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Would you object to a person being baptized both as an infant and as an adult? (ie. do you see anything wrong with it - rather than just something unusual?)

Basically the reason that I'm posing this question is that outside of the Reformed Churches, people keep pointing me to baptist churches if looking for depth in sermons. There are, of course, a number of different Baptist denominations - from the kind I have a hard time taking seriously (the KJV people) to the extreme liberal variety (and of course others in between).

This evening, I met someone from Bowness Baptist Church (probably the closest baptist church to here) while attending a presentation at Centre Street Church (the closest thing in Calgary to a mega-church) on a outreach program in downtown Calgary. Anyways, the church as he described it seemed fairly conservative.

You heard my thoughts on baptism here on Rotundus before, although I'm too lazy to dig up the references. Basically, the idea being that I can see things from both infant and believer baptist perspectives, and at this point don't reject either (while at the same time not really having a strong preference for one over the other).

Saw the steam locomotive that they've got sitting outside there. There was actually a rather interesting pedestrian underpass (under the tracks) along 1 st SW at 9th ave (this was in downtown - you can tell that Calgary is a bit of a railway town if you've got a rail yard right around the downtown core). Anyways, this pedestrian underpass was lit by a rather interesting technique. Basically, they had worked up a number of different locomotives and trains (in wireframe) along the wall. The lighting then came from such things as signals, locomotive headlines, "sparks" in the "steam" from a locomotive, and other sorts of lighting effects that you might see around the tracks.

Well, I started off by attending some churches that I know some people who have come from or left. In order of date of attendance, that would be Foothills Alliance Church, Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church (of Canada - not the PCA). Following that, last Sunday I ended up at Calgary Community Reformed Church (that last church didn't really advertise any denominational affiliation, but turned out to be part of the RCA). Anyways, I've got some thoughts on the respective theologies of those denominations, but I don't really have all that much time to post on Rotundus about that now (... <insert comment about getting that done in detail sometime later>). Basically the short version of that is that the first seemed a bit loose, and the latter two somewhat too liberal.

What I wanted to comment about at the moment was the use of LCDs projectors in churches. I think that in many congregations, the usage of an LCD projector does really either add to or detract from anything. However, after attending the last church on the list above, I've come to the conclusion that a projector can be of great benefit. In the case of the last church on the list, there were a number of powerpoint slides to go along with the sermon. Basically, any time a reference to a text was made by the pastor, the corresponding text would appear on the projector (quite useful, and keeps you from getting lost if you decide that you want to look the thing up). Additionally, some of the other stuff that they used used the projector for there was essentially an extended outline of the sermon, point by point as the pastor went through it. Again, it was a form of visual reenforcement of what the pastor was talking about, and as such made the sermon a lot easier to concentrate on. Basically, I think that over the course of the past few weeks my position on projectors in the church has changed from a neutral one, to one that is definitely in favour (as long as it is used properly).

I think that we've yapped about the topic of multiple services on Sunday sometime before (although that may have been back when Rotundus was still running PHP Nuke). Anyways, thus far, of the churches in Calgary that I've checked out not a single one has had multiple services on Sunday (I'm excepting the case where they have multiple services due to overflow). I've basically come to the conclusion that outside of the CanRC multiple services on a Sunday is rather uncommon.

On a semi-related note, have any of you ever met any people who would label themselves as messianic jews? Sounds like it would be an interesting group to interact with at some point - believing in Jesus, yet maintaining a lot of the old Jewish holidays and customs (it probably should be added that yet, at the same time, such groups - at least the particular groups that I've read about - seem to condemn those who don't hold to such practices). There is such a group in Calgary (and, as one might expect, they meet on Saturdays), so I may stop by there one of these days.