My late childhood and early teenage years

I guess the beginning is as good a place to start as any, right? I suppose the majority of people that share their testimonies start where it all began, but for someone like me, that's easier typed than done. It is very hard for me to pinpoint a specific time in my life where I went from the valley of dry bones to being a child of God. You see, I have always been a white-washed tomb. I have always professed Jesus with my lips, followed the Ten Commandments in public when it suited me, attended church, participated in youth groups, prayer groups, Bible studies, and so on and so forth. I always confessed that I believed that Jesus died for my sins on the cross, but it wasn't until just before I turned 21 that I began to believe that Jesus was my savior.

I grew up in God-fearing household, in a white suburban neighborhood, in the "Christian" part of town. I grew up in one of those neighborhoods that lied dormant Sunday mornings because everyone was attending their favorite churches around town. My two best friends in elementary school attended the same church, but my family and I attended an Evangelical Free Church after my parents grew tired of the mega-church New Life for reasons still unknown to me.

Our church met in a new school building up the street, and I enjoyed watching the church grow. Because we were meeting in a school, we would always have to set up and tear down. At least, the grown-ups did. My only brother and I would help set up a bit, but we were usually too busy shooting hoops in the gym where we held our services to notice what a nuisance we were to everyone's endeavors to put everything away.

I grew up attending Sunday school and despising it. I only marginally enjoyed it when the rich kids' mom taught the class and brought Fruit by the Foot snacks instead of the animal crackers that the poor kids' mom brought. I was only six or seven, so snacks were an important part of my life at the time. I remember hating Sunday school from the get-go. We would read the Bible marginally, we would do all kinds of artsy-fartsy crafts, we would enjoy scrumptious snacks (sometimes), and then we were expected to parade out of Sunday school with our artsy-fartsy craft and tell our parents about some Christian meaning that it was supposed to convey to us. I know, I sound like a very cynical seven-year-old, but I'm trying my best to describe my very first feelings about going to church.

My brother and I attended Awanas, and I am not ashamed to admit that I only came for the games and the food. There was only one boy in our group that was interested in memorizing the order of the books of the Bible and memorizing verses for Awana points, while the rest of us just goofed off. Every once in  a while, we would all have our memorization done for the week and we would be rewarded with a pizza party. I loved the pizza, but I found no use for the memorization whatsoever.

The church we attended constantly moved. We left the elementary school gym and moved into a vacant space in a strip mall next to a busy road in the city. My brother got involved with the worship band and started to play the drums during the morning worship service. Many of the members of the worship band attended the church, but every once in a while, young people who really knew how to play an instrument filled in. Most of them were members of heavy-metal rock bands. Even at my very young teenage years I was beginning to find it odd that our worship revolved more around sounding good to our ears then being pleasing to God's.

I actively participated and enjoyed participating in numerous outreach events that our church sponsored. My favorite was the free car wash and soda give away. A group would stay up at the church and wash cars while another group (usually the youth) would take several coolers full of caffeinated beverages down to the busy street and pass them out to cars while they were all stopped at the red light. That is, until the police would stop by and tell us that we needed to stop interfering with traffic and endangering our lives. At which point, we would stop. I suppose we were trying to get the word out that our church was there, but I think that most of people that we washed cars for and handed out drinks to just wanted a free car wash and a free soda.

As I approached my teenage years, I began to bring my magic card tricks to Sunday school with me in order to take the edge off of hearing the same ol' story with the same ol' moral. I got tired of hearing about David and Goliath, and I was beginning to wish there was a bean-stalk thrown in for some added adventure. Then the class got worse as the teacher whipped out his pre-programmed Yamaha keyboard and started singing Bible songs for us. I was probably only ten years old, but I felt like I was being treated like a new-born.

We would play "who's the better Christian games" by seeing who could find a Bible passage fastest. I seriously doubt that the teachers ever conveyed this exercise as a means to find out who the better Christian was, but since I was the fastest in my class (by far), I wasn't afraid to make it into a who's the better Christian competition. I was the better Christian.

In the middle of the class, I whipped out my card tricks and started performing for others in the class. Ironically, the person I remember being the most fascinated by the card tricks was the teacher. I'm not exactly sure, but I think that I spent the rest of the class amazing my Sunday school teacher with my mad, card-trick skills. After I performed a trick for him, he asked me to perform one for the whole class. Finally! Sunday school was getting interesting.

