Why the long title?
Well, for the most part it is because I’m trapped. I’m without the spiritual elders of earlier years, and without their wisdom I’m flailing around searching for a rock. All the while knowing that the rock is ultimately Christ, my hope, and I’m trusting in it, but I’m nervous about all the details.
To start at the beginning, for my first sixteen years of life I was an atheist, raised by agnostics, knowing little of the church (I was quite happy that way.) I was baptized as a baby at an Episcopal church, the denomination of my father, but never really knew anything except the Lord’s prayer. We recited it as a family before bed until I was about 4, but something happened and it simply stopped. All religious “truth” was set aside in a rush of self-driven intellectualism, the real God of my home.
I converted thanks to the work of the Spirit and the well-spoken words of Mennonite friends who introduced me to a life of Christ that was holistic, real, and working to redeem values and people to a “Truth” that wasn’t being handed to them from a source outside the Bible. I needed a local church, and being in the part of Pennsylvania I was in, it happened to be a Lutheran church. I had no particular ties to the church at first, but I began to read the words of Luther and was inspired by the fire and passion in his words. I stayed with the Lutheran church for the few years before college, gleaning what I could from the theological scraps from preaching and feasting on the words of Luther.
At college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania I was introduced to the Moravians, and quickly became one, singing at Central Moravian for three years before becoming a member of Edgeboro Moravian. I loved their traditions, their history, their words and daily practicality. Zinzendorf placed a heart-driven passion at the center of my theological world (herztheologie) and he continues to be the main influence on my theological direction (much to the chagrin of my more puritan-style reformed friends.) I met my wife around this time and often attended two church services every Sunday, one at the Moravian church I was a member of and one at the church she had grown up in, a highly charismatic world of flags, praise guitars, and prophetic words. Although I never felt at home here, they did show me something amazing about the fact that the expression of faith can be emotive and celebratory, it is OK to jump up and down in worship (they did it on Palm Sunday, of that I am sure, if ever there was a rock-styled event in the Gospels, it was then.)
Time to step aside for a moment to address the “calling of Christ” in my life. Early on, maybe a year after conversion, I was leading an emotional friend through the Lord’s prayer, she wanted to leave the church, she hated the hypocrisy and the lies. In bringing her through this she was brought to tears, I could sense the tension of faith and self that I often find in my own heart. As I got off the phone I felt overwhelmed, I broke into tears, I knew that this is what I was called to. I was called to speaking the Gospel’s truth into people’s lives. I was scared, excited, and firmly convinced that I had a direct experience, hearing God’s say, “This is your calling, now GO and follow it.” As I progressed through college, helping to lead worship, and as an elder of the campus fellowship, I began to pursue candidacy in the Moravian church. I eventually found myself at odds with some of the extra-scriptural elements slinking in at the edges. I decided not to complete my final candidacy paperwork and took a job in Virginia, far away from the Moravians and all the craziness that made me sick to my heart and stomach. For two years in Virginia I helped lead worship at a small Baptist church, living and loving in an urban context quite unlike the part of Pennsylvania I grew up in. After two years in Virginia we moved to Massachusetts when my wife took a job at a small Christian college, a college near the seminary that appealed to me the most, Gordon-Conwell.
We’ve worked at paying off all our debts and now I stand on the precipice of Seminary, without official denominational backing, although I am attending a Lutheran church that is a member of LCMC.
I’m scared to death - I don’t fit in any molds that I’ve met.
I have love for all those folks I’ve met:
Charismatic: for their unrestrained passion to experience God in worship
Evangelical: the Word must be proclaimed, there’s no getting away with whitewashing Christ’s truth for the world
Lutheran: the fire of the Spirit changes not just your actions, but brings you to repentance and the grace of God
Anglican: God is Holy, and the mind is a tool, not just something to be avoided or turned off
Baptist: your life is a reflection of Christ, the little things do make a difference
Mennonite: we are strangers in a strange land, we can’t just agree with the “powers” of this world and forsake the truth
Moravian: this world is our ministry field, we can’t avoid it, but we can bring light to places of darkness
Sure, there are parts where I disagree (For example I can’t bring myself to have a second baptism, both on grounds of the Nicene creed and on a covenantal belief in the nature of the baptism itself), but ultimately I just want to find a church home. One that holds to truth, but seeks out an holistic expression of it, a world-changing expression of it, and a hope in the life of the world to come. Any ideas where this seminarian can find a place to lay his head?
