{"id":3494,"date":"2010-08-25T14:19:07","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T14:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/warrenmyers.com\/blog\/?p=183"},"modified":"2010-08-25T14:19:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T14:19:07","slug":"church-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=3494","title":{"rendered":"church hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For several months, my wife and I have been church hunting in the Lexington area&#8230; a process far more difficult than we had anticipated!<\/p>\n<p>Our main goals have been these, in the order of priority:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Must preach from the Bible<\/li>\n<li>No women in prominent leadership roles (deacons or pastors)<\/li>\n<li>An excited community of believers who <em>want<\/em> to worship together<\/li>\n<li>Biblical songs &#8211; and not done in a &#8220;performance&#8221; fashion<\/li>\n<li>A community of folks our age to get to know<\/li>\n<li>It needs to be <strong>church<\/strong> &#8211; not a media festival<\/li>\n<li>Paid staff should <em>need<\/em> to exist, and should be minimal outside the pastors<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Several other smaller issues have floated through our minds as we&#8217;ve discussed various places, both before and after our visits: version of the Bible utilized, views on non-central issues, etc.<\/p>\n<p>One place we visited is no longer operating &#8211; we don&#8217;t know why, and don&#8217;t want to.<\/p>\n<p>Another turned out to have a performance-oriented music program (ie, the choir sang, and the congregation could join or not, but more did the &#8220;not&#8221; than the &#8220;did&#8221;). They also had a couple women pastors that we thought were more along the lines of support staff.<\/p>\n<p>Another used a version of the Bible we both have issues with from exegetical and expositional points-of-view.<\/p>\n<p>However, the most recent place we have visited, we have returned-to &#8211; the first place we&#8217;ve considered coming back to, and we&#8217;ve now visited not only their morning service, but one of the Sunday School classes, and last night went to find out more about all the things the church is involved-in in the community, state, nation, and globe. <a href=\"http:\/\/portermemorial.com\">Porter Memorial Baptist Church<\/a> is located just south of Man-O-War on Nicholasville Rd in Lexington. That puts it about 15 minutes from our apartment &#8211; a very accessible distance.<\/p>\n<p>The Sunday School class we&#8217;ve started attending is the <a href=\"http:\/\/pmbcyoungmarriedclass.blogspot.com\">Young Married<\/a> one, led a by one of the young married folks, Chandler.<\/p>\n<p>Being without a &#8220;home&#8221; church has been hard on both of us, and we&#8217;re hoping to be able to link-in with one soon &#8211; maybe Porter will be that link for us \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For several months, my wife and I have been church hunting in the Lexington area&#8230; a process far more difficult than we had anticipated! Our main goals have been these, in the order of priority: Must preach from the Bible No women in prominent leadership roles (deacons or pastors) An excited community of believers who &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=3494\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">church hunting<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,31],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-3494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-personal"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}