My Story

Everybody has a story. This is my story. It's not very exciting, maybe a little boring, but it is still my story. It all started when I was in Kindergarten or 1st grade. My mom told me we are going to church in our neighborhood called Faith Baptist Church. I don't remember a whole lot about that church other than the preacher yelled a lot and pointed his finger in his sermons. I do remember the first day we went, I wore a three piece suit with a gold pocket watch on a chain in the front pocket of my suit vest. After Sunday School I came home and told my mom I had to learn a bible verse. I still remember it, Psalm 37:5 "Commit thy way unto the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass". I don't remember why we quit going there but for some reason we stopped going for a while.

Now I am in 5th grade and we start going again to another Baptist church in Coal City. This one is a very small Southern Baptist Church in the town I grew up in. I think there were like 30 people in the service. In 7th grade I got involved in a program for boys called Royal Ambassadors. (I wrote a paper about this program in an earlier post.) Through this program I asked Jesus to be my savior and was baptized. I attend that one faithfully until I was a Junior. I meet a girl at this church and asked her out, she said yes and we went out twice. I could not see the writing on the wall, she was not interested in me. She liked another guy in the youth group and dumped me for him. Yes it broke my heart but it was this experience that turned my heart on fire for God. I really did not feel welcome in this youth group, so I started going to an Assembly of God church down the road. WOW what a difference in worship style, I could actually clap my hands, raise my arms, and shout to the LORD and not feel out of place. I could relate to the kids in the group, I am still friends to this day with the youth group leader and his family.

However I was torn between the two churches. I went with my mom to the Baptist church on Sunday mornings and this Assembly of God church on Sunday nights as well as on Tuesday night for youth group. My first youth group outing with this new church was at Gephard Woods State Park in Morris, IL. We all had a small stick and during the invitation we could get up and throw our stick in the fire to take a stand for God. I was the first to get up that night. I rededicated my life back to God, August 1, 1989. That park in Morris holds a special place in my heart. It was during this time I really was challenged to read my bible. And then it happened, "Would you like to be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues?" I remember going forward and asking God to fill me with the Holy Ghost. What I did for the next month or so before I left that church was repeat what I heard other people speaking in tongues saying. I was a clanging symbol. I praise God I am now part of a church where it is practiced but is kept in it's proper place, not in your face to where you feel pressured. I am not saying speaking in tongues is fake, in my own opinion there is a proper time to do it. If God were to ever wish to give me this gift I welcome it. Right now I have a hard time handling my own tongue. The pastor I have now told me a story of a lady who got saved because someone spoke in tongues in a meeting. She knew no English only German. The person who spoke in tongues spoke the plan of salvation in perfect German.

What I had a problem with at this church is when someone told me if a Christian did not speak in tongues then they did not have the Holy Spirit. What ever happened to 1 Corinthians 13? What about the Fruit of the Spirit?

About this time my two friends from high school invited me to their church's (First Baptist Wilmington, IL) Wednesday night Bible study/youth group. I loved it. So now I went to my mom's church on Sunday mornings and my friend's church on Sunday night and Wednesday night. I fit like a glove there. Everybody welcomed me and I felt like I was home, I was. I finally joined August 5, 1990 and started going there full time just before I started my senior year of high school. I had my first girlfriend there, we dated only for a short time but we got back together a few more times. I'll get to that later. Life at this church was pretty much normal, I went to a youth event called Youth Encounter, first as a youth then as a chaperon. We went on Ski Trips and winter retreats in Michigan at a farm called Maplecrest Farm. I served as an usher, money counter, trustee, I ran a video ministry where we video taped the Sunday services, I even taught a Young Adult Sunday School Class.