Once a year (or perhaps twice), the church would participate in mass baptisms. Everyone that wanted to be baptized had to attend a baptism class. Following the class, those who confessed their faith in Christ were invited to be baptized. The first couple of years, we attended the baptisms at a hot-tub in an apartment building complex. After that, all the baptisms took place in an extremely large horse trough filled to the brim with ice-cold tap water. I remember watching my brother get baptized, changing into dry clothes, and then being thrown back into the horse-trough again after teasing a group of guys (including the pastor).

I eventually "graduated" to the youth group, leaving Sunday school far behind me. Every Sunday, everyone would stay in the main room for worship. After a few songs, Sunday school and the youth group were dismissed, and only the adults sat under the preaching of the Word. I already told you about Sunday school, but the youth group was very different. I did not have to bring my card-tricks in order to stay amused.

Every Sunday, after the worship band did their thing, the youth would be dismissed, we would walk down to a nearby Wendy's, order frostys for everyone, fries for those who could afford it, and then we would huddle together and go through "A Tale of Three Kings." I never read the book, never paid any attention to what the youth "pastor" was saying, and I tuned out and enjoyed my frosty most of the time.

As a youth group, we did many different fun activities. We went camping once, and I quickly learned that nobody wanted to hang out with the 12 year-old that brought his beanie baby with him to camp. I'm sure we were supposed to learn something at camp, but all I remember is gaseous boys tents, hiking up a hill and almost killing someone when I unlodged a large rock, getting sick everytime we pilled into the van, thinking mom would not approve as we went cliff jumping, and participating in an epic spit-wad war on the drive home.

I didn't relate to the youth at my church's youth group very much. There wasn't really anyone my age except for a couple of girls that didn't want to have anything to do with me. One Sunday, a writer for a Christian magazine visited our youth group and asked us what we thought about Hell-houses (haunted houses that grotesquely reenact horrifying life events seeking to scare attendees to accept Jesus into their hearts). I was not surprised to find out that I was the only person in our entire youth group who thought this was a bad idea (to include my youth "pastor"). I said, "You can't use evil to do good things. People aren't getting saved there because they love Jesus; they're just scared of hell" (you can read the entire article here).

I spent a lot of time and actually enjoyed my two best-friends' youth group that met every Wednesday at their house. The lessons were the same mush they had always been, but I didn't attend for the material but for who else attended. My friends were there, and that was great. But better than that, there was a pretty girl that came and she loved to chase me around. We both went to the same elementary school down the road, I once professed my love for her best friend on the playground, and as a home-schooled teen, I was enjoying every bit of female attention I could muster.

Every once in a while, I would attend my friends' youth group at their church on Friday nights at an event they called Surge. At the time, Surge was the happening drink because it had the most caffeine in it (even more than Mountain Dew). I distinctly remember thinking that this Christian youth group event lacked anything remotely Christian. There were silly party games, lots of caffeinated beverages (that mom said I couldn't drink), pool tables, big screen TVs, video games everywhere, pool tables, air hockey, and really loud, obnoxious music. I felt like I was in a bar for teens rather than a Christian youth outreach event.

Not long after I disagreed with my entire youth group and youth pastor about using Hell-houses as an evangelism tool (although I had no idea what evangelism was), my parents decided to move out of our white, Christian, suburban neighborhood and move into the wide-open, windy, rural hoods (where you don't have neighbors and that's the point). We also stopped attending the evangelical free church that I had grown up in. For a while, we didn't go to church on Sundays. Then we attended a little cowboy church that met in the equestrian center down the street. That didn't last long either. Finally, my parents settled on a small (but larger than the cowboy church), Reformed Presbyterian church in downtown Colorado Springs.

Talk about a complete culture shock. I went from suburbia to the land of roving tumbleweeds. I went from loud, obnoxious praise bands singing "Jesus is my boyfriend..." to acapella singing of the book of Psalms. I went from a youth group that consisted of frostys, book studies that allowed us to keep our Bibles at home, and girls chasing me to sitting with the pastor and four older teens reading this thing called a catechism. The scariest part about the whole thing was that my parents acted like they finally found what they were looking for. We got home after our first visit, and my brother and I were thinking, "We thought the small cowboy church was strange. That was quite the experience. Time to put it behind us. I wonder what church we'll visit next week." We were floored when my dad said something to the effect of, "That was a breath of fresh air."

