I grew up in a typical evangelical church of the 1960s and 70s. Specifically, it was the First Baptist Church of Dominguez, a Missionary Baptist Church nestled between Carson and Long Beach, California. It was a Bible-believing, gospel-preaching, altar-call-featuring church connected denominationally with a number of churches in Southern California and the farm-rich California central valleys. These congregations initially consisted of families that fled the Dust Bowl and the hardships of the Depression to start anew in the West. Ours was a good church, an evangelical church, a faithful church, as were its sister churches.
And yet, I don’t recall ever hearing the Scripture read during a church service aside from the few verses upon which the sermon was based.
EVANGELICAL NEGLECT
What was true of my neighborhood church was true of all of Southern California’s large evangelical churches that I visited at one time or another during my teens and early 20s: Swindoll’s Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel, Ray Ortlund’s Lake Avenue Congregational, David Hocking’s Grace Brethren of Long Beach, MacArthur’s Grace Community Church, and Lloyd John Ogilvie’s 1st Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. Substantial Bible reading simply wasn’t a feature of evangelical churches of that time
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