My Church Story

In this episode, I share my Church story so you can get to know me, get to know my heart, and get to know what we are about. I share about my struggles to connect with the Church as an unchurched person and how I finally became at peace with following Jesus outside of the institutionalized church.  

The first thing I want to make absolutely clear is that we are not against traditional church. The point of me telling my church story is two-fold. To give non-christians something they can connect to, to discover God, and for people who consider themselves followers of Jesus who do not fit in the traditional church and need an identity. 

My heart is to love and reach people outside of the traditional church walls. My heart is to encourage and inspire traditional churches to reach beyond their walls. This is really what my story and this podcast is about, and that is what we will be discussing in the upcoming episodes. 

Transcript

So today I just wanted to share my church story so you can get to know me, get to know my heart, and get to know what we are about. 

My wife and I have run a ministry for more than 20 years. We have loved and reached some of the most unloved and unreached people in our city in Dallas Texas. We have worked with all different types of religions and people groups. This would mostly consist of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. We have worked with people in lower income communities. This would also include gang members, drug addicts, alcoholics, and the mentally ill. We have worked with people stuck in the sex industry. This would include going into brothels that are all over this city and building relationships with the women. We have also gone into and loved people in the gay community, which Dallas has one of the bigger gay populations in the United States. We have worked with the HIV community. We have even worked with many in the transgender community. 

So take a moment to think about all of these people groups. Do you see them in your churches? Do you think they are wanting to come to our churches? Of course I know stories of some of these people coming to a traditional church and that is great! But for every 1, there are probably hundreds and even thousands who don't. We are going for those who don't. When someone asks me what we do, I usually respond by saying, "we work with people who would typically never enter a church, and we give them an opportunity to learn about God in their own environment." Much of what we do and how we reach and love others comes from my "church" story. 

The first thing I want to make absolutely clear is that we are not against traditional church. The point of me telling my church story is two-fold. To give non-christians something they can connect to and 2, it's for people who consider themselves followers of Jesus who do not fit in the traditional church and need an identity. I can honesty say I identify with both because I was a non-christian who didn't feel like I fit in the traditional church and after I started following Jesus I still didn't feel like I fit in the traditional church. 

I grew up just trying to find myself like many of us. I was having some hard times in life and was just searching for answers. I was hurting like so many people and aided that pain through a destructive lifestyle. I was not connected to God or really had a desire for him growing up. When I would go to church, I just couldn't make the connection. Like most people, I thought in order to be a Christian, I had to attend a traditional church. When I would go I felt no connection. I felt out of place. I didn't connect to the type of music that was playing. I grew up listening to hard, alternative, and classic rock. When I was in the church, the music was extremely foreign to me. In those days growing up, it was mostly choir music sung by people much older than me. As time went on, church music became more contemporary but still wasn't close to anything I was familiar with. I didn't seem to fit in with the people there. Everyone was dressed nice, and I certainly didn't dress the part. I used to hate dressing up and I still do! I didn't connect with the speaker. It was always a guy much older than me and his talks were way over my head. I still didn't know the basics of Christianity. When I think about it now, I honestly think that it was just a cultural issue. A difference in preference. I wasn't in my culture when I went to church. I wasn't better than anyone else and they weren't better than me. We were just different and isn't that ok? But what was my alternative? I didn't have one. My cultural understanding of being a Christian was I had to go to a traditional church on Sunday morning. 

With all that said, an incredibly important seed was planted in me. My parents sent me off to a Christian sports camp. This was really the first time I felt like I connected to God. I loved the people there. I received so much love. I got a lot of one on one attention from my counselors and met many kids just like me. I connected to the sports aspect. At the time, sports was really my identity or at least the only thing I thrived in. I heard about God there from people who I built relationships with and finally a seed was planted in me. I believed in God and felt His love. 

Of course like many people's experience at camps, that feeling of connection with God often leaves quickly when you get into the real world. I would come back and start my destructive lifestyle all over again. In my high school years I was hurting pretty bad. I was so depressed, I could feel myself slipping into a dark place. I started to feel desperate. I couldn't take this lifestyle any longer. After a party one night, I actually went home early, went into my room and just started weeping and crying out to God! I missed the God I had felt at this sports camp. I cried and cried and then I felt so much hope. That next morning, I felt like I had made a life change. Now what??? I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to turn to. I sure wasn't going to go to church, so I tried to get connected to a school ministry. The leaders there told me they were pretty shocked to see me show up to a basketball pick up game at a house where this ministry was happening. They always joke with me that I was always on their prayer list but they were afraid to approach me. I guess you could say that I was pretty notorious for getting in big trouble in this community, so I understand their surprised reaction when I showed up. I made some great friendships there and made some head way with God, but like so many people I would fall away when temptation came. But I kept coming back, but as high school ended, so did this ministry experience. 

