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What Makes Us Different 
Why do we say that Urania First Baptist Church is different by design?
For some time, we had noticed that things were not as they ought to be in Baptist life in general and in our church in particular. So, we began thinking about how things could be different. After some time and a lot of consideration we came to the conclusion that we might be able to find answers in our past. So we began to look at some of the things that mattered to our forebearers, and we realized that many of those things had been neglected in recent times. We began to systematically evaluate our current attitudes and practices in light of Scripture and our heritage. In the end, we changed the way we do several things, but more importantly we created a new church culture that when compared to the way we were before or to typical contemporary Baptist life is obviously different by design.
What are some ways in which Urania First Baptist Church is different?
For a long time, many of us fell victim to the notion that worship was a type of performance by the worship leaders put on for the benefit of the congregation. But we realized that our worship was not for us but for God. He was our audience, and all of us in the congregation were the participants. So we determined to let God set the agenda for our worship. We stopped worrying about our tastes and preferences, and began focusing our attention on balancing all the biblical elements of worship. We still sing, preach, and take up the offering, but we also spend a significant amount of time in prayer and Scripture reading. The Lord's Supper and Baptism have also taken on fuller meaning. Since making this transition, our worship is richer and more meaningful than ever before.
Another area that needed to be improved was the way we structured the church. Like many churches, we had bought into the post-WWII corporate mentality of church life; however, we realized that we were not a business, and there was no reason we should administer ourselves as if we were one. Whereas we previously served an institutional system that treated the pastor as the CEO, the deacons as a board of directors, the congregation as stockholders, and the community as consumers, we now view ourselves as a family of families. We have three groups that meet regularly and either make decisions or bring recommendations to the congregation. Our deacons and elders provide care and leadership for our church; our trustees handle administrative tasks such as personnel, properties, and finance; and our church council, which is open to all members, calendars and plans our activities. The complex structure of committees and program directors was cumbersome and discouraged participation. Now, our membership meetings (those times we used to call business meetings) are enjoyable times were we sit around, share a meal, and talk about what needs to be done.
One of the more difficult aspects of our transition has been the reclaiming of meaningful church membership. It has been a large undertaking and a painful process. We came to the conclusion that we had allowed our laxity toward church membership to corrupt not only our church rolls but also our relationships with people that we once knew and loved. We had made promises to one another that we had not kept, and we had to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. We had allowed our church membership roll to inflate to over four times our active members, and there was no easy way to fix this problem. So we began the difficult work. First, we revised our church covenant and membership intake process so that we could stop this cycle from continuing. Next, we had to set our rolls in order by going through each name to find out who and where each person was. Finally, we began the process of contacting the inactive people on our roll and seeking reconciliation with them. This has been a long time in the making, and we are just getting started with this third stage. Nevertheless, we believe that God expects this of us and that we owe it to one another.
- Home Discipleship Emphasis
Another important undertaking has been our home discipleship emphasis. For a long time, the church had accepted a responsibility that it was never intended to have. In our age of consumerism and specialization, people began to think that the church ought to be the primary source of spiritual and moral training for both children and adults. It is obvious from Scripture, however, that this was a burden meant to be borne in the home, not the church. Not only have we found this to be a biblically necessary adjustment, but also, it has become painfully obvious over the course of the last several years that the way in which we had been attempting to train people was not working. We were not actually making disciples of ourselves or of our children. Consequently, we began work on our Home Discipleship Emphasis. Our church has stepped into the role of resourcing and equipping our families to engage in the work of discipleship in the home.
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