A Baptist without a church

To Greg & Broadus et al,

Again, I am truly uplifted at the obvious concern by my fellow Christians coming through this post. I had no idea it would get this kind of response. I just happen to be at a low point when I spilled out my feelings of despondency one night at being overwhelmed with so many church buildings around me but had no idea which Christ was preached from the pulpit. Remember, we live in the "blue" area of the country. New Hampshire was a "red" state (sort of).

I live near Nashua, NH and so Exeter, Hampstead and Litchfield are about an hours drive or more. If all we wanted was to go to church on Sunday for an hour, driving for an hour once a week would be ok, but it cuts out fellowship and Bible Studies.

The IFBC church that we had been to the most often was much, much to focused on dispenstional teaching in our observations. Isaiah for 5 years on Wednesday nite Bible Studies. Sunday night is Revelation and dispensational teaching. Sunday a.m. was more balanced but brought in the Dispensational Pre-mill/pre-trib doctrine to the point we found ourselves constantly having to filter out through the message. If we had to constantly be filtering out then we were not worshiping as we should, in my opinion. I don't want to get into a discussion about the various doctrinal issues on this post - that's for another board.

However, it was the churches requirement that in order to be a member, we were asked to accept their doctrinal position of which we don't.

 

For those who showed so much concern - this is my update. We found what we believe will be a great little church about 1/2 hours drive from where we live. It is in Billerica,Ma and is New Colony Baptist Church. We felt very comfortable as soon as we walked through the door. What we saw we liked immediately. There was a good mixture of young and old and most everyone was very friendly and not at all reserved as is typical of New England. People went out of their way to introduce themselves - another unique feature of New Englanders! Some people were dressed well, while others had jeans on. (One "Bikers For Jesus" even had his motorcycle gear on! There was also a mixture of different ethnic groups, blacks, hispanic, white, Chinese and others as well.

It is a small church that is struggling after a nearby military base closed but the pastor is encouraging the members to reach out to the community surrounding them. I think it will grow.

More importantly to us was that the preaching, at least at the first visit was well grounded in the scripture. Since I had posted that we did not agree with the two most controversial views presently being debated within Christianity today of Charismatica and Dispensational/Pre-mil positons, we were very relieved that it did not appear to be a divisive issue at least upon first observations. Therefore, we decided to discuss it with the Pastor (Dr. Phil) and he did say that he was pre-trib but that he only briefly mentioned it once in a year and even then more in the general sense that Christ is Coming and we will be with Him through eternity. He had no problem with others holding different views and didn't care what others views were. That was fine with us.

I THINK WE'RE HOME! Thank you so much for your prayers and for your genuine interest. Your prayers were answered.