Petaluma Valley Baptist Church

This Sunday (March 13th), I visited Petaluma Valley Baptist Church at 580 Sonoma Mountain Parkway. This church, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), garners a weekly attendance of around 300. The SBC represents the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with around 16 million members, and the second largest religious body in the U.S. after the Roman Catholic Church. Baptists trace their roots back to John Smyth in England, who was connected with the Pilgrims in the early 1600s. They were influenced by the Anabaptists in the Reformation, though they are different.

The Senior Pastor, Rev. Tom Marcum, is a graduate of the Southwestern Theological Baptist Seminary. He has been the Senior Pastor at Valley Baptist since 1999. He is an Adjunct Professor at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary. He is married to Stirling, and they have a daughter, Jordan. Under his leadership, Valley Baptist has grown and thrived.

I went to their Sunday School, where they were studying the Book of Judith, one of the books of the Apocrypha. Though Protestants do not consider the Apocrypha as part of the biblical cannon, they still encourage its reading and study. However, I have never been to any Protestant Sunday School or other bible study where one of the books of the Apocrypha was being read and studied. It was refreshing especially since the Book of Judith has inspired so much literature, music, paintings, and sculptures in Western culture. Gary Arbino, a professor of Archeology and Old Testament at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary, led the class.