Church update 3

We visited the Lutheran church yesterday as a family. I actually enjoyed the experience more than my first visit--the usual worship pastor was back, and we had a fantastic time of worship. The sermon was good, and once again, the ministry of the Holy Spirit was strong and dynamic. But Scott didn't like it. His problem with the service was not what he expected--he thought we would be theologically divergent. In fact, we were very much in line, theologically. Scott's problem was primarily with the way the "Word of wisdom" was brought forward (that was an area of disagreement he had at New Life too) and with the fact that the pastor used the NLT as his main text, which is a translation that is not even close to word-for-word. Scott's ok with a pastor using different versions of the Bible here and there in the sermon, but the NLT was his main translation, and that was Scott's issue. Anyway, these were big issues for him, so we have decided not to go back there, and that kind of left us at square one, since we didn't have another church in mind to try.


So yesterday, Scott comes to me and says "How do you feel about trying the hyper-Calvinistic East Valley Bible Church?" I must admit I was stunned. Scott and I aren't Calvinists, and it has always been commonly understood between us that we would never consider East Valley even though it is a pretty great church, from what we have heard. But Scott went on to explain his reasoning, which was that we have already realized that we're not going to find the perfect church--in some way, we're going to have to compromise on what we're hoping to have in a church--and maybe our compromise will be in attending a church with a Calvinistic viewpoint. At least as far as theological differences go, this is one we respect, even if we don't entirely agree with it; after all, the things that are discussed in the Calvinist-Arminian debate are beyond human understanding, so no one's conception of how all that "predestination/election" stuff works is complete. One drawback is that Scott would most likely not be permitted to teach there, since he couldn't affirm "TULIP", but we would be able to participate, if we decide this is where God is leading us to make our home.

This new search is taking us into all kinds of churches I never thought I'd try!