My Faith Journey
I would like to spend the next few days writing about my faith journey.
To start, I was born August 25, 1959 two months premature. When I was a few days old the doctors told my parents that I would probably not live another 24 hours. My father started calling ministers to find someone to come to the Hospital so I could be baptized. Within an hour of being baptized in the incubator I turned around and they said that I would live.
Because of this, I will argue all day long with those that do not believe in infant baptism.
My early childhood was in the Methodist Church (pre-united) though I do not remember much about it being Methodist. When I was 4 my father ran for county judge of Angelina County Texas. Angelina County was and is dry (no alcoholic beverages sold). As is true anywhere that is dry, people that want to drink just hop in the car and drive where they can get what they want, or they go to a bootlegger. My father was advocating that the county go wet as there were many accidents (some fatal) on the roads connecting Angelina to the neighboring wet counties. Dad taught Sunday School for the teens at 1st Methodist in Lufkin. The church asked him to quit teaching the class for advocating the consumption of alcohol. Because of this, my Mother was quite incensed. She plucked my sister and me out of the Methodist church and trotted down to the Lutheran church where they have no issues with drinking. My dad followed shortly after. This is about the age where I really became aware of denominational affiliation so I thought we had always been Lutheran. My first remembered church experiences were at First Methodist LCMS Lufkin Texas.
When we moved to Little Rock from Lufkin our pastor told us that we were to transfer to Grace Lutheran. Grace Lutheran was my childhood Sunday School church. We would gather for fifteen minutes before Sunday School and sing all of those old favorites such as Jesus Loves the Little Children & He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands. From 2nd Grade through 6th Grade I went to school at First Lutheran School We had devotional every morning, chapel every Wednesday morning and on Monday mornings during roll call we answered with whether we had attended Sunday School, church, both or neither. This put incredible peer pressure on to attend at least Sunday School or Church. I wonder how many parents that felt like skipping went to make their children happy.
When I was 13 my dad took us to visit a Unity Church. There were some aspects of Misery Synod Lutheran that didn’t quite click with me so this visit really began my interest in Christian alternatives. After we had visited the Unity Church a few times I surprised my parents by going up front during the invitation to membership. Thus we began attending the Unity Church and my parents and sister joined within a few months of when I joined. We all remained members of the Unity Church for several years. I only attended my first year of confirmation classes at the Lutheran church so I was never officially a member of the Lutheran Church. I wonder if any churches still require two years of confirmation to become a full member. Back then graduation from confirmation class was almost as big a deal as graduation from high school.
Just before my 14th Birthday in 1973 we moved to Cabot, Arkansas. Cabot was pretty typical small town America except that it was 99.9% white and within 30 miles of Little Rock. Thus Cabot became a “white flight town”. We commuted to the Unity Church in Little Rock most of the time we lived in Cabot. On Friday nights after the High School football games there would be after the game functions alternating between First Baptist and First Methodist. The entire feel of the two was VERY different. At the Baptist there would usually be some college athlete talking about how they drank and cussed and smoked until they accepted Jesus as their “personal Lord and Savior” after which we ate cookies and drank pop. The Methodist after the game functions usually had some activity and then a film or discussion where we had to think about how we would react in different situations after which we would have cookies and pop. About the only similarity between the two was cookies and pop.
Cabot was one of those typical Arkansas towns that had 2 or 3 Southern Baptist Churches, a Missionary Baptist Church, a Primitive Baptist Church and a couple of other Baptist churches and one each of Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and maybe a couple of others. There were in the surrounding country side dozens of Methodist churches that were on circuits. I visited several different churches with friends when we didn’t make the drive to Little Rock. To me, the Baptists were really weird. The Missionary Baptists always had separate Sunday School classes for boys & girls, men & women. The Southern Baptists always had some separate function when ever there was a school dance because they didn’t want any good Southern Baptists kids dancing. Most went to the Dances anyway. I also didn’t quite know what to think about these Baptists having to mention Hell in every sermon. I did like singing Just As I Am through until someone came to the alter rail even if we had to sing in through 12 times. I think most of those people repented just because they were tired of singing Just As I Am.
