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Although the agenda hasn't been finalized yet, there are no "big" issues to be discussed at this point, said Ed Cruzan, president of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference of the United States and Canada.
"No particular issues have been enacted over the last year," Cruzan said.
Workshops that are slated for the conference are "Partners in Prayer: Partnering with Pastors"; a panel discussion on "Practical Outreach for Your Church"; "Pray in This Way," a look at the New Testament guide on how to pray; "Walk Across the Room," based on the Bill Hybels book; "Church Finances"; and "Evangelism Training."
Conference attendees who made prior reservations also will be visiting Sight & Sound Theatres and touring Ephrata Cloister.
From 1 to 3:30 p.m. July 29, Mike Skupin, who was on "Survivor: Australian Outback," will be the featured speaker.
Skupin, who is not a Seventh Day Baptist, will give his testimony of a personal relationship with Jesus, how his experience reshaped his priorities and how prayer has re-energized him to do work for the Lord.
Although the Seventh Day Baptist church is one of the smaller, lesser known Baptist denominations, it does have roots in Lancaster County.
The first Seventh Day Baptist Church in America was formed in 1671 after five couples separated from other Baptist churches in Rhode Island. A second group separated from the Baptist church in New Jersey in 1705 and a third group of churches came out of a split with Quakerism in the Philadelphia area about 1700.
A pietistic movement among German immigrants was influenced by this third group.
The German Seventh Day Baptist Church was formed by the married congregation at Ephrata Cloister after the last celibate Cloister resident died in 1813. Members continued to live and worship at the Cloister until 1934.
From these beginnings, the Seventh Day Baptists followed the westward migration, arriving on the Pacific Coast by 1900.
Seventh Day Baptists' common bond of observing Saturday as the Sabbath enabled the denomination to avoid a split during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s.
Currently, there are 117 Seventh Day Baptist churches in the United States and three in Canada, said Robert Appel, executive director of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference of the United States and Canada.
Although the U.S. and Canada Conference is the hub of the denomination, there are larger conferences elsewhere in the world.
For much of its existence, the denomination has been rurally-oriented.
"We settled in smaller towns so that, as Sabbath keepers, we were not persecuted for working on Sunday and taking Saturday off," Appel said.
But in recent years, it has seen its greatest growth in developing urban ministries, he said.
From 1976 to 1981, the Seventh Day Baptists planted a number of churches in urban areas such as Miami, Houston, New York City, Portland, Ore., and Columbus, Ohio.
"They are all still in existence today and are doing quite well," Appel said. "We realized we can be in urban areas."
Therefore, he said, the denomination for the last few years has again "pushed the same model and been intentional in planting in urban areas and areas where there is no following except 'remote' Sabbath keepers (individuals with no congregation to meet together)."
Appel said the Internet has been a "blessing for us" because it has enabled people to learn that Seventh Day Baptists are just Baptists that worship on the Sabbath and are not Seventh Day Adventists.
"We truly are Baptist. We have congregational polity and autonomy of churches," he said. "The only difference is that we worship on the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday — the same Sabbath Jews keep today — although a number of Seventh Day Baptist churches keep it as a 24-hour period from 12:01 a.m. Saturday to 11:59 p.m. Saturday."
On a scale of all the Baptist denominations, the Seventh Day Baptists resemble the conservative Southern Baptists most closely, Appel said.
One of the things Seventh Day Baptists follow — as do all other Baptist denominations — is the belief that the Holy Spirit interprets Scripture, he said.
The denomination also believes in immersion baptism, which comes from John the Baptist, Appel said.
Because of the autonomy of churches, some hold Communion once a year, while others quarterly, monthly or weekly, Appel said.
Worship services also vary slightly depending on the church. The typical service includes songs, a children's message, prayer time, praise time and a sermon. Worship services can last for one hour, three hours or even all day, he said.
After years of holding its annual conferences in Houghton, N.Y., or Salem College in West Virginia, finding its way to Lancaster Bible College was "a God thing," Appel said.
When Appel surveyed the area in December 2007, Lancaster Bible College didn't have enough beds available for the conference.
"We said to ourselves (but not to LBC), 'If they just had 100 more beds, we could do it,'" Appel said.
Instead, they considered Millersville University and West Chester University.
But previous experience told them secular colleges didn't work as well as religious-affiliated ones, Appel said.
In April 2008, Appel made an unannounced visit to LBC. He was told LBC had 100 more beds available, and it was looking for a test group to see how well it could handle larger conferences.
"It was a God thing," Appel said.
When the Seventh Day Baptist churches were told about the location of this year's conference, they were signing up as fast as they could, he said.
"In our 200-plus years, we had never been (in Lancaster for a conference). People were excited about coming. I've never seen that before," Appel said.
Anyone wishing to attend the conference should call Sandy Layton at (856) 451-0690 or e-mail her at registrar@seventhdaybaptist.org.
For more information about the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference of the United States and Canada, go to http://lancasteronline.com/admin/kama/www.sevent....
E-mail: lvaningen@lnpnews.com
