VACAVILLE, Calif. (BP)–How far does a church go to make a worship experience relevant to the congregation’s culture?
First Baptist Church in Vacaville, Calif., a church with a most traditional name, is anything but traditional, except, perhaps, in the first of its three worship services every Sunday morning, in which worshipers use hymnals and pastor Leroy Gainey may wear a coat and tie.
By the second service, things are loosening up. Gainey has shed his tie and the choir begins moving to the praise and worship choruses and the congregation gets more involved, answering Gainey with “Amens” and “That’s right.”
By the third service, the choir is raising the rafters, the congregation is breaking forth in praise and there is not a coat or tie in sight.
While the style may change, though, the message stays the same: God loves you. He is calling you to Him. Here’s what it takes to be saved. Nothing is left out and nothing, absolutely nothing, gets watered down.
Gainey has been pastor of the 58-year-old church since 1989. The town is about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento and, even with a two-hour commute, it is considered a bedroom community.
“Lots of our people drive into the city to work. An hour, two hours is not considered unusual here,” Gainey said. Some of the church members drive an hour or more for church. “What we have learned is that around here people don’t necessarily go to a neighborhood church. They go to church where their needs are met. Because we are so different, we don’t have a lot of competition as a multicultural church.”
Gainey knows this by experience. He not only is First Baptist’s pastor, but also LifeWay Christian Resource’s liaison professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif., in suburban San Francisco. Golden Gate brought Gainey from New York to the seminary in 1987.
Three or four times every week Gainey does the 100-mile round-trip drive to the seminary where he teaches classes in Christian education and handles administrative duties.
“I love teaching and the interaction with the students,” he said. “Living out here, you just see so many needs and our students are so willing to do what it takes to prepare to meet them.”
But Gainey also loves preaching at First Baptist.
“It is so exciting here [at the church],” he said. “These people are excited about the Lord, excited about learning.”
First Baptist — a stirring combination of Caucasians, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics — is a church that doesn’t let the adage that the 11 o’clock hour on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America apply.
“Our people reflect the makeup of California,” Gainey said. “The faces you see in our services are the faces you see every day of the week.”
While it is a wonderful thing to have such a racially and ethnically diverse congregation, Gainey acknowledged problems that can occur for that very reason. Homogeneous churches have conflict, he said, but it is heightened in an ethnically diverse church like First Baptist.
“It’s heightened on the church level and it’s heightened on the family level with the interracial marriages,” he said. “We’ve had to work on our conflict-solving skills.
“We work at keeping things good,” he said. “There are, of course, some inherent problems within families of mixed race. When people come from different backgrounds and cultures, clashes happen, but we learn to deal with it and our church helps those families deal with their own pressures.”
Youth pastor Joseph Lugo, originally from Waco, Texas, said the presence of different cultures in the church makes everyone more sensitive to not worrying about things that don’t really matter.
“When we have differences of opinion about worship or whatever, we always have to sit back and look at the people who disagree with us and think, Is this really an issue that is worth arguing about or can we just accept that the black church tradition sees this this way and the Asian tradition sees this another way?” he said.
The same attitude goes for Lugo’s youth program. “We have a lot of youth on Wednesday night who are unchurched and unchristian, but they are coming to church and we welcome them just like they are. We have to remember they are coming from a different culture and background.”
For such a diverse ministry, First Baptist has found materials produced by LifeWay beneficial in its range of ministries.
At their last church leadership training retreat, the untraditional First Baptist emphasized growing their Sunday School using the very traditional Sunday School growth methods. “You know — Andy Anderson, the growth spiral, Flake’s Formula,” Gainey said.
“Those plans work!” Gainey said. “They are all about one-to-one relationships and that’s something LifeWay does as well as anyone.”
Gainey said First Baptist members are encouraged to go through a four-step process in their Christian growth.
“We are very intentional with our people when they come into the church,” he said. “We start out with a beginning Sunday School class where they learn basic doctrine and get a better understanding about their relationship with Christ.”
Following that, members move on to the “Experiencing God” discipleship study. Next comes another foundational discipleship study, “MasterLife.” They then conclude with a study of “Serving God: Discovering and Using Your Spiritual Gifts.”
Bob Lawler, the church’s pastor of ministries, said LifeWay resources meet the church’s needs. “We use a lot of LifeWay materials because they are good and are a good value,” he said.
Lawler said First Baptist has been using the Vacation Bible School materials for years with great success. He added that the “TeamKid” line of products is used as an outreach tool with the younger siblings of some of the youth.
“Some of the youth will come and bring their younger brothers and sisters,” he said, “but the parents don’t come.” He said that Team Kid works well with this group because of its emphasis on combining the lessons with fun and activities. “It’s an active learning.”
First Baptist is a church of contrasts, reflected by its slogan, “All Different. All Together. Altogether Different.”
But as the church grows and changes to meet the ever-changing needs of the people in it and around it, members adapt.
As Mattie Lou Jeffries, 107, one of only two charter members of the church still living, said, “We just need to do anything that will bring in people and help them know the Lord.” Oh, and yes, Mattie Lou does go the 11 a.m. service.
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(BP) photos posted in the BP Photo Library at https://www.bpnews.net. Photo titles: BUILDING ON THE BASICS, OPENING DOORS OF FAITH, CHOIR’S VIBRANCY and ALL IN THE FAMILY.
