An Interesting Sunday - 2nd Visit to APBC

This was really a mixed Sunday emotionally. There were three things to experience: the singles class, the sermon, and the 4th of July cookout.

The singles class was a mixed bag. I really like Al and Kathleen. They are very nice, very caring, and what appears to me to be very strong Christians. They ran the group: providing refreshments, taking down prayer requests and praises, and leading prayer time. Even though I didn't put in a prayer request they still remembered me in the prayer (for my church search).

But they didn't teach. An older man named David did. He is (or was) a minister and a former missionary. The teaching was... interesting. It's honestly what I've come to expect from Baptist dogma, but he made a good point--one that my dad has tried to drill into my head for years: avoid the appearance of evil. The reason I say it's what I've become used to in Baptist paradigms is the usual prohibitions: no drinking, no gambling, etc. I understand the concept of avoiding the appearance of evil, but it seems that there is something missing from the concept. (And not just from this lesson, from the whole concept in general, so it's not a strictly David thing that I'm picking on here.)

Once class was done, we transitioned to the normal service. This being the 4th of July (exactly the 4th this year) the entire service was patriotic from the music to the preaching to the invitation. We did the Star Spangled Banner and sang both verses, a new concept for some people. The congregation sang Battle Hymn of the Republic, but I inserted my own verses. (I'm a Southern Dixie type.) Pretty much everything was the same this Sunday as last, except the offering boxes were replaced with plates.

What wasn't the same at all was the preaching. The pastor really got into the patriotic spirit, and there was much animation and good, loud booming words from the pulpit. The sermon was a mix. He rightly identifies that Christians in America are quickly becoming an endangered species from a politically correct standpoint, but he nearly said that homosexuals and so forth didn't belong in church. I don't know how much of the rhetoric was heat-of-the-moment emotion and how much was premeditated, but it certainly got my attention.

Once the service was over we adjourned to their fellowship hall for a cookout. I had two invitations to sit at two different tables, and two people offered to pay for my lunch (one did). It was the same mix of hamburgers and hotdogs as well as the typical 4th of July church potluck desert type of thing. From the conversations it is abundantly clear that this church is quite conservative, that there is no great love of how things are currently being done in Washington, but a good sense of family and an almost unquestioning support of the military.

All in all it was a good Sunday. I got more information, a free lunch, and found a group of people that mesh with my social and economic leanings pretty well. But I've got a lot of thinking left to do before I decide if to commit or not.