I was thirteen at the time, and I remember thinking that that experience was worse than visiting my aunt and uncle's Lutheran church. What in the world could he possibly mean breath of fresh air? I found the whole experience nauseating. I admit, I never cared much for our old church, but this new church was a bit extreme for me. I wasn't very fond of the worship band and all the rock guitars, drums, and synthesizer sounds, but just singing? Are these people crazy? No piano? No organ? No nothing? Just singing? I didn't care much for the Jesus is my boyfriend songs at our old church, but this new church didn't even sing hymns! They only sang the Psalms. I didn't even know you could sing the Psalms! And if you could, who would ever want to?! I wasn't a huge fan of the Super Bowl parties that our old church threw, but this new church didn't ever watch football! They didn't do a lot of things on Sunday! No more Sunday night movies, football games, afternoon lunches at the restaurant, and what's worse, we went back to church on Sunday night!

I was terrified of the new "youth" group. I was the youngest person in the class. Technically, I should have been in a different class, but they made an exception for me because I was terrified by the notion of being separated from my brother around these people. I was thirteen, there was a fifteen year-old, my brother (16), a girl just about to graduate high-school, and her boyfriend who was already in college. We sat in a small room with the pastor, and we would read through this book with stick figures named Shorty that was about something called the Shorter Catechism. I remember thinking many times, I would hate to take a class covering the longer catechism. I still didn't know that the longer catechism existed and that it was actually called the larger catechism.

Oh, how I began to desperately miss the old Who's the better Christian games from my old Sunday school classes. I never felt so stupid. I was a Christian. I had been one my whole entire life. I was not only a Christian, but a more conservative one at that. And yet, here I sat in a room with others who seemed to know this catechism forwards and backwards, and I couldn't answer a single discussion question correctly. I quickly missed the "What does Jesus mean to you?" questions. Now I was faced with questions like, "What do dispensationalists teach about such doctrines as the birth of Christ?" and "Must a sinner have Christ in all three offices to be saved? Why?" However, despite my inability to get a single answer correct, the pastor, Paul McCracken, was always very gracious in correcting me. I never felt like a loser, and my fellow classmates were almost always encouraging. In fact, I was actually learning something about what I should believe and know about the Scriptures.

Several Sundays passed, and my entire family was meeting with the session about joining the church as members. I didn't really know what the session was, but it sounded a bit too official for me. I was afraid we were going to be on trial or something. We arrived at the meeting, and I was relieved to find that the session consisted of all the nice, older men that I had met at the church (to include my Sunday School teacher, Pastor Paul McCracken). They asked each of us who Jesus was and why He was important to us. I don't remember exactly what I said but I do remember it was something to the effect of, "He's my best friend!" They received my whole family into membership...except for me. I was told I would first have to be baptized before I could become a communicant member and partake in the Lord's Supper. WHAT?!

I was furious. I had partaken in the Lord's Supper numerous times before in the past at our old church. How dare they tell me that I couldn't partake in communion! Who did this session think they were? I felt like a second-rate Christian. I had to sit there and watch while my whole partook of the elements without me. On several occasions, before we left for the evening service for the Lord's Supper, I would eat a cracker and a drink a cup of grape juice. That will show this session what I think about their decision! I was probably 14 at the time, and sadly, that's all the Lord's Supper was to me: a cracker and a glass of grape juice. I knew what it signified, but the elements held no special meaning to me. The wise members of the session rightly bared me from the table so that I would not eat and drink judgment upon myself, but they were not going to stop me that easily!

All that stood in my way from partaking in the Lord's Supper with the rest of my family was my baptism. I remember watching my brother get baptized...twice. I was not a big fan of water to begin with, and I didn't like the idea of getting dunked in a small pool in front of everyone. Thankfully, this new church only sprinkled, and they would even baptize little infants (couldn't dunk an infant in a small pool of water). I wasn't to keen on standing in front of everyone and having water poured on my head, either, but if it meant that I could eat the cracker and drink the juice with the rest of my family, than I was ready to do what I had to do. Once again, I sat before the session and they interviewed me about my profession of faith. This time, I steered clear of the "Jesus is my best friend" answer and went more along the lines of "Jesus is my savior." I didn't know exactly what I was saying at the time, but those were the words that the session wanted to hear. I was accepted into communicant membership, I was baptized along another young lady, and I could finally eat and drink judgment upon myself!

