Orange County Churches Review & Guide

Abudant Life Community (Pasadena)

January 31st, 2005

http://www.alccpasadena.com

Church Review
Scriptural View: 5/5
Beliefs: 5/5
Community: 5/5
Preaching: Exegetical
Worship: Hymns & Choruses
Service times: Sun. 10:00 AM

Website Review
Site Usability: 3/5
Site Design: 3/5
Site Content: 3/5

Review: I attended the Sunday morning service in May of 2004. The moment I walked through the front door, several people greeted me and began asking me many questions. They were very friendly and invited me to sit with them.

The service began with prayer of petition that God would be glorified in the service. Abundant Life Community Church is part of the Sovereign Grace denomination Sovereign Grace Ministries . Sovereign Grace is the denomination from which PDI music (People of Destiny International Music) was formed and so we sang many PDI songs. All of the them were very lyrically strong (God-centered & man minimizing) and musically pleasing (led by a young man on an acoustic guitar). A couple of the stanzas of a song called “Haven’t You Been Good” particularly impressed me:

Thank you for the cross
Thank you Lord for drawing me
Out of millions lost
Thank you Lord for saving me

Haven’t You been good
Haven’t You been so good
Glory to Your name
Glory to Your holy name

Sovereign Grace is not only a Reformed denomination doctrinally but also a charismatic one. This was evident during one portion of the song time when someone went forward to the elders whispering something in their ears. When the current song we were singing was over, one of the elders, Ron Boomsma went up to the microphone explaining that the Holy Spirit had moved upon someone present to share something with everyone. He then handed the microphone over to that person who shared about her overwhelming feeling that we shouldn’t hold anything back because God was so worthy of our praise.

The sermon was delivered by one of the two elders who lead the church named Lynn Baird. He began by explaining that their church teaches through the Bible book by book and deals with every verse and every word. On this Sunday they were continuing their study in the book of Acts and were in chapter 16. Lynn was very passionate and at the same time very careful with the text explaining the genre and purpose of Acts, the relevant historical and cultural background and he dealt with the individual words of the chapter. The main thrust or theme of the message was reaching out to the world with the gospel.

At the conclusion the sermon there was a time of prayer and service ended. As soon as the service was over my wife and I were swarmed with people coming and talking us. We were actually invited out to lunch by three different people. One man took me to see their bookstore and ended up buying me three different CD’s. During the following weeks after we attended this church two different men called me to see how we were doing.

I would highly recommend Abundant Life Community Church as a great place for anyone to grow in their knowledge and love of God through the study of His Word and fellowship with His people. They are somewhat conservative culturally (some of the women wear head-coverings and wives are discouraged from working outside of the home) which may inhibit them missionally. But their doctrinal strength and devotion to God’s Word makes this church an excellent place to worship.

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Abudant Life Community (Pasadena)

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