I sought out the Baptist church.
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- Jun 26, 2004
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That must have been scary for a child. I haven’t heard of the Campbellite church. Did you settle with the Baptist church?
Gillian
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AKWarrior
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I never had a religious upbringing, but I've always found myself drawn to Baptist churches. To this day I'll always prefer them over any other denomination (or lack thereof).
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nonaeroterraqueous
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The last twenty years have been tough, as far as church attendance goes. I'm beginning to feel a lot like a church undertaker. My first years as an adult found me in an Assemblies Of God church, which is the denomination that I grew up in. That was the only church I ever officially joined. I sat a few long years under an angry pastor, as I watched membership slowly dwindle to nothing. As church treasurer, I learned the depth of my pastor's avarice, dishonesty and intemperance. We didn't quite stay to the bitter end. There were still a bare handful of people left, but I couldn't sit through another angry sermon. It was wearing me down.
We took refuge in a Vineyard church, with a fantastic pastor. The congregation was a decent size...at first. Through gross mismanagement of money, plus a dwindling attendance, they managed to get to the point where they had to ask another Vineyard to absorb them.
The second Vineyard was a wild and crazy charismatic church. They came in like a lion and went out like a beaten lamb. The pastor lost interest and quit. The church finances managed to adopt all of the burden of the previous church and work it up into a real budgetary meltdown. The replacement pastor repeated the error of our AG pastor and turned the podium into a political platform to rail against conservatives. They're still limping along, somewhere.
It was while we were looking for a new church not on the path to self-destruction that my wife stumbled upon our current church as the result of a missed bus connection. It was healthy. The doctrine was sound. The people were nice. Their budget was balanced. Oh, and it was Baptist. The pastor was still inviting us to join their church, right up to the point where he quit the church, himself. Since then, the pillars of the church, the most influential individuals have left. I've sat and watched the numbers dwindle daily. The members are real fighters, though. The pastor begged for someone to lead worship, so I bought a guitar and learned how to use it. Someone else bought a bass guitar and learned it. On top of that, we got a lead guitarist from a nearby church to help out. More people joined as backup singers, and now we have so many people on stage or in the back helping with children's church or greeting at the door, that it's beginning to seriously cut into the numbers sitting in the pews.
The numbers are still sagging, but I'm not planning to go anywhere. I want to help this church succeed. Man, I sure hope they don't go under. I'm looking at the two churches I attended as a youth, one non-denominational and one Assemblies Of God, and the former closed its doors long ago, while the latter is only a fraction of what it was. In fact, I've never been part of a church that was actually growing.
If this church fails, then I can't say what denomination will find me next. I don't know what I'm going to do.
We took refuge in a Vineyard church, with a fantastic pastor. The congregation was a decent size...at first. Through gross mismanagement of money, plus a dwindling attendance, they managed to get to the point where they had to ask another Vineyard to absorb them.
The second Vineyard was a wild and crazy charismatic church. They came in like a lion and went out like a beaten lamb. The pastor lost interest and quit. The church finances managed to adopt all of the burden of the previous church and work it up into a real budgetary meltdown. The replacement pastor repeated the error of our AG pastor and turned the podium into a political platform to rail against conservatives. They're still limping along, somewhere.
It was while we were looking for a new church not on the path to self-destruction that my wife stumbled upon our current church as the result of a missed bus connection. It was healthy. The doctrine was sound. The people were nice. Their budget was balanced. Oh, and it was Baptist. The pastor was still inviting us to join their church, right up to the point where he quit the church, himself. Since then, the pillars of the church, the most influential individuals have left. I've sat and watched the numbers dwindle daily. The members are real fighters, though. The pastor begged for someone to lead worship, so I bought a guitar and learned how to use it. Someone else bought a bass guitar and learned it. On top of that, we got a lead guitarist from a nearby church to help out. More people joined as backup singers, and now we have so many people on stage or in the back helping with children's church or greeting at the door, that it's beginning to seriously cut into the numbers sitting in the pews.
The numbers are still sagging, but I'm not planning to go anywhere. I want to help this church succeed. Man, I sure hope they don't go under. I'm looking at the two churches I attended as a youth, one non-denominational and one Assemblies Of God, and the former closed its doors long ago, while the latter is only a fraction of what it was. In fact, I've never been part of a church that was actually growing.