We went into a building program because we were outgrowing our current building. We owned 22 acres at the edge of town. So we built a church building. It is sad to say that building is empty today. I can blame the leadership, we had a pastor who wasn't much of a pastor in the end. The deacons did not do much either. I don't want to go into all the details, I believe God forgives and we do not need to bring up the past. We did not even observe the Lord's Supper for over a year, we just forgot isn't that sad. The whole point is we as a church took out eyes off the cross and put them on that building. We were so focused on outreach and that building we forgot about the in-reach. People stopped fellowshiping with each other. People who were once friends were now enemies. As soon as church was over in 15 minutes the building was empty. I saw the writing on the wall the girl I was seeing on again off again broke up with me her senior year in college, my church I loved was falling apart so I left. I was there 7 years. The church eventually split and they lost both buildings to the bond company. Praise God they got back together under a different name and were able to buy one of the buildings back. Last I talked to them they had 60 baptisms in 1 year.

I went back to that small Baptist church I grew up in and found it much the same as I left it before except they had a lot more people. It was a small church who was experiencing growing pains. I worked my way into being a Sunday School teacher to college age young adults. I was put in the kitchen, the worst place for a class. The highlight of my time there was when I took a group of high school girls up to the ski trip cabin in Michigan. Yes it was out of their comfort zone, yes they complained but not in front of me. On Sunday morning we had out own worship service. One of the Junior High girls sang a song for the special music. The background music tape messed up, she just kept on singing.

I was feeling God lead me away from this church once again. Needless to say the pastor was a little disappointed in my decision to leave and with my new church selection. I would like to point out nobody asked my mom where I was at after I left, except for the few people she was closest to. One Sunday morning nobody showed up for Sunday School class so I had had enough and filled out whatever paperwork I had to fill out for attendance and got in my truck and left for First Christian Church in Morris, IL. It is now May 1999

I loved it there. They accepted me with open arms. I became involved on the softball team. One week after I joined I got hit in the face with the ball and ended up ripping the straps off the stretcher before they put me in the ambulance. Proud to say it took them all to hold me down. (I have vertigo and get dizzy when I lay on my back.) I ended up with 6 stitches in my chin. I got involved in a Sunday School Class, with people my own age which I have not had in a long time. I loved the sermons every Sunday morning.

Before I joined a friend gave me a bag full of sermon tapes, a years worth. I listened to them all in two weeks. A few elders saw some potential in me so they asked if I would be interested in taking a leadership class the pastor was teaching. I eventually taught a Sunday School class for young adults and did the Communion Meditations twice a year a month at a time. I also served as an usher and took pictures of all the new members. I felt a need to go back to college and take some bible classes. So I enrolled at Lincoln Christian College and took Life of Christ 1,&2, Basic Christian Beliefs (I have a paper posted on this blog from that class), and Intro to Bible. The church started offering bible study classes on Sunday night. At this time I was not teaching a Sunday School class, God closed that door a year or two before and he opened this one. I asked one of the pastors if I could teach a Bible study class on the Life of Christ using video clips as discussion starters. After explaining it in more detail he said I could. So I was able to teach this class in 2004-05. I loved it, I think we had 12 to 15 people in the class.

Again God closed another door in June of 2005 and I left. I meet a lady a few years before at a friends christian bookstore in Morris when they were closing the store and retiring. We started dating about a year or so after first meeting. Things were getting serious so I moved an hour and a half north to Sycamore, IL to be closer to her. I started going to her church, Crosswind Community Church of Genoa, IL. I eventually joined and we got married on February 25th 2006.

At Crosswind Community Church I am involved in a men's group called M.A.S.T. (Men Acknowledging Struggles Together). I am not really involved in a "job in the church" like I have been in the past. My job right now is to be a better husband to my wife.

I have learned a few things in my Christian walk and being apart of different churches.
1. If you ever find the "perfect church", don't join it you might mess it up.
2. Embrace your church heritage, be proud of it.
3. Do one job in the church and give 100% at that one job. Don't do anymore jobs because you can't give a full 100% at those jobs and manage a family too. One or the other suffers.
4. Don't look down on another Christian because they don't go to the same kind of church you do, or that, that church down the road believes a little differently than your church.
5. We all should have one thing in common and that is Jesus. Isn't that enough.