For several months, my wife and I have been church hunting in the Lexington area… a process far more difficult than we had anticipated!
Our main goals have been these, in the order of priority:
- Must preach from the Bible
- No women in prominent leadership roles (deacons or pastors)
- An excited community of believers who want to worship together
- Biblical songs – and not done in a “performance” fashion
- A community of folks our age to get to know
- It needs to be church – not a media festival
- Paid staff should need to exist, and should be minimal outside the pastors
Several other smaller issues have floated through our minds as we’ve discussed various places, both before and after our visits: version of the Bible utilized, views on non-central issues, etc.
One place we visited is no longer operating – we don’t know why, and don’t want to.
Another turned out to have a performance-oriented music program (ie, the choir sang, and the congregation could join or not, but more did the “not” than the “did”). They also had a couple women pastors that we thought were more along the lines of support staff.
Another used a version of the Bible we both have issues with from exegetical and expositional points-of-view.
However, the most recent place we have visited, we have returned-to – the first place we’ve considered coming back to, and we’ve now visited not only their morning service, but one of the Sunday School classes, and last night went to find out more about all the things the church is involved-in in the community, state, nation, and globe. Porter Memorial Baptist Church is located just south of Man-O-War on Nicholasville Rd in Lexington. That puts it about 15 minutes from our apartment – a very accessible distance.
The Sunday School class we’ve started attending is the Young Married one, led a by one of the young married folks, Chandler.
Being without a “home” church has been hard on both of us, and we’re hoping to be able to link-in with one soon – maybe Porter will be that link for us 🙂