Covering Testimony: Danica Churchill

Name: Danica Churchill | Age: 32 | Location: Alberta, Canada | Date started covering: 2012
1) Introduce yourself to our readers.
Hi! My name is Danica Churchill, and I am 32 years old. By God’s grace, I became a Christian in November of 2007. I have been married to a wonderful Christian man for almost nine years now, and we have four sweet children together.
2) Where do you attend church? Tell us a little bit about it. Do others practice head covering there?
I attend The Shelter Reformed Presbyterian Church and have been a dedicated member since 2010. The denomination of my church is the RPCNA (Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America). Though head covering is not widely practiced, it is still held to by individuals within some local church bodies. In my church, there are seven other families who practice head covering besides us.
3) What led you to start covering?
When I became a Christian, I was mainly occupied with discovering the basic tenets of the faith, so I didn’t really start looking at head covering until 2012. That year, there was a family that began attending our church who came in with the wife and daughters wearing head coverings. Internally, I immediately scoffed at it, thinking that it was some kind of archaic, strange thing to be doing. After several weeks, my husband was approached by the husband of that family and the topic of head covering came up in their discussion. After we both did some thorough reading and studying of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, we were both convinced that head covering is in fact a command for the New Testament church worldwide.
Among the resources we consulted were two sermon series named Headcoverings in Public Worship by Brian Schwertley that he preached in 2003 and 2006, and a paper written by him as well. We listened to sermons both for and against the practice. Interestingly, the main thing that convinced us was a rival paper produced by Greg Price who claimed that head covering was merely a cultural practice. After observing the weak arguments and inconsistent hermeneutic used to defend his position, we were more convinced than ever that this was certainly not a cultural practice. The biblical practice of head covering for women and uncovering the head for men defies culture and is not a command that we have the liberty to disregard.

4) When do you use your covering?
After wrestling with the Scriptural text, praying to God about it, and seeking counsel from our pastor and other people in the church, we began practicing head covering during public worship. We considered the arguments that people had for women covering full time; however, we saw overwhelming evidence that this practice was within the context of corporate worship only.
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