Introduce Your Church

This was one of the blog posts a while ago, but I think it will be a good topic on the forums, too. Tell a little bit about your church - if you want, you can tell about how it got started, or even how your denomination was started.

Our church is family-integrated and nondenominational. I can't say how it started because our family hasn't been going nearly as long as its been around, but I can say that our elders strive to have a solid Biblical foundation for it. They are convicted to have a church that follows God's standards for churches.
Women are not allowed to speak in church-only men can share and pray. A male adult leads worship, and all men are encouraged to be the leaders of their households that God wants them to be.

My Church (Hope Community Church in Westfield, MA) was actually the successful combination of two churches (Agawam Church of the Bible and another one that I forget the name of), and we are approaching our second birthday this month. Both men and women are allowed to minister in our church and it is non-denominational.

1 Corinthians 14:34 says, "women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says." This can be interpreted to mean, as Jackie Chase's church does, that women may not speak in the service at all. But here is my favorite commentator, John Gill, on this verse:

"'Let your women keep silence in the churches'… This is a restriction of, and an exception to one of the above rules, that all might prophesy; in which he would be understood of men only, and not of women; and is directed against a practice which seems to have prevailed in this church at Corinth, allowing women to preach and teach in it; and this being a disorderly practice, and what was not used in other churches, the apostle forbids and condemns, and not without reason:

'for it is not permitted unto them to speak'… that is, in public assemblies, in the church of God, they might not speak with tongues, nor prophesy, or preach, or teach the word. All speaking is not prohibited; they might speak their experiences to the church, or give an account of the work of God upon their souls; they might speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; or speak as an evidence in any case at a church meeting; but not in such sort, as carried in it direction, instruction, government, and authority. It was not allowed by God that they should speak in any authoritative manner in the church; nor was it suffered in the churches of Christ; nor was it admitted of in the Jewish synagogue; there, we are told (b), the men came to teach, and the women "to hear": and one of their canons runs thus."

So, this verse is probably saying, if we take it into context, that women were not permitted to speak in tongues, prophesy, etc. since such things were common at that time and Paul was instructing the Corinthians on how to be orderly in the service. But women are never supposed to preach to or teach men in church services–that much is clear. There are various interpretations of this passage, but what we can certainly obtain from it is that women are not allowed to preach in the church. So, GraceandGlory, the Bible says that what your church is doing is not right, to be blunt. What is your church's interpretation of that verse? I'm sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but that seems to be the Bible's clear teaching.

Yes, SBG, that is what it's like-everyone sings and women participate actively in the family and ladies Bible studies that we hold, but they do not teach/share during the services.

My family goes to Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Grace OPC is a reformed evangelical church with a commitment to historic biblical Christianity, reverent worship, and Christ-centered preaching. Grace was started about 5 or six years ago by a few families looking for and not finding a good reformed church in the area. Our family visited on holidays and some evenings but did not start coming regularly until about three years ago. We got a pastor two years ago, but he is moving to California now so we will start looking for a new pastor this fall. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church was formed in 1934 when the Presbyterian Church in the USA was becoming more and more liberal. J. Gresham Machen, along with 34 ministers, 17 ruling elders, and 79 laymen met in Philadelphia on June 11, 1936, to constitute the Presbyterian Church of America. (Because of a lawsuit brought by the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the name of the new church was changed to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1939.) The Orthodox Presbyterian is one of the most conservative of the Presbyterian denominations to this day.
(I took part of the history of the churches from thier websites: http://www.graceopcfargo.org/about-grace-opc.html and http://www.opc.org/whatis.html)

Tone it down, Birthday Boy!

By the way, where do you go to church?

Hey, at least I apologized for sounding harsh! :D

I'm not sure his Dad wants him to tell everyone where he goes to church, WM.

Hey, @Octo, have you checked out the Faith Family Friends Church down the road? It seems like a good fit for you to try out. I think they have a no-tattoos, no-piercings, no-strange fire policy in place that you'd enjoy. They also go all seven days of the week, just like you seem to think everyone else should do; so it might be something worth checking out.??

No answer will be granted to such silliness.

www.rushcreekbiblechurch.org

Like Jackie Chase's church, ours in family-integrated and non-denominational; women are allowed to share prayer requests on stage, but they are not permitted in any formal ministry positions.

My Church is also named Hope Community Church, and is also non-denominational, only ours is in MI.

My family and I attend a Hebraic roots/ messianic/ jewish congregation that meets on Saturdays. It is called Beit Hallel. We go to that church about once a month. Other than that we just do home church. Beit Hallel's services usually last about 3 hours and include music, dancing, prayers, bible reading, and a teaching and sometimes a meal after the service. The size varies from about 10 or 15 to about 30 or 40. Sometimes when they have concerts there will be about 100 people. I prefer the home church over Beit Hallel.

@ All I go to a Christian Reformed church and a Wesleyan church. Although my doctrinal beliefs are more in line with the CRC. I love going to both of them. They are both small churches of about 40 to 60 people.

Us Eddys' church (the ones on memverse are Andrew, Sarah, Rebekah, and myself) is Manchester Community Church. Our Dad is the pastor and he's great! We are more or less 4 point Calvinists (Maybe 4.5 Calvinists), and our church is going to be 100 years old in 2014. We are now pretty much family integrated though it was not always that way before Dad was the pastor. One of my favorite things about our church (besides Dad being such a wonderful godly man always preaching out of the Bible) is that as a teenager I really appreciate the adults in our church wanting to be involved in us young peoples lives. I think I can truthfully say that we don't deal with the age barrier that I hear of a lot of times in churches. Which is incredibly neat.

Oh, I forgot to say, we have about 150 people any given Sunday morning. (we actually have a policy about not counting people, I think sort of as a reaction to people ranking success of the church on numbers, so that's just an estimate).

I think it's more like 200 hundred (a little less but closer to 200). That's an estimate too. :)

What happened to us not using the forums?? :P

What did I say about not using forums?

har-har…you're so funny

Anyone else want to introduce their church?

I attend the same church as Aidan B.

We go to a great independent baptist church about 45 minutes from our house. Wyldewood Baptist church. We believe in salvation by faith alone, and full submersion baptism as a response to salvation. Our pastor just retired and we now have a new pastor, but they are both great, and very personable. We dont have any women preaching stuff going on, we try to bring glory to God in everything we do..

My church was started by my Dad, Grandpa, and Great Grandpa about twenty years ago. They felt that the present church that our families had been attending was losing it's focus and was not the conservative church that they wanted their families to grow up in, so they started our church. We are a independent church, I guess if you were to try an put us in a denomination, we would be indepentant Baptists. Our church is running about a hundred and twenty, and if I had to guess I would say that over half of them are under the age of twenty. We sing the old hymns with the piano, and do our best to follow the Scriptures teaching. i.e. us woman don't teach, ect. A couple of years ago we started what we called our gas saving services. Because so many of the people drive a ways to come to church, the gas was getting expensive to come to church Sunday morning and night, so we started having a morning service, lunch at the church, and then an afternoon service instead of a evening service. Different families take turns making lunch, and we've really enjoyed the fellowship that we can have over lunch. The last Sunday of every month we still have an evening service. Our church is called Family Fundamental Church. If your ever coming to northern Minnesota, check out our church website, and stop in. We're nothing fancy, but we try to serve God with the resources that he has given us.

Our church is a Bible church. About 80-90 people, over half are kids. The oldest kid is 14, and the youngest is a baby. Our pastor is a historian, so his preaching through Daniel was excellent!

I Go to GCF (Grace Christian Fellowship) In North Carolina

Our church is Church of God (7th Day).