Roy Bible Church

For a while, we've been planning to visit Roy Bible Church, and we finally did yesterday. Now, I had been wondering why whenever we mentioned wanting to try it out, everybody else was uninterested, because they didn't have a pastor, or whatever. After all, if there's one thing I've learned the last year, church is about much more than the pastor and his preaching; I figured that we could go and meet the elders and/or other leadership, and from that could get a pretty good understanding of the church. If the leadership is solid, we can trust them to choose a pastor who has the right character and spirit, can accurately handle the Word of truth, and is the right kind of leader. Well.... now I know a good reason for y'all to be hesitant, whether you knew it or not.

By their own words, they are a church in "transition," and the interim minister (who has been there 14 months as such; they've only been looking for a pastor since late summer) is "the kind who comes to churches that have issues to work through." They obviously didn't intend to pour out their souls to first time visitors, but there seemed to be an overwhelming cloud everywhere, as folks came up to us and said "Hi! Glad to have you! Hope you come back! Bye!" What we did learn is that their last pastor wanted them to join the Southern Baptist Convention, so they did last year. Three months ago, they voted on it, and in a close decision they are no longer in the SBC. It sounds like, having a history of and constitution requiring elder rule, the SBC trist disolved that, so that now they are without elders, without denominational oversight, and without a pastor. So the interim pastor is trying to pick up pieces and turn them in a good direction. Judging by his sermon, we'd likely agree with that direction.

Anyway, I wrote in the registry that we'd like an elder to call, so hopefully someone with some type of leadership will let us find out a bit more about them. Maybe if we tell them a bit of our background, how we don't want to "not do our homework" again, they'll oblige. If they are open with us and we see a way to usefully fit into the work of reconcilliation and whatever else needs to happen, we'd think about it.