If this church fails, then I can't say what denomination will find me next. I don't know what I'm going to do.
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princesstatyanna
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I was raised in the Methodist church and switched to Baptist when I turned 18 years old
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Newtheran
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Wasn't raised in the church. "Got saved" as the result of a high school friend witnessing. Spent a long time in the most conservative baptist churches I could find.
But when the Evangelicals became Pentecostal, and the Baptists became Evangelical, I became a confessional Lutheran.
But when the Evangelicals became Pentecostal, and the Baptists became Evangelical, I became a confessional Lutheran.
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Sorry to hear you and your wife have had some bad experiences with churches. Good for you doing your best to help your current church. Do you have an organist or a pianist? Maybe you should limit the numbers you have on stage? I have visions of a crowd on stage and one person sitting in the pews.
Gillian
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nonaeroterraqueous
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We do have someone who can play the organ, but the church voted to put their organ away into storage before I got there. The organist plays electric keyboard, now.
On a good day, we have seven on stage and about forty-five in the pews. On a bad day, we have the same number on stage and about twenty-five in the pews. The bad days are getting more frequent. The question of limiting the number on stage is totally out of my control. I have absolutely no say in how anything is done (which is probably for the best). I just do what they tell me.
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Newtheran
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Have your current pastor / elders made an attempt to try and determine why the church is shrinking? Is it a demographic issue where members are passing away or moving to be closer to family? A demographic issue where the Christian population of the neighborhood is falling and being replaced by either members of another religion or atheists? Has another church opened nearby that is drawing away members? Or has something happened to the parent denomination and the stances it takes that is causing people to leave?
Trying to figure out the why behind the what would probably be the first step.
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nonaeroterraqueous
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I'm sure they must have. They don't talk about it much, though.
We have lost a significant number of people to death (by age-related causes) and moving to other churches to be with family.
The displacement is mostly by immigrants. Specifically, the Mexican immigrants are transforming the immediate area. The last Assemblies of God church I attended had the same issue. The entire city was predominantly illegal immigrant (I'm not being political. They really were illegal immigrants), which made English an unpopular language. As in this case, the church made ends meet temporarily by leasing space to a foreign language church that was much bigger. Our own congregation, in both cases, shifted toward an older set, because the younger couples were leaving and the elderly couldn't or didn't want to leave. As a result, both then and now, I had to watch the ticking time bomb of a church slowly growing old and dying, and not being replaced.
There is a nearby megachurch (Saddleback) that has drawn a few of our members, but I would not regard that one church as a primary concern. We've lost members to a miscellany of other churches.
That's a tough one. I don't know of any changes to the SBC in recent history. I get the impression that the members of the Southern Baptist Convention are quite autonomous, so a change in the denomination would have little effect on the individual congregation. It's possible that the changing times has forced certain issues to the forefront. It's not so much that their position has changed as that they've had to take a stronger stand on their positions.
I also get the feeling that the abandonment is self-reinforcing, that people are leaving because it's depressing to be in a church where people are leaving.
Thanks for your help. I'll keep it in mind. That was a good set of questions to get a person thinking.
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Electric keyboards seem to be the way to go in many churches these days. We have a piano for the morning services and a keyboard for the evening services in our church, mostly.
Those ratios don't sound too bad - they could be worse - but since you are one of the musicians on the stage, I would have thought you would have had some say on how things are run- at least a comment. Who are 'they'?
Gillian
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YeshuaFan
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I was a card carrying evolutionist, and really into Ufo's before Jesus saved me, and was for over a decade a teaching Elder in the Assemblies of God before becoming a Baptist for the past decade!
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That's interesting - thanks for sharing your story! Any particular reason why you left the Assemblies of God and why you subsequently joined the Baptists?
Gillian
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YeshuaFan
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I never held to their belief of the second act of Grace as evidenced by speaking in otyher tongues, and after doing much reading and studying of the bible, became a Calvinist, so that led me to becoming a Baptist!
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Here's trusting you remain a Baptist for a long time to come! Your story reminds me of a pastor we had several years ago. At one time he was a Presbyterian minister at one time, but study of the Bible convinced him of believer's baptism, which led to him becoming a Baptist pastor.
Gillian
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