Tripp’s recent post on where he’s worshipped got me to thinking about that as well. Here’s my list:
Woodlawn Christian Church (Wichita, KS–I was on the cradle roll here in the late sixties)
Countryside Christian Church (Wichita, KS–I was baptized here at 7, and ordained here at 24)
Leon Christian Church (Leon, KS–I went here during most of my grade school years)
King-Solomon Christian Camp (near Solomon, KS, east of Salina along I-70–I went there a few summers during grade school)
Immanuel Bible Church (Bellingham, WA–this church was profoundly influential in my personal discipleship)
First Baptist Church (Augusta, KS–where I went with my friends till I went to Haverhill CC)
Haverhill Christian Church (Haverhill, KS–where I launched into Bible college)
Stockton Christian Church (Stockton, MO–I was a student youth minister here during college)
Mound City Federated Church and Wall Street Christian Church (Mound City, KS–I was a student pastor during college to these yoked churches. The second congregation got its name from the fact that it sat smack dab in the middle of cattle pasturage. Get it? Oh, the irony of Kansas farmers!)
Vincennes University/Christian Campus Fellowship (Vincennes, IN–I was campus minister here after college)
Greenview Christian Church (Greenview, IL–I was pastor here)
Trinity Episcopal Church (Lincoln, IL–I was a licensed lay reader and chalice bearer here after becoming an Episcopalian)
St. Alban’s Chapel (Baton Rouge, LA–on the campus of LSU; I was a lay reader and chalice bearer here while my wife went to library school)
All Saints Orthodox Church (Chicago, IL–’nuff said)
Clifton:
I was interested to find the strong pre-millenial belief statement on Immanuel Bible Church’s website. Which made me wonder about even ‘our own’ separations and factions within the Restoration Movement and its progeny -
the congregations I grew up in drew a lot of pastors from Emmanuel School of Religion in TN in years gone by and sent a lot of children to Puget Sound College of the Bible, San Jose Bible College, and Northwest Christian College, but I suspect that some of your congregations might have seen such schools as somewhat liberal.
Just idle curiousity . . . thoughts?
Eric:
I would concur about your sentiments. Although it was never directly stated, I often got the sense that when fellow RM Christians spoke of PSCB, et al, it was with a cocked eyebrow of “well, you know . . .”
Regarding Immanuel, I attended there way back in ‘85. I was a young’un in high school, so perhaps I was naive, but I definitely do not recall a large pre-mill emphasis. My somewhat unreflective take on it then, and now in memory, was that it was pretty conservative Baptist.
But Immanuel had one heck of a youth program, with solid young single men and young married men who came alongside us high school boys and both taught and demonstrated what it meant to be a Christian man. They had a passion, fervor and discipline that was remarkable to me then. It was there that I first saw the reality of a pervasively Christian life. It marked me for forever.
Ah - I guess I initially assumed that Immanuel was an RM congregation . . . nor did I intend to criticize their devotion and intention. Having made a wrong assumption about their ‘lineage’ I was interested insofar as I thought that pre-millenialism had become somewhat rare in RM circles (instrumentalists, anyway; no idea about non-instrumentalist congregations) although not entirely absent.
Even as a kid I found it interesting that, other than Fifth Sunday rallies and the like, the ‘glue’ that held a lot of congregations together was the bible colleges and seminaries to which they sent their children . . . and there were often vehement feelings on whether to support a particular school or not depending on the current administration of the school and what congregation members felt about the teaching.
Well, thanks for the reply and I hope to hear soon about the joyous day of your family’s chrismation and baptisms.
Eric:
In my view, you’re right about the Bible Colleges being the “connections” between radically autonomous congregations. Instead of a denominational headquarters, there was a “Bible college headquarters” if you will.
When I was pastor at Greenview, we were a half hour away from Lincoln Christian College. But due to my Ozark Christian College connections, in our first year we took the youth to Ozark rallies. That left me “out” with other area ministers who did all their stuff at Lincoln. (The one area minister with whom I did have good rapport was a fellow grad from Ozark–we knew one another from college, he was a grade or two ahead of me.)
I never experienced the sort of disagreement about supporting extra-congregational entities that divided some congregations. All the RM congregations I attended supported Bible colleges, mission organizations and summer camps.
Complete tangent - but as you love Classics, I just read some fascinating information about John Lloyd Stephens, an early American lawyer and travel writer and wrote this little blurb up:
He entered the Classical School in 1815 at the age of 10 to prepare for Columbia College. The headmaster informed his father: “While your son remains here, he will be exercised in Latin and Greek composition; the higher he gets the more he will have of it.” The curriculum also included history, analytical arithmetic, mechanics and chemistry, but classics were the heart of it.
He was admitted to Columbia College at 13 years of age, as secondary school didn’t really exist. Admission was by examination, under the following regulation: “‘No student shall be admitted into the lowest class of Columbia College unless he be accurately acquainted with the grammar of both the Greek and Latin tongues . . . he is to be examined upon: Caesar’s Commentaries, the Orations of Cicero against Catiline, the Oration for the Poet Archias, the Oration for Marcus Marcellus; he is to know the first eight books of Virgil’s Aeneid; the first five books of Livy; of the Gospel according to Luke and St John and the Act of the Apostles; of Dalzel’s Collectanea Graeca Minora; of the first three books of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and the first three books of Homer’s Iliad. He shall also be able to translate English into grammatical Latin, and shall be versed in the first four rules of arithmetic, the rule of three direct and inverse, decimal and vulgar fractions, with Algebra as far as the end of simple equations and with modern geography. The classical examination to be ad aperturam libri’” [from the opening of the book - e.g., from whatever portion of the text they open the book to] - Quote from Introduction to Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Patraea and the Holy Land by John Lloyd Stephens, introduction by Victor, Wolfgag von Hagen, University of Oklahoma Press 1970 ISBN 0-8061-0886-X
Oh to have acquired such skills by 13!
I believe that the entrance examination to Transylvania College (Lexington, Kentucky), which Pres. Jefferson Davis passed, was similarly demanding. I doubt very much whether ANY of the tenured faculty of th institution (or virtually any American Institution of “Higher Education,”) could pass these sort of stock entrance exams of yesteryear.
Hopefully, early retirement from the law will allow me to complete (OK, “start,”) my Classical and Christian educations.