At Napavine Baptist Church we are on a mission. As we look around us, we believe that Christianity has lost its power to have a positive affect on our society. We long to be the kind of Church where love abounds, yet sin is preached as sin; where the saints gather together, but sinners feel abundantly welcome.
The Bible asks the question:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah. Psalms 24:3-6
We deeply desire to be that generation that seeks Him. We have been taught how to do church in Christianity, but many Christians see that what we are doing is not having the positive affect that it should have on the world around us. The path that most churches seem to have taken is to become all things to all that we might save some. The church looks like it is only a few steps behind the world in what is called worship.
We are taking the opposite approach- we are seeking the old paths; the way Christians used to worship God in a time or times when He seemed to be pleased with His people. Therefore we use the old Bible, not the newer translations. We sing the old hymns, not the modern praise songs. We are on a mission to rediscover what God wants us to be, what the church has been in the past that encouraged Him to bless the church. Studying the revivals of the past, the saints lives and their holiness that affected the church and drew in Gods blessings.
We are focusing on a multigenerational vision by endeavoring to make and keep families strong and serving the Lord as families. We preach and teach on this, and reinforce this teaching with a bookstore that features family based books and audio and video recordings.
We even structure our Sunday services to promote families worshipping together. We have an assembly time first when we sing songs and memorize scripture. We are having Sunday school together as families and are studying character, and how we can develop character in our lives. For our worship/preaching service, we are all together (no junior church). After our preaching service, we have a potluck meal, focusing on the fellowship of families. After a clean-up time, we have an afternoon service except on the last Sunday of the month.
We also study the heritage and history of the Christian Church with special emphasis on times of revivals. We put major efforts towards personal spiritual growth rather than on building a big church congregation. |
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