Let’s start from the beginning to bring you up to date with our background and how we got to where we are today. We wont really get much into what we believe currently but will build a background story so you understand where we are coming from. As you will see with everything in life, CONTEXT is everything. This will be a 3 or 4 part series of posts to keep it digestible.
California/Minnesota Baptists
My father gave his life to Christ in High School through the Baptist Church youth group he was apart of during the late sixties in Southern California. He describes it as a transformative moment in his life where everything changed for the better and everyone around him noticed the obvious change. He soon thereafter decided to pursue a degree in theology with the intent of serving in “the ministry” to some capacity.
For some reason that decision brought him to a little Baptist Bible college in a small town in southern Minnesota. There he would meet his future wife, my mother. She had grown up her entire life in a Baptist family on a small farm just 20 minutes from there and was the valedictorian of her class. They were married while still attending college but before finishing their degrees, they packed up and moved to Southern California. My father ended up securing a position at a Baptist Church and would go on to earn his degree in theology within 4 years of returning to California. For 6-7 years he would serve there as youth pastor, assistant pastor and history teacher at the private school that was part of the church.
I arrived on the scene in the mid 70’s shortly after the move to California and 2 years later I had a little sister. My mother worked as a receptionist and secretary during this time but living in a big city is expensive so we didn’t have much. We rented and moved frequently but we were relatively comfortable there. The church was our family. I attended the preschool and school there into the 1st grade. To say I was raised in and by the church is an understatement.
It was here that I was part of a children’s group at church called AWANA. It was a ‘club’ of sorts that memorized Bible verses and we earned badges. Something like Boy Scouts for Christians. Anyway it was here at the very young age of 4 or 5 that I raised my hand and “accepted Jesus into my heart”… This would end up happening every single service, EVERY SINGLE SERVICE… services always ended in a high-guilt altar call where you felt like a sinner that was going to burn forever in hell if you did not respond that instant. Thus I always felt guilt-tripped into raising my hand or coming forward to give my life to Christ… this happened EVERY SINGLE SERVICE.
If you are unfamiliar with the Baptist church, (maybe not all are the same and maybe times have changed) from my experience it was ultra conservative and what might be even called “fundamentalist.” They held very traditional values, at least relatively speaking. No dancing, no going to movies and no loud/worldly music was ever tolerated. Songs were sung Sunday mornings from a hymnal that only contained songs written more than a 100 years ago. Only traditional instruments like piano or organ were used to lead worship. There were very little signs of emotion, no clapping, no raising hands and certainly no outbursts or random shouts of “Amen!” There was no praying for others, laying on of hands, and certainly no speaking in tongues or ‘prophecy’. Every single service concluded with an altar call (and singing of “Just As I Am”) where the preacher attempted to convince everyone that if they did not know without a shadow of doubt where they would go if they died today then they were doomed to an eternity of anguish in the burning lake of fire known as HELL.
Everything we did revolved around the church. My father was very involved and often we had people over to our house for various get togethers. I remember everyone in the family always dressing our best every Sunday. We always went to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening and every Wednesday evening. The church was our life.
One day when I was 6 years old we went over to have dinner with some friends. They had a daughter that was close to the same age as my 4 year old sister. As soon as we had parked the car across the street from their house my sister immediately jumped out of the car and darted across the street. As I stood there on the boulevard watching, a car seemingly came out of nowhere and struck my sister in the middle of the street. I watched her fly what seemed like 20 or 30 feet in the air before she rolled to a rest near the curb on the hard street pavement. She would not survive the night. I can still vividly remember everything about it in slow motion but ultimately I don’t think it has really ever affected or scarred me directly, certainly not to the extent it did my parents.
That was clearly a pivotal moment in the life of my parents. Life changing. A moment that breaks many marriages, but they endured. It was from this moment that my father began to seriously seek comfort and answers from his friends, the church and the Bible. This theological crises of sorts introduced some serious dilemmas and questions that the church was not really providing adequate answers to. Not to mention my parents were not finding the support they were needing to recover from this tragedy.
A big question my father began asking the church leadership was why the ‘gifts of the spirit’ were not ALL currently being practiced in the Baptist church. The explanation was simply that some gifts were only for a certain time and place (dispensational theology). Simply put: That was then, this is now. Ultimately that was not an adequate answer for my father.
Within a year of my sister’s passing my father had resigned from the church and he temporarily went out to Austin, Texas on his own to find work roofing houses with some old college friends. During this time he would end up falling off of a 3 story house, breaking his arm and landing on a pile of bricks. Miraculously he survived. He returned to Southern California to pack up what we had and bring myself and my mother back with him to Austin to start over.
To be continued…
