It\u2019s not just that new believers are baptized in the ocean or in a river by Sunny Brae Church in Arcata, California.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are radical professions of faith from people who are coming from a very different place,\u201d Derk Schulze said of the 200 people he has baptized during 21 years as a pastor in one of the nation\u2019s top marijuana growing regions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people are truly outsiders,\u201d having trekked to Arcata, a town of about 18,000, for the region\u2019s legal and illegal marijuana trade. Schulze said they speak \u201ca different language; they have different priorities, different mindsets and a different culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baptism, he said, \u201cis really a public profession of faith, a testimony of what God has done in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe live in a visual world and this can be an effective way to proclaim the Gospel,\u201d the pastor said. Baptisms in the ocean or a river give people who would never step in a church \u201ca picture of the Gospel, and that leads to an opportunity to answer questions and explains the new believer\u2019s faith, because they\u2019re not doing it in front of just adherents, but those who are not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen things happen [at baptismal sites] that would not have happened otherwise, because [onlookers] wouldn\u2019t have come into the church.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arcata, five hours north of San Francisco, is in densely forested and mountainous Humboldt County, known for the nation\u2019s largest-remaining old-growth redwood forest, ideal growing conditions for marijuana, and a free-thinking university.<\/p>\n
Schulze, a building contractor by trade, injured on the job and now living with a disability, wears his hair long, his attire casual and spends his days in the community. His wife Wendy works as a teacher with special needs youngsters.<\/p>\n
\u201cArcata is a mecca for the marijuana worshipper; they want to be free to smoke their weed,\u201d Schulze said of his daily encounters. \u201cIf you become adversarial, that never leads to dialogue. We\u2019ve had to do things differently. Instead of getting in peoples\u2019 face about the ills of pot, we basically tried to address the many issues that affect the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne is that you have many transients sleeping everywhere and doing their things everywhere,\u201d the pastor said. \u201cSo, we set up a sanctuary on our property, basically for people in crisis or at risk. They sleep in their car or tent, and we have the opportunity of influencing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunny Brae, a small church with about 30 in attendance, has had a homeless ministry for 18 years with \u201csome success,\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s measured by changed lives,\u201d Schulze said.<\/p>\n
The pastor spoke of one young couple with a toddler who arrived from Ohio in an aged Dodge RV that had the word \u201cMiracle\u201d spray-painted on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had dreadlocks * and loose, grungy clothing, smelled of heavy doses of patchouli oil and were definitely into using pot at the time,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cWe loved them and received them where they\u2019re at; that\u2019s one of our principles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The young woman was pregnant, saying that God had told her she was bearing twin girls. The birth of a son, instead, became \u201ca platform for discussion,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cShe wanted to know, \u2018Why did God lie to me?\u2019\u201d giving the pastor an opportunity to set forth the larger truths of Scripture.<\/p>\n
For six months, the family stayed at Sunny Brae and then gave birth to their son. They then stayed with various church members until they had saved enough money for a place of their own. They were discipled, then asked Schulze to marry them, were baptized and became members of the church.<\/p>\n
Christ \u201cchanged their minds, which changed actions, and now they\u2019re Kingdom workers,\u201d Schulze said. The family is back in Ohio, where he has become a pastor in a church larger than Sunny Brae.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about extending and developing trust, and not try to put the issue of conformity on them,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cWe hope for a radical grace, as it were.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe heart is the issue,\u201d he noted. \u201cWhen a person understands their heart is off, then we can speak to the power of the Gospel to change the heart. The heart compels the will, and it\u2019s from the new heart that we have life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Sunny Brae Church\u2019s small numbers, it is a healthy congregation, by Schulze\u2019s assessment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have different measures for what a healthy church should be,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cOne is generosity. Where your heart is, your treasure will be also.\u201d A full 15 percent of offerings — about $500 a month — are passed on to missions causes, including the Cooperative Program — the way Southern Baptists work together to spread the Gospel worldwide -\u2013 along with the work of the North Coast Baptist Association and the California Southern Baptist Convention.<\/p>\n
In his forays onto the campus of Humboldt State University in Arcata, Schulze said the chasm between the church and community becomes most apparent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have an \u2018open mic\u2019 you can sign up for on the campus plaza,\u201d he said in recounting an example of the overt hostility toward Christianity that hovers campus-wide. When an evangelist signed up last year, there was such a language discrepancy. When he said \u2018love,\u2019 he\u2019s saying it in one way and the audience hears it very differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s presenting the traditional Gospel, and suddenly this kid in the middle of the plaza right in front of him gives him multiple middle fingers and starts doing backflips,\u201d Schulze said. \u201cThe evangelist said, \u2018Oh, he just embarrassed himself, didn\u2019t he?\u2019 and I said, \u2018I don\u2019t think he did. Plenty were applauding his antics.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think we\u2019re communicating but we\u2019re unwilling to listen,\u201d the pastor said. \u201cWe need to not cut people off, and not immediately become contentious, and build trust so we can speak, so they know we\u2019re not religious puppets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schulze said his relationship with people \u201cshould reflect how God has treated me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my preaching I do a lot of defining of terms and putting everything into a Kingdom perspective,\u201d the pastor said. \u201cWe think the Gospel is just about getting right with God, but it\u2019s much more. Jesus and Paul both preached the Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
* The original had “dreadknots”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not just that new believers are baptized in the ocean or in a river by Sunny Brae Church in Arcata, California. \u201cThese are radical professions of faith from people who are coming from a very different place,\u201d Derk Schulze said of the 200 people he has baptized during 21 years as a pastor in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5406,5405,5404,1090,5403],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}