Messianic Rosh Hashanah Service

Last night, I attended a Rosh Hashanah service at Congregation Beth HaShem. The church meets in Durham on West Club Boulevard, the same site as the Summit Church West Club campus. Some friends from Cambridge Christian Fellowship at Duke invited me. We went to church at 6:45pm and did not leave until shortly before midnight due to a wonderful time of prayer and fellowship after the service.

The church was interesting and markedly different than my typical Protestant church experience. The differences were mainly in language [multiple prayers in Hebrew], custom [Jewish traditions], and liturgy, not in theology. The theology sounded evangelical to the core. I was curious to see how the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament would be used in the service. From what I gathered, the Hebrew Bible is understood prophetically to speak of Jesus and the redemption God would bring through Him.

I thought to blog about the service namely because my team and I will be entering into similar situations in the next year. No, we will not be attending Messianic Jewish services--but we will interact closely with Christian brothers and services who do not "do church" our way. In Galatians 1:6-9, Paul speaks in very direct terms the importance of not "perverting the Gospel of Christ" by either distorting, add to, or subtracting from the Gospel. I look forward to God exposing distortions in my understanding of the Gospel in Dakar through Christians brothers and sisters there.