My story

I was born in Southern California in 1968 to young, born again, on-fire, Catholic Charismatics.  My parents embraced the Jesus Movement and we would often travel to Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa to hear the music of Chuck Girard and the preaching of Chuck Smith.  Our home was open for ministry to all: foster kids, relatives, hippies, Catholic friends, neighbors...anyone who wanted to hear and learn about the good news of Jesus, to to be prayed over for healing or the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or needed a place to live or a meal to eat.  Thus began my spiritual journey.   I was taught the gospel in music: artists like Love Song, Keith Green, Barry McGuire, Darrell Mansfield, and even the Godspell Soundtrack would resonate in our home much of the day, nearly every day.  I was taught the Bible and theology by my parents at home, in the car, or just about everywhere and anywhere.  On tv we would watch the likes of Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, lots of TBN and of course, the 700 Club. Though occasionally we would attend a service, Sunday School class or VBS at another church, my formal spiritual education came through the Catholic Church. I was baptized as a baby, attended catechism and Catholic school, and had my first communion, just like so many "normal" Catholics.  But we were anything but "normal" Catholics.  The Bible was the final authority, (the most common versions we read from at the time were Good News for Modern Man and The Living Bible) so any Catholic doctrine that ran counter to it, such as praying to saints, a sinless Virgin Mary, Purgatory, or even seeking forgiveness through confession to a priest, were set aside after being shown to violate the teachings of Scripture.  Needless to say, it is difficult to remain a Catholic when you fail to embrace so may of the Church's teachings.  When I was fifteen years old, my parents decided it was time to leave: the "Catholic" was gone, the "Charismatic" was not.  Through my teen years we attended various Charismatic churches,  and I saw a lot of things which which I wasn't quite sure about.   Speaking in tongues, prophesying, slaying in the spirit, the casting out of demons, laughing in the spirit...things that seemed a bit (okay, ALOT) wierd.   Going into my college years I still considered myself a charismatic, but I had some lingering doubts.  In college I was active in Campus Crusade for Christ and interacted  with (and debated) a lot of cessationists and people I would characterize as anti-Charismatics.  After college I moved to a new town, and started attending a Baptist church, primarily because they had an awesome college and career group and I was hoping to find a wife.   I did find a wife, but it was at a pro-life event, not at church.  She was Reformed in theology, but was attending a Baptist church that became our home church for nearly twenty years.  Our children were baptized and attended Sunday School and AWANA in that church.  I even served on the Elder board for several years.  But eventually our traditional, hymn-singing, book of the Bible-teaching, Baptist church morphed into a attractional, seeker-sensitive, topic-driven  church.  And on top of that, the reformed leaning theology that my daughters were learning at their Christian school had taken hold in our family, and in me.  As I thought back to my childhood and the conflicting theological messages I had received, I knew it was time to find a church where we could sit through a sermon and be able to say a resounding "Amen".  So we found, and now attend, a Reformed Baptist church.   The pastor is a gifted expositional Bible teacher who is strongly Calvinist, and also strongly cessationist.  In all of the years at the previous Baptist church, the charismatic issue wasn't really an issue.  The church definitely was not charismatic, but it wasn't anti-charismatic either.  I could live comfortably as continuationist (with reservations) in theology and cessationist in practice.  But there is no middle ground for me now.  I have to have a strong, Biblical argument to be a continuationist, or I need to abandon it and become a cessationist.   I decided to start this blog as a record of my study.  I am not sure where I am going to land in the end.  But wherever it is, I trust that God, as he has all my life, in His Sovereign grace, will have led me there.