I began going to UMYF every Sunday afternoon as the Unity Church didn’t have a regular youth program and was an awfully long way off for Sunday afternoon. I really connected more with the Methodist way of doing things over the other churches in the area. They used a lot of the same liturgy that we had in the Lutheran church and they were a heck of a lot nicer than the Baptists. There were some other really neat things about the Methodists. They didn’t think that it was OK to be prejudiced. They would let women be ushers and even preach. In 1976 I attended Sex-Education classes at the Methodist Church. That was pretty bizarre to me. Those other churches didn’t ever say anything about sex. They might say something about fornication or adultery but NEVER sex.
When I began college I was still a member of the Unity church but I regularly went to the Wesley foundation at UCA (University of Central Arkansas) and UALR (University of Arkansas at Little Rock). I think that Wesley Foundation probably had more of an influence on my theological thinking than anyplace else. From 1978 to 1981 (ages 19-22) I really went through a period of religious seeking. I visited almost every Christian denomination I could as well as taking lessons in Judaism at Temple B’nai Israel and visiting the Bahai Center. I continued to go to the Wesley foundation and actually paid my tithe directly to Wesley Foundation until I found my Church home.
In 1981 I visited Hunter United Methodist in Little Rock. I walked in and the congregation was racially mixed with a young white female pastor and an older black male pastor. The church seemed to perfectly mirror the racial make up of the neighborhood and was a really neat church. Within 6 weeks I was a member. When I walked up during the hymn of invitation I told the pastor that I was baptized as a Lutheran and she said that they would accept that baptism. It was that afternoon that I discovered that I had actually been baptized a Methodist.
Over the next few days I will discuss each church that I have been a member of and what I think was their mission. I will be lifting up the good and bad as I remember it. I hope that this will give people an opportunity to look at their own church and maybe give them some ideas.
I would like to spend the next few days writing about my faith journey.
To start, I was born August 25, 1959 two months premature. When I was a few days old the doctors told my parents that I would probably not live another 24 hours. My father started calling ministers to find someone to come to the Hospital so I could be baptized. Within an hour of being baptized in the incubator I turned around and they said that I would live.
Because of this, I will argue all day long with those that do not believe in infant baptism.
My early childhood was in the Methodist Church (pre-united) though I do not remember much about it being Methodist. When I was 4 my father ran for county judge of Angelina County Texas. Angelina County was and is dry (no alcoholic beverages sold). As is true anywhere that is dry, people that want to drink just hop in the car and drive where they can get what they want, or they go to a bootlegger. My father was advocating that the county go wet as there were many accidents (some fatal) on the roads connecting Angelina to the neighboring wet counties. Dad taught Sunday School for the teens at 1st Methodist in Lufkin. The church asked him to quit teaching the class for advocating the consumption of alcohol. Because of this, my Mother was quite incensed. She plucked my sister and me out of the Methodist church and trotted down to the Lutheran church where they have no issues with drinking. My dad followed shortly after. This is about the age where I really became aware of denominational affiliation so I thought we had always been Lutheran. My first remembered church experiences were at First Methodist LCMS Lufkin Texas.
When we moved to Little Rock from Lufkin our pastor told us that we were to transfer to Grace Lutheran. Grace Lutheran was my childhood Sunday School church. We would gather for fifteen minutes before Sunday School and sing all of those old favorites such as Jesus Loves the Little Children & He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands. From 2nd Grade through 6th Grade I went to school at First Lutheran School We had devotional every morning, chapel every Wednesday morning and on Monday mornings during roll call we answered with whether we had attended Sunday School, church, both or neither. This put incredible peer pressure on to attend at least Sunday School or Church. I wonder how many parents that felt like skipping went to make their children happy.
