After my conversion, I still had to connect with the rest of the Christian Church.
This posed an issue. Like my career life, I wandered through a few dozen churches throughout the United States between 2006 and 2020:
- Evangelical Free Church of America x3: 5 years
- Seventh-Day Adventist: 4.5 years elementary private-schooled
- Southern Baptist Church x2: 4 years
- Discipled/mentored by the gloriously attained CEO of Mastermedia International: 2.5 years
- Third-Wave Pentecostal: 1 year
- Church of Christ: 1 year
- Calvary Chapel x3: 1 year
- House church with cult-like characteristics (Geftakys Assembly): 4 months
- Big Eva x3: 4 months
- Hutterite-inspired church: 2 months
- Roman Catholic church: 2 months
- House church inspired directly by Jack Langford: 1 month
- Hebrew Roots Movement: <1 month
- Foursquare Pentecostal: <1 month
- Oneness Pentecostal: <1 month
- Eastern Orthodox Catholic church: ~1 month Ancient Faith podcasts
When I went to the first few churches, I fit in well-enough. However, my ambitions to serve within the Church were met with a general resistance.
Over time, I started catching a few patterns within the churches I kept entering and leaving:
- The primary concern of many Christian leaders, of all denominations, was typically advertising their specific church or denomination as the “right” one. Some of what they said was right, but they were very quick to dismiss “outsider” groups, even when they shared 98% of the same things (e.g., Baptists rejecting Methodists, Roman Catholics rejecting Eastern Orthodox).
- The leadership cared deeply about “building up” the Christian Church, but that usually meant their specific church. While I respected their authority, I also saw them as 1 leader in 1 church alongside ~31,000 denominations who all held at least some of the truth, and most of them resented that equivocation.
- Many of my fellow laity didn’t make understanding their Christian faith much of a priority. It was more a social club than anything I had read about in the book of Acts, and their general response to my passion was “dude, lighten up” or “trust in your leadership” or “stop asking so many questions”.
- For much of that time, my personality had created optics issues. My background had made me particularly harsh in my obsession with the truth, and it turned off most of the Church. I imagined there was something wrong with me in the Christian Church for a while.
But, as I started to understand certain theological concepts, and started asking bigger questions, I started facing more steady resistance from the leadership. This got worse after I personally experienced multiple, repeated, profound successes outside of the Christian Church’s influence.
The social tension within church culture only became more pronounced starting in late 2014 once I met the female who would become my wife. She softened my jagged edges and civilized me immensely, which magnified the reach and diminished the liabilities stemming from my otherwise severe statements.
For something like a decade, not much changed in my church life:
- Find a church.
- Offer to help with my natural spiritual giftings that provoked me to volunteer with logistics, teaching, writing, organizing, or technology.
- Distrust with church leadership regarding my openly-disclosed attitude to help.
- Since I wasn’t wanted or useful, I found no meaning or corporate spiritual connection with sitting idly with the rest of the congregation.
I had anticipated that something would break soon, and I’d be able to find a church community that would accept me. I worked hard to implement what I understood about social standards, and I believed it was only a matter of time.
Nothing seemed to change, though. Around late 2016, I started seeking answers beyond the domain of the Church’s formalized authority.
Next: Finding Answers