I started to try to live for God on my own and with maybe a few friends, but we didn't know what we were doing. I felt myself slipping again and one night I remember feeling desperate and God giving me the feeling that something big was about to happen and it did. That week, two great friends of mine died in a car accident. I was crushed like so many people. My faith was crushed. This led into some of the darkest 3 years of my life. That's the only way I can really explain it. Just dark and full of sin. An extremely lonely place. I really had no connections to Christians and just fell away completely. But that seed was in me from the sports camp for good. I would always hope to get back to God. Three years later I attempted to find God by joining the same high-school ministry that I had gone to, but this time I was a leader. I really had no business being a leader at this time but I was desperate. I would co-lead a bible study with a buddy of mine who I actually met at the sports camp. He was my old camp counselor! He was really ministering to me as I was trying to minister to kids. But I was still hurting and living two lifestyles. Then one night he asked me to go to this home group. I didn't know what it was and I didn't want to go. He asked me many times over the weeks, but I think I was just too ashamed to go. Finally I went and my life completely changed. 

I walked into this house and immediately I felt God. I didn't hear His audible voice, but I totally heard Him speak to my heart and say, "you are home and you do not have to hurt anymore." I usually cannot tell this story without crying. I cannot describe the relief of the pain and hopelessness of my situation. I immediately connected to this place. There were people there like me. Just a bunch of people with a lot of my same background, hurting and searching for hope. I spent a lot of that night just weeping, but I felt so much relief. I was home! I didn't know it at the time, but I had found a Church home. I didn't know it because I didn't know that a group of people coming together outside of the traditional church could be a church. After that night I have never looked back. All of the addictions and destructive lifestyle was gone and behind me. It was truly a miracle. Immediately I knew what my purpose in life was and I started reaching all kinds of people. Of course, I was drawn to the people who were just like me. People who didn't connect to the traditional church.  I also met my wife there which was extremely special to get to go through all of this together and of course grow together. A few years later my wife and I started our own ministry. Over twenty years later, we are still meeting with this group in the same home! They are truly my spiritual family. They are truly my Church! 

But it would take me many years to be ok with them being my church family because of guilt. Where was this guilt coming from? Our culture? From myself? I think the answer is obvious. Especially in Dallas, it truly feels like there is a church on every corner.  We are in the Bible Belt! Today, we can hardly imagine a local church not having their own building. Growing up, I never once heard from anyone that there was an alternative to traditional church. I simply thought as many of us do, that to be a Christian you had to go to a traditional church on a Sunday. To back this up after over 20 years of ministering to non-Christians, they think the same thing! It always comes up in conversation when ministering to people. Most believe that’s the next step to following Jesus. But again the point is, when they think of church, they mostly think the way I did about church. Why is this? I believe it is simply because of the strong and dominate Christian culture we live in in America. It is a powerful cultural belief that conditions us to believe that church can’t happen in other ways.

For probably the first 10 years of me following Christ, I still believed this way. I tried church after church. I would sometimes even end up being on a leadership team at the church as the volunteer outreach director. But I would sit in church and simply felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I would feel so much guilt about this. Why couldn’t I just be normal! 

Honestly what confused me the most, and this is telling; is that when I read the Bible about the life of Jesus and the early church, I would get more confused. To me, what I was reading in the Bible, just didn’t seem to match up with my church experience. I realized that you are not going to find this dominate traditional church model in the Bible, but instead it was created over time through our culture.  I also learned, for the first 300 years of Christianity, house churches were the norm. Realizing that was a huge deal to me. Again hear me say, if you feel like what you read in the Bible does match up with your church experience then I think that is great. Remember it’s a matter of preference and most importantly calling. 

When I read the Bible, I longed to jump into the Bible and follow Jesus. I longed to be a disciple of Christ in the first century. I longed to be a part of those difficult but beautiful times of the early church. But that was not my reality and I had to figure out what that looked like for me. 

I desperately and passionately wanted to be a part of the mission of God to love and reach people but I didn’t always feel that was the message in church. I would sit in church, and GRIEVE..about the people who were not in church. I would grieve about the people that I would pass by on the streets who didn’t look like me and would never see them in my church. I would grieve because it didn’t feel like we were making that a priority to reach them. Obviously some churches do but others don’t. 

It really wasn’t until I started studying about Christianity and churches around the world, and started to realize that church in other countries, especially in persecuted ones, can look much different. I learned that millions of people all over the world meet in house churches or different forms of church either because of need, preference or persecution.

I read every missionary book I could find. I studied the history of the church. I studied the history of missions. I started following a ministry called Voice of the Martyrs, which helps and supports the persecuted church and of course educates the American church about them. My eyes were opened. I finally realized that “church” didn’t always look like it does today and there were followers of Jesus doing church and spreading His mission in different ways all over the world. These different ways left me exploding with excitement. I started to finally become at peace with myself on the issue with church. 

With all that said, it was never easy. It still isn’t easy. I still at times feel like people look at me like an alien for not attending a traditional church. At times, I feel extremely isolated. But I would never change anything because my heart is to love and reach people outside of the traditional church walls. My heart is to encourage and inspire traditional churches to reach beyond their walls, and this is really what my story and this podcast is about and that is what we will be discussing in the upcoming episodes. 

Thank you for listening to my story. I hope that it encourages many of you and my prayer is that as you listen to more episodes that you will most importantly be inspired to love and reach all people. 

If you have any questions or comments, you can contact us through our website, at lovingallpeoples.com. Thanks for the listen everyone.