St. Andrews Presbyterian
November 13th, 2004Church Review
Scriptural View: 4/5
Beliefs: 4/5
Community: 4/5
Preaching: exegetical
Worship: contemporary on Sat night / traditional on Sun morning
Service times: Sat night - 5:30, Sun morning - 8:30, 10:15
Website Review
Site Usability: 3/5
Site Design: 3/5
Site Content: 3/5
I attended a Saturday night service in July. I was invited to go there by a friend of mine who attends St. Andrews and so I was able to sit with him and a few of his friends. That made me feel very welcome. St. Andrews seems to have a very strong sense of community. It is a large church, a couple thousand in members, but I would not be surprised if there are even more people involved in their mid-week Bible studies and other ministries.
For the most part the majority of the people appear to be upper middle class, mostly caucasian. I am not sure how people of varying cultural classes and interests would be received. I did not perceive any particular indicators that St. Andrews is significantly interested in cultural awareness and/or mission.
The worship of song was contemporary style. The worship team seemed to genuinley enjoy worshipping. That made it pretty easy to sort of follow their lead and sing along unto the Lord. All the songs were choruses and were projected on two large screens, one on each side of the platform.
The preaching was exegetical in format though the minister did some odd things with the text. The sermon was a study in Psalm 73, which seems to cleary be an apologetic Psalm both raising and answering the question of how God can be just when the wicked prosper. But rather than following this strongly evident theme in the text, the minister talked a lot about how Satan was tormenting David in this passage and how there is a spiritual battle going on in every one of us. My difficulty was that though spiritual /Satanic battle is a reality and though he was going through the Psalm verse by verse, he was clearly reading things into the text that were simply not there. It seemed like he was trying to get God off the hook by reverting to Satanic activity as the source for wickedness and spiritual struggle. This answer seemed odd to me since both this particular text and the rest of the Bible always pictures God as sovereignly and purposefully goverening Satanic wickedness.
Our church reviews are usually based upon only one visitation and what we can learn about the church from their website. For this reason there is always the possibility that the particular time I visisted just happened to be different from the norm. In this case I would like to give St. Andrews the benefit of the doubt for a couple of reasons. One, the preacher for that service was a guest preacher, Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Seminary. Two, their doctrinal statement is very strong (with the exception of paedobaptism [learn what we see as the errors of infant baptism instead of believer baptism ] and egalitarianism [all roles are open to both men and women instead of some roles being designed solely for women and some roles designed soley for men, i.e. complementarianism). Three, I have been informed by a staff member that they do in fact affirm the Sovereignty of God in all things and are dedicated to carrying on the vision and convictions of the Reformation (ususally considered to be the 5 solas: the auhority of the Bible alone, salvation by faith alone, by grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone, for the glory of God alone).
Though I do have some secondary reservations on a few non-essential matters, this church does seem to be theologically sound at their core. I would recommend this church if you live in Newport Beach particulary in light of what appears to be a lack of churches in the immediately surrounding area who are committed to exegetical preaching and theological depth.