Expert: Rev. Robert Woods - 12/8/2005

Question
I am a leader in a Missionary Baptist Church that belongs to the Kentucky Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention. We are without a pastor at this time. While we search for a pastor we have been using a young preacher that attends a Independant Baptist Church. Myself and another member of the pulpit committee questioned Bro. Lee before allowing him to preach. He agrees with our doctrine in everything that we asked. A year ago we were lucky to have an average attendence of 30 to 35 on Sunday Morning. The last 2 months we have averaged 70 to 75 on Sunday morning and 50 to 55 on Sunday night in October during the morning service the day of our homecoming we had 110 which was a record for our new building we built 4 years ago. With this growth some problems have arose that I am not sure how to answer. Bro Lee has started requesting Testimony at the end of some services. I think that they have gone well. We can feel the spirit moving in our church but some of the older members don't like the giving of testimony especially if a woman stands to give testimony. They feel that a woman should not speak out in Church. Another problem we have is a question of open or closed communion. We had this argument several years ago when we came up with our church constitution. At that time we voted to have an open communion. We have since had a couple of older families join and they think real Southern Baptist Churches only have closed communion. We were told in a pulpit committee meeting the other day that we weren't real baptists because we allow these things to happen and we shouldn't allow men to preach in our church that are not real southern baptists. This took my friend and I by suprise and I didn't know how to respond. We both feel that if a person believes exactly as you do it shouldn't matter what label you use. Are we wrong to feel this way? I can't see letting the feeling of 6 people get in the way of the worship of God of the other 69 people who like the way services are going especially the 12 new members we have added in the last 2 months. Which brings up the last problem we have had come up. When we wrote our constitution we stated that the ways to join our church were to accept Christ as your Savior and be baptized. Come by letter from another church, and by Statement that you had accepted Christ at sometime and had been baptized, but that your baptism was not for salvation but as a profession of your faith. These same people believe that unless you come by letter you have to be baptized again. Can you give me some of your thoughts on these issues.  

Answer
Blessings and thank you for your questions.

1.  Testimonies - 1st of all, it is wonderful to hear that testimonies are being at the end of church.  I am sorry, but I think your older members are being like Pharisees.  Did Jesus rebuke the woman at the well when she went and testified about what God had done.

2.  Communion should only be closed to non-Christians.  Again it sounds like Pharisees are creeping in.

3.  Again, if a man is preaching the word of God, then his label shouldn't matter.

4.  I believe that once you are immersed then you don't need to be again.

I am sorry this is short.  I just got out of the hospital yesterday and I oonly have a few fingers available to type.

Blessings