Hello all:

This weekend, our congregation is out at Camp Yamhill, conducting a family encampment. I had to work all weekend, and the camp is a long way from our house, so we couldn’t go. There is a small group meeting at the building today, but we decided to go elsewhere for the day.

Our plan was to go visit an Independent Christian Church and see what it was like. I’ve been to a Disciples congregation before, but I’ve never been to an independent church before.

We looked up a church near us on CrossLink’s website, which is a site for the independent churches. We went there, and too our surprise, found that it was anything but an Independent Christian Church of the variety that we were expecting. It might be independent, and, it might be a “Christian Church”, but it is not an Independent Christian Church….

There were several references to accepting Jesus as your personal savior. There was no baptistery. Women not only played in the band, and served the Lord’s Supper, one got up and spoke for a while about Hurricane Katrina.

The Lord’s Supper was served as I stated a minute ago, which we were glad about. But when we received it, we found that the bread was a small, individually baked wafer. Not what we were expecting or hoping for.

I was uncomfortable the whole time. Even my wife, who grew up in the Assemblies of God and who joined the church reluctantly, was uncomfortable at this church. We stayed through the whole service and then left, deciding that we should do a little more research before going somewhere unfamiliar again.

It was though, an interesting experience. It reminded me alot about the more liberal members of our congregation that want to fellowship with these people.

It was obvious that the members there were sincere people who love God. However, it was very obvious that there was a lack of reverence for the word of God there. My wife was bothered by the use of twelve different versions of the bible in the sermon. One version read so differently, and had been so contemporized, that is completely lost its true meaning.

Many people may claim a love for God. They may be good people, trying hard to live a good life. However, when there is a blatant disrespect for the word of the Lord, we should not fellowship with them. For all the libs that read my blog, I am not writing about silence in the scriptures. I am writing about commands and examples.

While I appreciate our brothers call for unity, there must be a line. We should not, under any circumstances, sacrifice the word of the Lord to fellowship others.

-Clarke