First Baptist Church

Ok, so I went to a First Baptist Church this morning at the reccommendation of Kyle, my FOCUS leader. I must admit though that there were a few things that slightly threw me. These are things that I admit I really don't know much about, they are just things that came up that seemed strange to me.

First of all, they used a verion of the Bible I have never heard of before, let alone used. I was brought up reading the New King James version whereas they used the English Standard version. At first this threw me quite a bit because the pastor opened to 1 Corinthians 1:2 and began reading and I accidentally opened to 2 Corinthians 1:2. While the two passages are very similar, I was horrified at how much more the pastor had in this one verse than was in my Bible. I thought, "What have these people done?? Why have they added to the Scripture??" But then I realized my mistake and that relieved the majority of my worries. I must however look into this English Standard version and see what it's all about.

Secondly, the pastor, who I might also mention is going to be one of my professors this semester, did not merely read through a passage and talk about it as I am accostumed to doing. Instead, he went through a topical study titled "What is the Church?" This contributed to my next point which is:

Thirdly, the messaged seemed pretty shallow. Sure, there was a lot of talk about how our lives should be in accordance with what we believe in because we have been called to redemption, but it seemed surface to me because he only read a couple verses and the rest of what he said was merely coming from his own opinion. I'm sure most of what he was saying was Biblical, but I would have liked him to have read more verses that expressed the point he was making.

So that is my first impression of First Baptist Church. I will probably go back again one or two more times before deciding if these are issues that I am ok with.

Maybe Kyle will be able to explain to me the reasoning of using the English Standard version and topical teaching.