Little did I know that what I sought to gain by selfish means would be used by the Lord for His glory and my ultimate downfall six years down the road. I didn't know what I was doing when I got baptized, but God placed His name upon me that day, nevertheless. I had no intention of changing after my baptism because I did not sense that there was anything wrong with my self-righteous beliefs. In my mind, I was a Christian, by golly, and I wasn't going to sit around and merely watch the Lord's Supper when I had partaken of it my whole life prior. I was a very proud, arrogant, young man at the age of 14. I was a good Christian. I attended church regularly, I knew where most of the books of the Bible were located, I knew that the red-letters held greater significance than the rest of the Bible, I only listened to Christian music, I was homeschooled and prided myself in my Christian education, I didn't use the Lord's name in vain or cuss, and I believed in Jesus. However, I did not have saving faith in Jesus as Christ yet, and I had no place seating myself at the Lord's table. However, that is a lesson I would learn later on after my teenage life fell to shambles and everything I thought I knew about the Christian faith turned out to be completely wrong. I would know the Gospel of Jesus Christ six years down the road, but it would take that long even though I sat under the preaching of the Gospel every Sunday for those six years.

Although I didn't take my baptism seriously, God held me to it. What I viewed as a sprinkling of water, God effectually placed His name upon me and held me accountable as member of His covenant people, the church. I was a member of the covenant of grace, and I didn't even know what the covenant of grace was. Unknowingly, I intended to bear the Lord's name in vain, but God had other plans. He was not about to let some punk, fourteen year-old who feels entitled to a place at His table bear His holy name in vain. I had no intention of changing who I was as a Christian or what I believed about God, but God began to perfect my baptism by fully initiating me into the covenant of grace through the baptism of His Spirit. That baptism held no meaning to me whatsoever apart from feeding my selfish pride, but God has allowed me to look back at that baptism and know that it truly symbolizes God pouring His Spirit upon me. Whether or not I was filled with the Spirit that day, my baptism marks the beginning of my walk with the Lord and I had no idea.

I know it might seem that my feelings about my experiences in an evangelical Sunday school, youth group, and church have been altered since I have spent the last twelve years in the RPCNA (Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America). However, I am able to recall so many memories about my experiences in the evangelical church only because my early thoughts and opinions were so negative. My bias against the evangelical church I grew up in comes as no bigger surprise than to me, considering that what I believed about Jesus and how I understood the Christian religion was perfectly attuned to what many evangelicals hold to today. I was raised in the midst of an evangelical church, my Christian beliefs were very much akin to the teachings of the broad evangelical church, and yet, I detested every moment of it. I grew up with the popular belief that I asked Jesus into my life, that He was going to help me when I needed it, and I was going to be a better person for having asked Him to be a part of who I was. And yet, every Sunday, although I was merely a young boy, I felt like I was getting it all wrong and that the people that surrounded me were only making my confusion worse.

I'd heard every story a million times, but it all did not make since. What did a guy escorting two of every kind of animal onto a giant boat have to do with Jesus being baptized and having the Holy Spirit descend upon Him like a dove? What did Moses splitting the Red Sea for Israel's safe passage across and watching Pharoah's army drown behind them have anything to do with Jesus' prayer in the upper room? What does David's defeat over Goliath have to do with Peter's denial of being a disciple of Christ three times? There was a huge disconnect, even in my mind as a pre-teen. These stories weren't adding up. Nothing is jiving. The rainbow after the deluge is great and all, and I know it makes for a really good Sunday school craft, but how is this all connected to Christ on the cross?