When I was 13 my dad took us to visit a Unity Church. There were some aspects of Misery Synod Lutheran that didn’t quite click with me so this visit really began my interest in Christian alternatives. After we had visited the Unity Church a few times I surprised my parents by going up front during the invitation to membership. Thus we began attending the Unity Church and my parents and sister joined within a few months of when I joined. We all remained members of the Unity Church for several years. I only attended my first year of confirmation classes at the Lutheran church so I was never officially a member of the Lutheran Church. I wonder if any churches still require two years of confirmation to become a full member. Back then graduation from confirmation class was almost as big a deal as graduation from high school.
Just before my 14th Birthday in 1973 we moved to Cabot, Arkansas. Cabot was pretty typical small town America except that it was 99.9% white and within 30 miles of Little Rock. Thus Cabot became a “white flight town”. We commuted to the Unity Church in Little Rock most of the time we lived in Cabot. On Friday nights after the High School football games there would be after the game functions alternating between First Baptist and First Methodist. The entire feel of the two was VERY different. At the Baptist there would usually be some college athlete talking about how they drank and cussed and smoked until they accepted Jesus as their “personal Lord and Savior” after which we ate cookies and drank pop. The Methodist after the game functions usually had some activity and then a film or discussion where we had to think about how we would react in different situations after which we would have cookies and pop. About the only similarity between the two was cookies and pop.
Cabot was one of those typical Arkansas towns that had 2 or 3 Southern Baptist Churches, a Missionary Baptist Church, a Primitive Baptist Church and a couple of other Baptist churches and one each of Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and maybe a couple of others. There were in the surrounding country side dozens of Methodist churches that were on circuits. I visited several different churches with friends when we didn’t make the drive to Little Rock. To me, the Baptists were really weird. The Missionary Baptists always had separate Sunday School classes for boys & girls, men & women. The Southern Baptists always had some separate function when ever there was a school dance because they didn’t want any good Southern Baptists kids dancing. Most went to the Dances anyway. I also didn’t quite know what to think about these Baptists having to mention Hell in every sermon. I did like singing Just As I Am through until someone came to the alter rail even if we had to sing in through 12 times. I think most of those people repented just because they were tired of singing Just As I Am.
I began going to UMYF every Sunday afternoon as the Unity Church didn’t have a regular youth program and was an awfully long way off for Sunday afternoon. I really connected more with the Methodist way of doing things over the other churches in the area. They used a lot of the same liturgy that we had in the Lutheran church and they were a heck of a lot nicer than the Baptists. There were some other really neat things about the Methodists. They didn’t think that it was OK to be prejudiced. They would let women be ushers and even preach. In 1976 I attended Sex-Education classes at the Methodist Church. That was pretty bizarre to me. Those other churches didn’t ever say anything about sex. They might say something about fornication or adultery but NEVER sex.
When I began college I was still a member of the Unity church but I regularly went to the Wesley foundation at UCA (University of Central Arkansas) and UALR (University of Arkansas at Little Rock). I think that Wesley Foundation probably had more of an influence on my theological thinking than anyplace else. From 1978 to 1981 (ages 19-22) I really went through a period of religious seeking. I visited almost every Christian denomination I could as well as taking lessons in Judaism at Temple B’nai Israel and visiting the Bahai Center. I continued to go to the Wesley foundation and actually paid my tithe directly to Wesley Foundation until I found my Church home.
In 1981 I visited Hunter United Methodist in Little Rock. I walked in and the congregation was racially mixed with a young white female pastor and an older black male pastor. The church seemed to perfectly mirror the racial make up of the neighborhood and was a really neat church. Within 6 weeks I was a member. When I walked up during the hymn of invitation I told the pastor that I was baptized as a Lutheran and she said that they would accept that baptism. It was that afternoon that I discovered that I had actually been baptized a Methodist.
Over the next few days I will discuss each church that I have been a member of and what I think was their mission. I will be lifting up the good and bad as I remember it. I hope that this will give people an opportunity to look at their own church and maybe give them some ideas.
posted by Conrad at 7:21 AM
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