Larry Devich
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Seventh Day Baptists?
The unending saga of "Larry looks for a church" continues.
Today I went to a church in a denomination I had never heard of before yesterday. They are the Seventh Day Baptists, not to be confused with Seventh Day Adventists who are rather cult like and have way too much strange baggage for me to ever be comfortable attending there.
What happened with the Catholics you ask? Well, that is hard to explain. I had been thinking that it was the way to go, that they had good points to make, and they do, when suddenly I began to have this sense that I was really in the wrong place. I can't explain it really. I had been quite certain that the Holy Spirit was leading me there and yet, it seems not.
I think what was going on was this, God wants me to be involved in a church, in a local group of believers, to have fellowship with Christians. I got that message and started looking around and found the Catholic and Episcopal had services that fit my schedule. The Episcopal decided to start ordaining homosexual bishops and seemed headed for oblivion. I did check out the Seventh Day Adventists, for the Saturday Sabbath benefit, but the dietary laws and Ellen White as a prophet turned me away, they are borderline Christian. That left the Catholics as my last chance of a church community meeting on Saturdays as far as I knew.
At first my enthusiasm for fellowship and my love of liturgical worship sustained me, the doubts could be answered. I read a great deal of Catholic material, including a book by Karl Keating called "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" which did a good job of clearing up much of what bothered me about them.
But still as time went on I did not become more confident about being on the right track but less. Then yesterday I suddenly felt compelled to pick up the phone book and start looking for another solution to my dilemma.
That is where I found a tiny entry for the Bay Area Seventh Day Baptists. I checked out their web site and followed links to other sites and found that they are essentially normal Baptists with the single twist that they believe in observing the biblical Sabbath of Saturday. This makes sense to me anyway, it never did seem right to change it to Sunday. I know all the arguments for Sunday and they really are pretty weak as far as I am concerned. I also never figured it really made that much difference, still don't really ;-) But since I need to go to church on Saturday it seems an ideal solution for me.
So today I went and enjoyed my first time. They are a very small congregation, maybe twenty people were there today. They didn't have the normal Sabbath observation they usually hold due to a wedding so I am going to go again next week to get a better idea of who they are. In any case I was pleased with the result.
I do have a list of other churches I might try out, including a Taize based meditative Sunday night service at the Walnut Creek United Methodist Church. That is one I am sure to go to no matter what. I can do Sabbath with the Baptists and then get my chant and mediation over with the Methodists on Sunday night, cool huh? ;-) unfortunately they don't have it every Sunday during the summer, I'll try it next Sunday night and see how it goes. ¶ 8/14/2004 12:18:00 PM 0 Comments
Today I went to a church in a denomination I had never heard of before yesterday. They are the Seventh Day Baptists, not to be confused with Seventh Day Adventists who are rather cult like and have way too much strange baggage for me to ever be comfortable attending there.
What happened with the Catholics you ask? Well, that is hard to explain. I had been thinking that it was the way to go, that they had good points to make, and they do, when suddenly I began to have this sense that I was really in the wrong place. I can't explain it really. I had been quite certain that the Holy Spirit was leading me there and yet, it seems not.
I think what was going on was this, God wants me to be involved in a church, in a local group of believers, to have fellowship with Christians. I got that message and started looking around and found the Catholic and Episcopal had services that fit my schedule. The Episcopal decided to start ordaining homosexual bishops and seemed headed for oblivion. I did check out the Seventh Day Adventists, for the Saturday Sabbath benefit, but the dietary laws and Ellen White as a prophet turned me away, they are borderline Christian. That left the Catholics as my last chance of a church community meeting on Saturdays as far as I knew.
At first my enthusiasm for fellowship and my love of liturgical worship sustained me, the doubts could be answered. I read a great deal of Catholic material, including a book by Karl Keating called "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" which did a good job of clearing up much of what bothered me about them.
But still as time went on I did not become more confident about being on the right track but less. Then yesterday I suddenly felt compelled to pick up the phone book and start looking for another solution to my dilemma.
That is where I found a tiny entry for the Bay Area Seventh Day Baptists. I checked out their web site and followed links to other sites and found that they are essentially normal Baptists with the single twist that they believe in observing the biblical Sabbath of Saturday. This makes sense to me anyway, it never did seem right to change it to Sunday. I know all the arguments for Sunday and they really are pretty weak as far as I am concerned. I also never figured it really made that much difference, still don't really ;-) But since I need to go to church on Saturday it seems an ideal solution for me.
So today I went and enjoyed my first time. They are a very small congregation, maybe twenty people were there today. They didn't have the normal Sabbath observation they usually hold due to a wedding so I am going to go again next week to get a better idea of who they are. In any case I was pleased with the result.
I do have a list of other churches I might try out, including a Taize based meditative Sunday night service at the Walnut Creek United Methodist Church. That is one I am sure to go to no matter what. I can do Sabbath with the Baptists and then get my chant and mediation over with the Methodists on Sunday night, cool huh? ;-) unfortunately they don't have it every Sunday during the summer, I'll try it next Sunday night and see how it goes. ¶ 8/14/2004 12:18:00 PM 0 Comments