I knew that much. I knew the Christian religion was all about Jesus dying on the cross. That was a really big deal. That was what being a Christian was all about. I picked that up very early from my parents. If it's all about Jesus dying on the cross, then why are Noah, Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David,  Jonah, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul and all these confusing books after the story of Jesus important? Are they just moral filler? Are they just mythical stories that serve to portray how and how not to obey God's commandments? If it is all about Jesus dying on the cross, then why is the Bible longer than just the last few chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

Your child does not have to be a rocket science in order to know when a story has a beginning, middle, and end that don't seem to jive together. Rather than finding fault in the narrative itself like many of my peers who have since abandoned the faith, by the sheer grace of God, I found fault in those conveying the narrative stripped of the Gospel. I did not know why I found fault in the evangelical church we went to until after I turned twenty, but ever since I was eight or nine I felt like something was missing from all of these meaningless Bible stories. I knew the flood was much bigger than the rainbow, I knew the story of Joseph was much bigger than his colorful robe, I knew the story of Jacob and Esau was more profound than a bowl of soup, and I did not like the fact that we were eating frostys and reading a book about leadership rather than reading the Bible, where the answers to all of my questions probably lied. And yet, I had no will or intention of reading the Bible on my own. It was a closed book to me. I was just a kid. Surely, I couldn't just pick up the Bible and read it, expecting to understand what it taught.

I grew up in this atmosphere that taught me that I couldn't handle the truth. I grew up in a church that taught me that the Christian faith had to be cut into tiny little pieces, stuffed into a blender, ran through a juicer, pasteurized, and then placed in a baby bottle before it would be appropriate for me as a young person. I attended Sunday school classes that taught me that unless I get to color every color of the rainbow with crayons then a Bible story would hold no value for me. I attended a youth group that taught me that unless I'm fed fast-food and caffeinated beverages, then I really would not be all that interested in the message of the Bible. Unless there was loud music, video games, and pool tables, I would find nothing of interest in what the church had to offer. Ironically, I hated the crafts, the shallow lessons (and they must have been shallow for me to find them shallow as a nine year old), the loud music, the junk food, and the stupid book studies. This church gave me everything that I thought that I wanted and could handle, but they deprived me of the one thing that I truly wanted, the one thing that they thought I couldn't handle: the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

I'm a postmodern phenomenon, by the grace of God. I grew up evangelical, I knew the evangelical mantra, I cited it as my own beliefs all the time, but ever since I was attending Sunday school in an evangelical church I knew that that was not truth. I knew that the truth was still out there, and I only wished they would give it to me. Today, I recognize the reason why they never gave me truth. It's not because they didn't think I could handle it, entirely. It is because many of them did not even recognize or know it themselves.

After we left the evangelical free church we had attended for seven years, the whole thing began to fall apart (not because we left, though). In the last twelve years since we left that church, I have sadly watched many of its members abandon the faith they once held. The bass player for the worship band stopped going to church, and his wife divorced him and left him for her lesbian partner. My former youth pastor's wife, who was very involved with the youth-group, left him and her two children for another man. The pastor, thankfully, was convicted by many reformed doctrines, and completely altered the message he preached every Sunday. Almost everybody who was instrumental in starting the church from the very beginning abandoned the pastor and his new, radical ideas of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I have no doubt that had we stayed in the church, I too would have abandoned the church after graduating college and being emancipated from my parents. The whole thing lacked any reason or purpose to me. We sing, we pray, we eat frostys, we hand out sodas to strangers, we camp in the woods together, we sell dark-roast coffee, but why is any of that important? How can I say that any of that defines who I am when I don't even understand what it is I am supposed to be doing here?

My life as a fifteen year old wouldn't be characterized by Christian decisions and faith, but God graciously placed me in a new environment, surrounded by new people, new teachers, and a wonderful new truth that I would hear every Sunday unbeknownst. If I had remained in the evangelical church when I was fifteen, I know I wouldn't being sharing my testimony of faith with you. I would have had the fuel to feed the fire of my doubt that this church, or any church for that matter, knows what they're talking about. However, God placed me in the midst of His people (His people reside in the evangelical church too, but I was also surrounded by many who were not Christians). I had my doubts, and God placed me in a community of saints who knew my doubts because they had them too, and were able to address my doubts with answers. Lest you think that I became a Christian because I reasoned my way to Christ, you will soon find out that my perception of what it meant to be a Christian was completely false and that God would drag me, kicking and screaming, to the true narrow path. My experience of hearing the Gospel, knowing the Gospel, and believing the Gospel by faith was not a pleasant one. It only brings me immense joy to relive it because I see how God used immense sorrow and depression in my life to bring to nothing my "Christian" beliefs and replace them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

These were my late childhood and early teenage years. It's as close to a beginning as I can get. From here, we move onto a deeply troubled, depressed, white-washed tomb that must collapse completely before God can start a new work in my life.