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Coming to the Faith

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Who are the Seventh Day Baptists?

Coming to the Faith (Part 4)

We were already a church in the real sense, in that we were a group of Christians engaged in fellowship and worship, but we began to talk about becoming a church that could be more of service and more visible to the Cradock community where the Alexander family were already living and serving.

One day during the summer David told me that a Russell Johnson, the National Extension Minister from the Seventh Day Baptist denomination was going to be coming to our Sabbath service. I was very excited because, although I already called myself a Seventh Day Baptist, I had never actual met someone who was actually a member of a Seventh Day Baptist church. After the Sabbath service we spent several hours talking with him, asking him questions about the Seventh Day Baptist church and trying, though him, to get an idea of what the Seventh Day Baptist church as a whole was like. The openness he displayed and the overall good impression he made went a long way towards our decision to continue to seek affiliation with the Seventh Day Baptist denomination. He would visit our fellowship several times over the next couple of years and we would talk with him on the phone several more times.

David and I began to work on a church covenant and by-laws. Russell Johnson gave us helpful advise on both. Since I had a computer I was given the job of typing the drafts. The work on the by-laws went fairly easily and quickly but the covenant was a struggle that went through many drafts. David and I did not want the covenant to be a theological exercise but a few people wanted a detailed, creedal, document. Finally David and I decided to go with a fairly simply covenant and when we showed it to Russell Johnson he concurred. The simple, non-creedal, covenant was more in keeping with Seventh Day Baptist ideals which allow freedom on thought in areas not central to the Christian faith. The vast majority of the members of our fellowship concurred. In early October we were finally done with the Covenant and church by-laws. During the Sabbath service on October 15th, we each signed the covenant and after the service returned to the Alexander home for a small celebration.

This was not the birth of a new church, we had already been that, this was the birth of a mission, a mission to the Cradock community of Portsmouth and all of the Tidewater region of Virginia.

As I am completing this project, in the Fall of 1998, I am stationed in Hawaii. As part of my preparation for retirement from the navy I have moved my church membership to my hometown church, the Centralia Seventh Day Baptist church of Lewis county in Washington state.

Although I am no longer a member of the Abundant Life SDB Church I remain in touch with my good friends David and Gloreen Alexander. Russell Johnson, and his wife Jennifer have also become personnel friends of our family.

It is my hope and prayer that I can continue to use my talents to assist both the Seventh Day Baptist denomination and the Centralia SDB church and expand the understanding of the Sabbath within the Christian community.