:D A fellowship home!

[coveredinharmony]

Hello, brethren! I think finally, after a long search, the Lord has seen it fit to lead me to a Biblical fellowship! I went for the first time today, and I cannot tell you the feeling of being "at home" that I found.

The fellowship is a "brethren" church. They don't use the word "church" to refer to themselves, which I think makes sense (there is only one Church, after all ). I know there is a wide variety of people who are called Brethren, from pretty liberal to very, very conservative. This group seems to be in the middle, which is fine for me for now.

About half of the women wear coverings. I can't tell you, after five years in churches with all uncovered women, how strange it is to see another covered woman! Granted, they mostly wear lacy mantillas or doilies, but I am thrilled for a fellowship that understands its Biblical truth

The group is mostly older, with a scattering of thirty-somethings. I'm definitely the youngest there, but I figure that now I can have even more godly older women to teach me than your average sister

One of the sisters invited me to her (enormous) house for lunch. This woman raised fourteen children, several of whom were special needs. She, her husband, her son, and I talked for about three hours today. The sister and her husband are of my grandparents' generation, and boy did they have a lot to teach me. I thank and praise God for such an opportunity.

I'm going to a Bible study with a few of the other brethren there on Friday. I'm really excited!

Love in Christ,

Little sister Sarah

[7schmicks]

Dear Sarah,
I'm so glad for you! I have felt so lonely the past few years, because there are no churches around here where the ladies cover. There are a few Mennonite Churches, and there was a Charity-like group, but they are about 45 min. or more away, and we aren't Anabaptist (Arminian,) so we don't really fit in, anyway.

The Church were we've been going for the past few months is very friendly, and the pastor has great sermons for the most part, but today, more than half of the women were wearing pants to church. On Mother's Day, the pastor gave this nice sermon for women, partly from I Peter 3, and then,near the end, he made the statement that Peter wasn't saying that women can't go to the beauty parlor to get their hair done or put on jewelry, so I was disappointed (and glad that my little girls had gone to the bathroom!) because I think that's exactly what Peter is saying when he says, "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and the wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;)"

Needless to say, we go there because it is close, but I don't think we will ever get too deeply involved, which is hard for me in some ways. I feel so starved for real fellowship and wish we had a place to be involved in ministry!

Sister Brenda

[Tammy]

Sarah, that's wonderful! What a blessing!

[SisterNancy]

Sister Sarah, I am so happy for you! How did you find it?

sister Brenda, I so feel your lonliness...we had found a church where the pastors family wore coverings and were so happy but they have left and the new pastors family does not and the church people feel it is the "old way" of doing things. sigh. So, we are back to nothing!

I pray everyday for the woman on here to find fellowship close by.

[mitchell]

I would settle for just finding a church where the women even just wore headcoverings while in church, even if they didn't wear them all the time.

What I've run into in churches is some degree of hostility from women who are not about to be limited in any way in their pursuit of doing as they please. I don't want to be judgmental, but seeing women in a church meeting wearing tight blue jeans and short, short haircuts sort of throw me. I have even seen women in tight shorts in a Christian Orthodox church where I went for a while. (The European Orthodox women do wear headcoverings in church and would meet an uncovered woman at the door of the church and offer her a scarf with which to cover. The American Orthodox women are mostly like all the rest in this feminist-ruled culture.) I soon opened my eyes to a lot of doctrinal problems there anyway and left it. Every time the bishop would come to visit, after he left, the service kept getting more and more Greek in tone, and I wasn't Greek. Also, when I first visited there, the Virgin Mary was only a casual part of the service, then the bishop's visits also seemed to coincide with Mary becoming more and more the central theme of the service and having much more time devoted to her. I didn't mind calling her "blessed" as the Bible stated, but I did not believe in worshipping her. Sometimes what we see at a church when we first visit is not really what it is. Things change, and not always for the better.

Sister Wanda

[coveredinharmony]

I am really excited about it, too. It is nice to have a church that doesn't ask me if I'm a nun...although one of the sisters asked me if I was one of the German Brethren (and to be fair I was wearing a cape dress with a vest over it). Probably half of the women there wear pants, but for the most part they seem very accepting of different dress styles.

Strangely enough, I found the group on a message board that I'm not part of! I did a Google search for "headcovering" and several towns surrounding me. The fellowship does not have a website, so I wrote a letter to see that they existed (a twenty minute drive is too much if something doesn't exist!). Quite apparently they do!

I also visited a few of those links about home churches--and there are a few in my town. I might check those out as well, although a headcovering church--however partial--is a huge start for me!

Sister Brenda, that sounds like my first church all over again. Even before I grew more "plain" and began covering full-time, the entire concept of "It's OK to wear copious jewelry and makeup despite what the Bible says" always bothered me. If we're going to follow the Scripture, let's follow the Scripture, know what I mean?

