Concerning this new Bible Baptist church, many of my earlier problems have been put to rest in another meeting with the pastor. (Actually, it was another bible study group that met with him: Tiff’s folks. I don’t join them; but they passed word on to me.)

The church strongly believes that its precedent is not by any “trail of blood,” but by its identity as a community saved by grace through faith in Christ. I will not be regarded as unequally yoked for fellowshipping with non-Baptist evangelicals. I will have to be baptized once again by immersion to gain membership, but the “Trail of Blood” mindset is not binding on any member, and is not waved around as much as I first feared.

My re-immersion can be regarded as a casting-off of my earlier baptism in a prior church — which, I cannot disagree — was tainted with lukewarmness and compromise.

Denominational issues aside, I must say that Berean is a good, solid, traditional church, and very much unlike most other Fundamental Baptist churches you may have heard of. Elitist Baptist chest-beating and pastoral authoritarianism are absent from this congregation, and the pastor runs a tight ship, well-balanced on that narrow edge between the tyranny of the traditional and the compromise of the liberal.

There are a few more churches to try before we finish this church-shopping stage, and this church has been the best so far. Conservative churches sure are hard to find in the charismatic-laden Filipino Christian community.