Church Alive

As an employee of the International Service Department (ISD) at The Mother Church, I was delighted when asked to help plan and accompany the Christian Science Board of Directors on a visit in March to Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. The Board wanted to join hands with African members of The Mother Church as a Church family, to further unite and strengthen the Christian Science movement.

In the Church Manual   Mary Baker Eddy shared a description under the heading “Prayer in Church,” for the direction of our prayers. She wrote: “The prayers in Christian Science churches shall be offered for the congregations collectively and exclusively” ( p.

Since my awakenin g to Christian Science in 1970, I have studied deeply the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, along with Mary Baker Eddy’s other writings. This naturally led to my becoming an active Christian Scientist, including serving at The Mother Church for the past several years, and previously in its branch churches.

Our members wanted a place of worship they could call their own. For over a decade, our Christian Science Society, and then church—Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Lagos, Nigeria—had been holding services in the Christian Science Reading Room belonging to First Church, which had its church edifice 25 kilometers from the Reading Room.

I was a Reader in my Christian Science branch church for 19 years. All but one of those years I served as First Reader.

I love attending my branch church in Nigeria. There is such a warm, palpable sense of fellowship, and always a vibrant expectation of witnessing another’s spiritual progress through a testimony of healing, or of hearing an acknowledgment of God’s goodness.

I love Wednesday evening testimony meetings.   What has always struck me about these meetings is how the heartfelt and sincere expressions of appreciation have lifted me up in much the same way the experience helped and healed the testifier.

My experience as a church member was getting dull. I wished to feel love and joy.

Last summer, I moderated a panel discussion on branch church membership at the New York City Church Alive Workshop. Here are some of the questions we considered: Why join? What is the purpose of membership? What does membership promise in return? The NYC Church Alive workshop panel was titled, “Membership: Its Purpose and Promise.

The Bible Lesson is God’s musical composition. As I read His music, may I play it as He would want it to be— “Undivorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized.