Where To Worship

Life was good in Deland. I was completely on my own, with my new apartment, new job and beautiful new wife. She worked as a keypunch operator. I worked at a sawmill, then later operated a band saw at a place that made transformers. We lived on the edge of the Stetson University campus.

We attended Deland Baptist Temple, a small, autonomous church that was part of the World Baptist Fellowship. Their doctrine seemed to be the same as my Southern Baptist thinking and my wife’s Chapel beliefs. The people were nice. The pastor was friendly. And we fit right in. I taught some Sunday School classes and spoke to the teens. I even drove the church bus, which was actually a van. I picked up a few kids, as well as some older folks who didn’t have rides.

One character that stood out in my mind was an elderly woman from nearby Orange City, who played the piano. She was quite outspoken and opinionated, but we were drawn to her and her husband. Another fellow made a brief appearance one Sunday. He came in barefoot, was friendly in nature, and left a $1,000 check in the offering plate. That raised two questions: 1) What did he want? And 2) Was the check good? Answers: We never saw him again, and I don’t remember what the pastor spent the money on.

So why did we pick this unusual, little church? I think it was because we wanted something different from what we had been raised in. One Wednesday night, however, changed that. I was about ten minutes into my teaching when I saw the pastor and his wife sit down on each side of my wife. Then all three got up and left the room. A few minutes later my wife sat back down, alone, crying.
We left quickly after the service, and I asked her on the way home what had happened. She said that the pastor told her that her baptism was illegitimate because she had not been baptized by an ordained minister in a real church, and that she would need to be re-baptized.

Now, a word about her home church, the Plymouth Brethren. The name comes from a group that met in a home in Plymouth, England in 1830, under the teaching of John Nelson Darby. However, most of the current “assemblies,” as they are called, do not trace themselves back to this group. They see themselves as descended from the original church, always operating in the background of the organized church. Their doctrine is pretty fundamental, in line with most of conservative Christianity. They had no membership, other than the “right hand of fellowship” from the elders, their only official leaders. Their core “meeting” was a one-hour worship service each week, with open “sharing” by the men, hymn singing without musical accompaniment, and concluded with a communion service. Their women wore head coverings and kept silent. They had no pastor or minister, no seminary graduate, but would often employ a “full time worker,” who would preach and visit the sick, and, for his service, would receive one weekly freewill offering per month. An elder or the full time worker could baptize.

So the pastor at Deland Baptist Temple had a dilemma --- by his reckoning. I met with him on a Saturday. The discussion didn’t last long. I cited Ephesians 4:5 (“… one Lord, one faith, one baptism…”), and he returned with a passage on obeying the authority of leaders (Hebrews 13:17). I decided that we should leave. He requested that we not contact others in the church, so as not to cause division. I honored his request, but, in hindsight, have regretted it. While we had no intention of turning the church against the pastor, the truth that led to our departure should have been shared with, at least, those whom we knew well. We received a few phone calls, but quietly responded that it was “the Lord’s will.” Who knows what reasons the pastor gave?

This would be the first of a few run-ins I would have with clergy.