A New Name. Possibly a New Place. But the Same Message.

In September 2003, Heartland Baptist Church of Oklahoma City conducted its first worship service at the Hilton Hotel in northwest Oklahoma City. Much has transpired since then, and for the past four plus years we have been meeting at the Warr Acres community center. Our church's name does not do an adequate job in reflecting our geographical location, and that will still be the case if we decide to move to the east side of Oklahoma County in the coming months. With that being said, Heartland Baptist Church of Oklahoma City will be changing its name in the near future. What our new name will be has not been determined yet, but that change is coming soon. Change can be good, even for Baptists. Remember the familiar joke? "How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?" The response is, "CHANGE?!?"

We believe our church is entering a new phase, and maybe this is a great time to change our name anyway. We are planning to start meeting on Sunday evenings in the Midwest City-Del City area starting possibly the second Sunday in September. This will be in addition to our Sunday morning worship services at the community center. The Sunday evening times will be more along the lines of what the apostle Paul did in Ephesus as he held "theological discussions" for the lost and the saved in the school of Tyrannus for a span of two years. (Acts 19:9-10). These Sunday evening gatherings (and I haven't come up with a name for them yet; we have a lot of naming to do on our hands!) will not be anything like a typical worship service. They will be low-key, informal, give-and-take discussions, but yet well-planned out talks on some very deep, intriguing, challenging doctrinal subjects that in many cases have been too long ignored in many places. The very first series of talks will be on the doctrines of grace, such as the doctrines of man's total depravity, God's unconditional election of sinners, Christ's definite atonement on the cross, the Spirit's effectual calling, and the perseverance of the saints.

I heard the testimony of a young Christian who remarked that he was tired of going to church where all he needed was a straw; rather, he was craving for a place where he could come bringing a steak knife and a fork to dig into God's meaty dish.

One purpose of these Sunday night gatherings is "to test the waters", so to speak, to see what the response might be on the east side of Oklahoma County. If after much prayer and evaluation our church determines we need to move permanently to the Midwest City-Del City area in the foreseeable future, then we will make that move, trusting the Lord to lead us every step of the way. We have all sorts of ideas and plans of how we will promote and advertise these Sunday evening gatherings, and just one of these avenues will be this blog site. We will keep everyone posted as we get closer and closer to September, and once we determine the exact place and time we will be meeting on Sunday evenings.

Your prayers will be much appreciated. We need God's wisdom, and in all things "God must increase, and we must decrease."

Yours in Christ,

Chris

P.S. My plans are to write more regularly on this blog site, and the next article that is coming soon will be "Gog and Magog I: Before Hitler, There was Haman"