First Baptist Church, Long Beach, MS

In the "Twenty-something" Sunday School class, Daniel told us about the oak tree that used to be in the center of the courtyard of the old church. You can still see the oak tree; it stands. The church that surrounded it was utterly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. From the reports I heard while talking to people at First Baptist in Long Beach, Mississippi, a new church was built after the old one came down -- and by a new church they didn't just mean the building.

In 1909, twenty-one charter members of the first First Baptist Church of Long Beach met together in a school, and a year later they were meeting in a church building. In 2005, after their church building was destroyed by the storm, the congregation of First Baptist Long Beach was again meeting in a school. That first Sunday service after the storm was a joyous reunion; discovering who had survived the storm and who was still in town.

The congregation moved from school to school after the hurricane. Food and clothing were also distributed from several of the same locations. Most everyone in the congregation was involved in the process of distributing goods to those in need, cleaning debris and rebuilding structures.

At one point the congregation was meeting in a building with a roof but no walls. The senior pastor, Dr. LaRue Stephens, told the congregation that it must continue on like that, as though there were no walls between the church and the community, reaching out to those in need. I talked to an usher named John who said about Dr. Stephens, "I love that man. He took on so much after Katrina in the rebuilding process. I'd lay down my life for that man."

After the storm, many people came to help. Natives were amazed to see truck after truck arrive bearing goods, with no payment expected for the goods or the drivers. Rick and Lynn, a couple who lived in Baltimore, Maryland, read about the devastation on the Gulf Coast and felt called to move to Long Beach. Rick brought his construction skills to Alabama to lead work teams, and Lynn soon followed. The couple had to live month after month in a trailer until they finally moved into a house. Once they had a house, they used it to shelter teams of workers on short term mission trips.*

Pastor John Jones came to the church after Katrina, but he believes the overflowing generosity shown to the church led to a spirit of generosity in the church. In the years following the storm, many in the congregation served the needs of the community. Among other things, the church has run Beach Club, an after school club for children.

One of the most impressive ministries of the church is their overseas missions trips. A couple of years after Pastor John arrived at Long Beach, he helped plan a missions trip to Peru. Since then, the church, which has about five hundred members, has sponsored trips to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, China, and, soon, a trip to India. Every six months the church sends a group to Haiti, rotating ministry and medical teams. John said about a hundred church members have been on mission trips, but Sandy Stephens, the senior pastor's wife, put the number closer to one hundred and fifty. Either of those numbers makes for an impressive percentage of the congregation involved in missions.

The youth group has taken mission trips to Vieux Carre Baptist, the church we visited in the French Quarter of New Orleans. This coming summer, there will be a youth trip to Chicago. Mindy and I had the opportunity to visit the Wednesday night youth group and talk about our church visiting adventure this year. John wants to expose kids to great variety of churches in different settings and cultures.

On Wednesday night, we met Rachel, who volunteers in the youth group (she's the one who invited us to the Twenty-somethings Sunday School class). She's only been attending the church for a year and a half, but she was attracted by the missions focus of the church. She believes that a church that doesn't have such an outward focus will be a struggling church. Rachel said there were other factors that attracted her to the church: she wanted to sing in a choir, which the church has. She was drawn to Bill and Beth, the leaders of her Sunday School class, who demonstrated great care for her. She also said that the church has helped her grow in her devotional and prayer life.

We heard story after story of God's care for the people of the church after Katrina and how that led to a spirit of giving to others. I couldn't help but think of these words of Paul from the first chapter of Second Corinthians: "He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

God has taken the people of Long Beach Baptist through the storm and they have taken up the responsibility of doing the same for others.

*A sidebar about Rick and Lynn and how we came to stay with them, illustrating the kind of thing that keeps happening on this journey: In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we stayed with an old friend and visited her church. At that church, a member of the worship team gave us the name of a pastor in New Orleans, leading us to stay there. While helping with a project at the church in New Orleans, new friends put us in touch with John Jones, the Student Ministries pastor at First Baptist, Long Beach. John called Rick and Lynn, confident they would house us sight unseen. His confidence in their hospitality proved well founded.

