So what's my church situation?

A number of you are probably wondering about my church situation - down here, not in Iowa City (that's a whole other topic on which I won't comment).

With this being the Bible belt, there are tons of Baptist churches around. You kind of lose the overview - is it 65 or 85? What's the difference between Ebenezer Baptist down the road and Iglesia Baptista next door? The big Baptist church is, of course, First Baptist Church in downtown Hendersonville right off Church street. It has about 1170 members. That's a tenth of the town, figuring that Hendersonville has about 12,000 people. It is THE church to attend and features many programs. Sunday mornings there are three services, one being contemporary, and two periods of Sunday School meetings. Dwight and I attended the contemporary meeting, which was quite tame. Nobody raised their hands, everybody was very proper in their attire.

I liked the minister, who is still quite young. My next-door neighbor, a senior citizen, refers to him as a "boy." But overall I came away with two impressions - one, that women play almost no role in ministry.All the ushers, the communion servers, the deacons who serve in emergencies are male. I couldn't see myself doing anything beyond baking cookies, which is not my particular gift. The other impression I got was that every sermon was essentially ending with the topic of being born again. While this is extremely important, it's only the beginning of our journey with God, and I didn't get the impression that I would be able to grow much beyond that if I stayed.

The following Sunday we went to the Family Christian Center, a pentecostal holiness church. It hadn't been easy to locate a charismatic church to begin with, so I was looking forward to it. Again, Dwight came with me. This was a very small church in a poor part of town. Dwight in particular didn't feel that he had anything in common with the lower-class people, but we did join the pastor and a few other people for lunch afterwards at a "soul-food" restaurant.

The third Sunday we tried another small charismatic church which we both liked. It's called His People Community Church, and the pastor, Emile Wolfaardt, is from South Africa. Put succinctly, I liked both the worship and the preaching - which you can check out on the website, www.hispeople.ws. But there's something more to the church, the people, and the pastor. Call it authenticity, grace, the love of Christ, the anointing of God - some of the things Emile says get under my skin in a good way! Although I have really been burnt in the past in a small church, I'm cautiously wanting to move ahead, at least for now. This church seems different somehow. Yesterday Emile (he rejects any title for himself, saying he's just like us) spent two hours getting to know Dwight and me a little better, and he showed great, genuine interest in Dwight's scholarly work and even discussed church history with him. It reminded me of Paul saying, "To the Jews I became like a Jew... that by all means I might win some".

So that's where I'm at. I'm excited about God leading me to Hendersonville at such a time as this (particularly with the difficulties at my Iowa church). I sense an anticipation in my spirit that I may grow in different ways than I have been able before. By the way, the church believes in the spiritual gifts though they would be the first to admit that they don't always function because of blockages on our part (like sin or unbelief). Women ministering are ok as well. Their vision is very close to mine, though it's not always easy to implement a vision.

So that's where I'll be headed tomorrow - back to "His People".