Sister Wanda, I actually was going to become an Orthodox Christian in my early baby Christian days, simply because I heard that they practiced headcovering (I covered at least partially since day one of Christian life, oddly enough). The whole Mary and "The Saints" thing threw me too, even then. I agree with you.

Love in Christ,

Little Sister Sarah

[mitchell]

Yes, dear Little Sister Sarah,

My sojourn in the Orthodox thing was rather an education. Actually, it was a pretty large group of American people who had come into the Orthodox church and a lot of them had moved into the area from another state to establish their church. I visited one Sunday morning, and at the first, it seemed to me to be a very devout and nice service - even more scriptural in some ways than others I'd seen. . and it was very American in tone . . at first. They sang the Beatitudes, and the service seemed to me to focus more on Christ than on Mary . . at first. Then, as time went on and I went there more, as I said, the bishop visited, and every time he visited, everything began to change. The service took on an increasingly Greek tone, and he also required that standing for the duration of the service (it was not uncommon for it to go on for 2 hours!) be increased steadily, until all of us who were able would eventually be standing (like the Greek Orthodox do) for the full duration of the service. The multitude of saints and martyrs with names I couldn't pronounce were also sort of a puzzlement for me. (I realize there have been multitudes of martyrs and saints in the church over the past several centuries since Christ's ascention, but all the long, foreign sounding names threw me.) Ditto on the icons and the ever-increasing focus on the Virgin Mary, and all the "stories and names that had been handed down" supposedly, in the church, but were not found in scripture - that also threw me. . but, the final straw was just reading scripture and remembering scripture that I'd already read that said that WE were to boldly approach the Throne of Grace ourselves and that WE are kings and priests ourselves, that CHRIST is our ONLY intercessor, then the idea of confessing to the priest and him "absolving" us was not even sensible. - While they didn't have statues per se, they did have pictures painted on wooden plaques that had been allegedly okayed by one of the first big Christian councils (Nicea?). I just decided that in anything where I had doubts, it wasn't worth it to risk offending God. - The way they were going, by this time at that church, they are probably all speaking Greek. I just didn't fit into it; perhaps it was my French Huguenot Maupin blood that finally rebelled. (They were thousands of Protestants who were kicked out of France by the Catholic hierarchy, and a lot of them were killed.) I know the Orthodox church is not exactly like the Catholic church, but they are somewhat similar in some ways.

Sister Wanda

[molly]

I'm so so happy for you, Sister Sarah! ;D
I've heard some really good things about some of the conservative Brethren groups. What kind of Brethren is your fellowship? I think there is a River Brethren?? and a German Brethren???

I still haven't really found a place to go yet. About ten years ago I went with a friend to her Catholic Mass and all the ladies wore a headcovering there and I wasn't out of place at all. They were all quite nice and invited us to lunch.

I would really enjoy being in a good old timey kind of fellowship with a cape dress and headcovering dress. Can you tell me about the Brethren?

[coveredinharmony]

It is definitely hard to find a Biblical fellowship. It took me three years to find this one, and it's still not exactly right (modesty and gender distinction is lacking, it's an unbalanced congregation in terms of age, etc). Yet I praise God for a more Biblical group with which to worship Him.

The particular fellowship I go to is called "Plymouth Brethren," although I've yet to hear them use that term for themselves. The term "Brethren" is actually used by many groups who are either completely unrelated or loosely associated. There are some Brethren who are almost like black-bumper Mennonites (long-sleeved cape dresses, little technology, etc), and there are some that are very liberal (where you couldn't really tell them apart from a mainstream Protestant church).

Here's an article detailing some of the Brethren groups. I can't guarantee everything on the page, but it gives you a good idea. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brethren

This one is on the Plymouth Brethren. It's fairly generalistic but decent nonetheless: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Brethren

If I assigned a score of 100 to the most conservative and a 0 to the most liberal (simply in terms of clinging to the Bible) the fellowship I'm attending is probably a 40 or thereabouts. The preaching is solid, the setup of the church is Biblical, gender roles are clear (most of the women are/were homemakers, but to be fair most of them were mothers in the fifties and sixties). I'd love a more conservative meeting, and I'm considering contacting some local homechurches. Though the chances of finding a likeminded family in this town is pretty low.

Love in Christ,

Little Sister Sarah

[SisterNancy]

the fellowship we were attending was a Brethren in Christ. But, many of them have become liberal too. SO SAD!

We are now officially home churching. And praying God will send like minded people to us!

you know I have to share something I find funny. We were out the other day and I noticed at different times thru out the day people would look /stare at me..they would try to be polite about it though. lol If I looked back at them they turned away. lol BUT, here is the thing I forgot I was even wearing a head covering, it comes so natural to me now. So, I was wondering why people kept looking at me. HAHAHA.