Statistics

Service Length: 1 hour 13 minutes

Sermon Length: 34 minutes

Visitor Treatment: a number of people said hello as we entered the building (one man was stationed outside to greet people as they came in, and a few others were inside or at the door to the worship center). The welcome center is highly visible when entering, as are the check-in locations for nursery and preschool children. The greeting time in worship was warm, and visitors were encouraged to fill out registration forms (we saw one version at the welcome center and another during the worship service. Either way, visitors were encouraged to place them in the offering plates as they left).

Followup by Tuesday Morning: none (but we had lunch with several members of the church on Sunday, and were in touch via FaceBook with a couple others).We also got an email from the church's Minister of Education on Tuesday.

Our Rough Count: 350

Probable Ushers' Count: 415

Snacks: vending machines in cafe area; homemade biscuits with butter and jam, coffee and water in the Twenty-somethings Sunday School class

Musicians: Young Musicians Choir: 8 girls and 9 boys, singing two songs with music track

Adult Choir: 11 men, 15 women

additional: organ (woman), piano (woman), electric guitar (man), electric bass (man), director (man)

Songs: "Family of God"

"He keeps me singing"

"This is amazing grace" (Young Musicians)

"Amazing grace/my chains are gone" (Young Musicians)

"Down at the cross"

"Grace alone"

"His grace will lead us through" (Adult Choir)

"Just as I am"

Miles to church: 2

Miles from start: 7,865

Total 2016 Miles: 7,820

Church website: www.fbclb.com

First Congregational Church of Long Beach

This month we're visiting churches that are featured in movies, so it seems reasonable to first deal with expectations raised by viewing the movie. This week's church was used as a location for the Robin Williams film "License to Wed." Here are three things found in the film which we didn't find at the actual church:

1) The pastors are not wildly antic stand-up comedians. Yes, I know that some may find such clergy appealing, but do you really want your pastor making zany asides about your mother's liver disease? Senior Minister the Rev. Elena Larssen and  Associate Minister the Rev. John Forrest Douglas seemed to be quite pleasant and kind, both with a decent sense of humor, but neither seemed destined to be opening at the Improv any time soon.

2) Late comers were not shamed. In the film, Williams interrupts his own prayer to note that the couple under his premarital counseling is late for church. The choir sings a special little "you're late" song reminiscent of the white rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland." When we were at this church, anyway, late comers entered in peace. Shaming people for any reason would be at odds with the middle part of the church motto: "A Liberal Church, Welcoming of All, Passionately Committed to Social Justice."

3) St. Augustine's Church in the film is quite nebulous about its denominational affiliation, whereas First Congregational is clear about its denominational affiliation, proud of their descent from the Pilgrims. In a conversation with folks before church, there were several mentions (usually jovial) of someone or other being a "good Congregationalist" and the denomination received a few hat tips during the service.

We arrived half an hour before the service and a number of people welcomed us and someone directed me to a church timeline filling a wall in the fellowship hall ("Koinonia Room"). The display had been set up the previous year in celebration of the church building's hundredth anniversary. There were a number of interesting entries through the years (I was amused by a mention of a petition early in the 20th century against billiards and pool tables, and was interested to see the church's proclamations against Hitler in the early 1930's).

The timeline noted television shows that been filmed at the church, including Ally McBeal and Criminal Minds. A gentleman named Chan told me that American Horror Story had recently done location filming there. Chan had been serving as church secretary when Ally McBeal filmed, and said that everything that might interrupt filming had been removed then, except the church's answering machine.

I asked Chan how long he had been attending the church. He said he and his partner first came to the church in 1987.  He believed they might have been the church's first openly gay couple. (I noticed that the timeline included the church's participation in a Gay Pride parade in 1985.) Chan said he believed a third of the church was gay or lesbian, though someone else thought half would be more accurate. (Another gentleman, Ben, told Mindy that the official figure is 43%.) Chan and Ben both mentioned that the associate minister is gay (which the church's website also mentions). A number of people we talked to said that the church's welcoming nature is what first appealed to them.

