The secret of this is the Church's most unusual worship style.

Before it began in 1997, its members studied what the Bible said about how to hold church services.

The Bible seemed to tell them that:

1. There should not be one preacher, but a succession of speakers (1 Corinthians 14:27, 29).
2. All church members should have the opportunity to speak or present a musical item every week (1 Cor 14:26).
3. Musical instruments supplying both percussion and melody are approved by Scripture. (Psalm 81:2; 150:3-5).

It limited its sermons to 10 minutes long. And it limited the time for contributions by others to five minutes.

Any church member has the right to select the preacher. The member just confirms a free date with the senior elder, who keeps the preaching list.

The church pastor usually preaches once a month. Most of the other preaching time slots are filled by laity -- simply because members tend to chose them. Often the person selected is a woman. In fact once, six women were selected to preach in a seven-week period.

The rest of the program is taken by the church members and visitors. There is no requirement to arrange to particulate beforehand. Most of the two-hour program time is taken by members presenting spontaneous or prepared material.

There are two simple rules for this.

1. Any person can make a presentation up to five minutes long.

2. You are not to criticise something someone has just said. (If you disagree with something someone says, you can put your viewpoint next week.) Similarly, you cannot criticise our denomination or its leaders, or criticise another demonination.

Members have become addicted to their worship service. Normally, church members find Sabbaths at our annual Conference Camp a greater blessing than regular Sabbaths at home churches. However, Coolum Beach members feel "withdrawal symptoms" when they attend the annual camp.

The church members and visitors usually stay together until late afternoon. They bring food to share at a regular church lunch. There is informal social contact by members all this time.

Part of a world-wide fellowship

Coolum Beach SDA Church is proudly part of the world-wide fellowship of Seventh-day Adventist Churches.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church:

• Deliberately attempts to be as close as possible to the doctrines of the New Testament Christian Church.
• It has more overseas missionaries than any other Protestant denomination.
• It has more schools, colleges and universities than any other Protestant denomination.
• It has more hospitals and clinics than any other Protestant denomination.

It has 10,000,000 members world-wide and has rapid growth, baptising 2000 new members a day.

Wherever you are in the world, there is probably a Seventh-day Adventist Church near you.

You are most welcome to fellowship with them.

If you happen to be near us, we meet at 10am each Saturday morning at CWA Hall, Coolum Terrace, Coolum Beach.

You are just as welcome here as you would be at any Adventist Church world-wide.