{"id":7874,"date":"2015-08-17T07:04:29","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T13:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=7874"},"modified":"2015-08-17T18:12:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T00:12:59","slug":"at-your-service-nice-surprise-in-store-at-emmanuel-baptist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/08\/at-your-service-nice-surprise-in-store-at-emmanuel-baptist\/","title":{"rendered":"At Your Service: Nice surprise in store at Emmanuel Baptist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emmanuel\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Here was another very large West End Church, but with a pleasant surprise.<\/p><\/div>\n

Emmanuel Baptist Church<\/strong>,\u00a0328 S. Shiloh Road
\nService<\/strong>: 8 a.m., Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015
\nLength of service<\/strong>: 1 hour, 6 minutes. Length of sermon<\/strong>: 35 minutes<\/p>\n

I lucked out this week. I chose the 8 a.m. service at Emmanuel only because it fit with my plans for the day. I didn\u2019t know until I got back and looked at Emmanuel\u2019s website that the early gathering is always the bluegrass gospel music service, with \u201ccontemporary praise music\u201d at 9:30 and 11.<\/p>\n

On stage\u2014yes, stage; this is another very large West End church\u2014were three guitars, a fiddle, mandolin, dobro and upright bass. I wasn\u2019t familiar with the first couple of songs but enjoyed what I was hearing, and then the band swung into a fine medley consisting of \u201cI Saw the Light,\u201d \u201cBlood of the Lamb\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ll Fly Away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AtYourService\"<\/a>This was the first time I had heard Hank Williams (\u201cI Saw the Light\u201d) at a church service. I think it\u2019s safe to say I sang along with as much enthusiasm as I\u2019ve ever shown in church.<\/p>\n

Then came an even better song, \u201cFarther Along,\u201d one of my favorites. Its chorus ends, \u201cWe\u2019ll understand it, all by and by.\u201d The song was trailing off when Pastor Paul Jones strolled out in a checked shirt under a sweater and said, \u201cI\u2019m kinda looking forward to that \u2018by and by.\u2019 It\u2019s the here and now that\u2019s getting me down.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a few more remarks and announcements, the band played one more song, \u201cIn the Sweet By and By.\u201d This is a sect, I realized, with a heavy emphasis on the hereafter. And sure enough, when the song concluded and Jones launched into his sermon, the subject was how members of his flock might get into heaven.<\/p>\n

\n
What is this series about?<\/h5>\n

To read the essay that introduced this series click here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He took as his text 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, in which Paul talks about destroying strongholds, taking captive \u201cevery thought \u2026 to obey Christ\u201d and punishing every disobedience. Jones said Paul based this discussion of spiritual warfare on the standard Roman techniques of subduing its enemies.<\/p>\n

This explained, I think, why the large stage was strewn with artifacts of war, including combat boots and helmets, duffel bags, ammo boxes, even a large tent draped with camouflage netting. The bulletin said this was the third week of a lecture series.<\/p>\n

Jones said the struggle with Satan is relentless and it is not haphazard on the enemy\u2019s part. Satan knows all our weaknesses and is an expert at exploiting them, at creating within us \u201csatanic strongholds,\u201d by which he meant vices or sins. Jones, a former college football player, warned that Satan has a playbook on each one of us.<\/p>\n

He said strongholds begin as thoughts, then turn into attitudes, actions and habits. We can destroy them only by concentrated, intentional attacks, he said, and in this pursuit the notion of \u201cmoderation in all things\u201d is downright foolish. It\u2019s as if a serial killer said, \u201cI think if I could just murder less, everything would be OK,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>If a particular action is wrong, he said, what is the benefit of continuing to do it in moderation? And once you destroy a stronghold you have to stop the enemy\u2019s future incursions by immediately taking every errant thought and deed captive and doing away with it.<\/p>\n

He repeated something he said he heard from his eighth-grade religion teacher: \u201cIf a bird lands on your head, it\u2019s not your fault. If it makes a nest there, it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, so good. I thought his advice for overcoming vices and bad habits was perfectly reasonable\u2014so reasonable that you could strip away all the talk of Satan and Jesus and put it in the mouth of a secular psychologist.<\/p>\n

But of course that would make no sense to Pastor Jones or, presumably, his congregation. For the goal is not merely to conquer sin for the sake of improving our temporal existence. Everything aims at heaven, as those gospel songs tell us, and Jones scoffed at those \u201cwho don\u2019t really believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

I distinctly remember feeling the first pangs of heresy when the nuns at my Catholic school told me the same thing, that all non-Christians were bound for hell. It struck me as merely unfair then. Now, I find it dangerously arrogant in a world teeming with religions and made so small by technology.<\/p>\n

Which isn\u2019t to say that I felt anything dangerous in the presence of Jones or his flock. It was a mostly older crowd that turned out for the bluegrass service, and I was a little surprised how at-home I felt there, how comfortable it was to sing along with familiar old tunes.<\/p>\n

And Jones didn\u2019t leave his flock feeling all smug, either. He said the important thing was giving themselves up to Christ: \u201cYou can give yourself to Jesus this morning and get killed at the roundabout\u201d (I sensed some nervous shuffling among the elderly drivers), \u201cbut heaven is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

If they went on living after giving themselves to Jesus, however, the battle against Satan would have to continue to be fought every day, he said. I hope it wasn\u2019t blasphemous of me to leave there feeling as good as I did, despite my heathenism.<\/p>\n

Naturally, my joy was heightened by the thought that I hadn\u2019t had to sit through another long session of contemporary praise music.<\/p>\n

Previously:<\/strong>\u00a0Chapter 1:<\/strong>\u00a0St. Patrick Co-Cathedral<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2:<\/strong>\u00a0Mount Olive Lutheran Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3:<\/strong>\u00a0Full Gospel Revival Tabernacle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 4:<\/strong>\u00a0First Church of Christ, Scientist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 5;<\/strong>\u00a0First Baptist Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 6<\/strong>: Billings Freedom Church.<\/a><\/p>\n

Chapter 7<\/strong>: Faith Chapel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 8<\/strong>: Eagle Ministries Inc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter<\/strong> 9<\/strong>: First United Methodist Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 10<\/strong>: Pilgrim Congregational Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 11<\/strong>:\u00a0Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Meetinghouse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 12<\/strong>: First Christian Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 13<\/strong>: Victorious Word Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 14<\/strong>: Oasis Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 15<\/strong>: Harvest Church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 16<\/strong>: Billings Association of Humanists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chapter 17<\/strong>: Word of Life Fellowship.<\/a><\/p>\n

Next Week<\/strong>:\u00a0St. Nicholas Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emmanuel Baptist Church,\u00a0328 S. Shiloh Road Service: 8 a.m., Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015 Length of service: 1 hour, 6 minutes. Length of sermon: 35 minutes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2349],"tags":[2946,2944,42,2945],"class_list":["post-7874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-at-your-service","tag-bluegrass-music","tag-emmanuel-baptist-church","tag-hank-williams","tag-paul-jones","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}