The service opened with the sound of a Buddhist singing bowl and the progression of the choir in their robes to the front of the sanctuary. (Mindy noticed the organist in shorts providing a nice casual contrast to the choir and clerical robes.) During the service, the choir that day sang a Randy Stonehill song from the eighties, "Shut de Do'." (In the weekly church newsletter, the choir director said of the song, "What strikes me is that the only thing required to keep the devil at bay, in the words of this week's anthem, is a door that is kept shut. The door, of course, is just as figurative as the devil ... but sometimes an actual door or two can make a difference.")

The church was beginning the annual stewardship drive, which I had heard people talking about before the service. During the "Stewardship Moment", a member of the congregation urged people to consider the benefit the church provided by offering opportunities to volunteer.  The Drop-In Center provides meals for the homeless, and a number of students have used this as an opportunity to meet requirements for volunteer hours. Other groups have served at the center, including Hindu, Muslim and Jewish organizations. The DAYS Program provides language and math tutoring for schoolchildren.Volunteering for these programs, the speaker noted, made people "feel better about themselves."

The prayer time was introduced as a "moment to take a deep breath."  The conclusion of the prayer was not, as is common in churches, in Jesus' name, but rather "we pray this in your many names." (There is a reason we honor the name of Jesus above all others. In Philippians 2, Paul  wrote, "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."*)

Rev. Douglas gave the sermon, using Mark 12:41-44 (where a widow donated all she had, two small coins, to God's service) as his starting point. He began by telling the story of "The Lion King," saying that just as Simba believed Scar's lies, we tell ourselves lies. We say, "I'm not smart enough" or "I'm not good enough for that job." But, he said, the widow's story teaches us that "YOU ARE ENOUGH."

The thing is, though we sometimes tell ourselves untrue and negative messages, sometimes we're not smart enough. That's why Harvard didn't come begging me to take their scholarship money. And I'm not up to the job of center for the Golden State Warriors. Those who use a twelve-step program to deal with their addictions admit regularly that by themselves, they're not enough to deal with their cravings. And I'm not good enough for salvation without the grace that comes through Christ's death on the cross. I'm not enough, but Jesus is.

All of this made me rather sad this week. You see, as we've visited various churches, we obviously encounter beliefs and practices that differ from our own.  We usually consider these minor things. But this church, in an article explaining their liberal theology, states that for most who are part of the church, "Jesus is not a divine figure sent from God to pay for the sins of a fallen humanity." In the Bible, 1 John 4:2 -3 reads, "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God."

We really liked the kind people we met at this church, and they serve their community in fine ways. But salvation through Jesus Christ is heart of the Christian gospel. As C. S. Lewis famously argued, Jesus was the Lord, a liar or a lunatic. This church wishes to honor Jesus as a good teacher, but He didn't leave us that option.

*Philippians 2:9-11, NIV

Statistics:

Service Length: 1 hour 16 minutes

Sermon Length: 13 minutes

Visitor Treatment: "Passing the peace" was a warm greeting time during the service, and several people greeted us as we walked around before worship began. Each pew had an attendance form that all were encouraged to use to register their attendance.

Followup by Tuesday Morning: Welcoming email on Monday afternoon (from the Associate Minister)

Our Rough Count: 145

Probable Ushers' Count: 175

Snacks: coffee, tea and hot chocolate in the courtyard; cookies, fruit and other treats available in the Koinonia room for a donation to the Outreach and Social Justice committee

Musicians: organist/bongos (male), choir director/maracas (male), rhythm sticks (male), full choir (forgot to count, but probably about 15-20 men, 15-20 women), youth bell choir (about 10 middle school aged students), guitar (male) and percussion box (male) for a special song

Songs: organ, "Prelude on 'Borning Cry'"

            "We Sing Because"

            "Song of Welcome"

            bell choir, "A Festive Intrada"

            "I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry"

            choir, "Shut de Do'"

            special music, "It's Just Leaving"

            "There's a Spirit in the Air"

            organ, "Diptych (based on 'Orientis Partibus')"

            "Doxology"

            "What a Covenant"

            organ postlude (which people stayed for) "Trumpet Toccata"

Miles to place: 498

Total California Miles: 15,624

Church website: www.firstchurchlb.org