God in a Box

I have no interest in writing my biography; I don’t believe my life has been that interesting. But a few people have asked me how I got where I am in this ministry. I’ll offer a rough outline of what I believe were the turning points.

It was 1963. I grew up among an extended family of Southern Baptists. At age 7, I was outside on a summer day playing with my toys in the grass and dirt of our front yard. The pastor of our Baptist church drove up and I quickly moved my stuff from the driveway, then continued playing while he went inside to visit with my mother. A little while later, Mom called me from the porch.

I came in the front door and the pastor began to interview me about my faith. I recall almost nothing of this conversation, though my mother thought I was answering his questions consistently and knowingly. She claims I professed faith in Christ, but all I can recall from this encounter is the pastor demonstrating to me what baptism would be like, with him holding me just off the floor on my back in his large hands.

In other words, nothing happened, yet everyone else was convinced it did. I was duly baptized and considered a born-again Christian. I was not. A couple of years later we lived in another town and attended another local Baptist church. I came under conviction and the pastor had the sense to know what it was. That was when I genuinely professed Christ as my Savior. It changed everything for me.

And yet, there was this potent sense of unfinished business. Something kept drawing me to the altar during the worship service, and I had no idea what it was. This went on for years. Then, in yet another town and another Baptist church, someone guessed it correctly and I seized upon the truth: I was called to the gospel ministry. I was 16 at the time. Again, major changes inside of me, and my self-image and understanding of the world shifted.

As I prepared to jump through all the hoops required by the system, two things were missing. One was the simple need of an understanding mentor. I never got that, and to this day I’m frankly still outraged. The pastor of our church did not take me seriously, and there may be some earthly reasons for that, but everywhere we went and no matter what church we joined, no one would so much as make a referral. Two, everyone kept trying to herd me in directions I knew I could not go. They thought I was balking, but they were refusing to help me because I wouldn’t play their silly head games.

And they were silly, indeed. It was all politics and money. I was unaware of the details, but I sensed it wasn’t the Holy Spirit that guided their manipulations. I was hard driven for something no one was willing to offer.

Finally, I found a conventional path that God didn’t block off, and I went to Oklahoma Baptist University, almost on full scholarship. It was just a time in American and church history when things converged to pay for a genuinely poverty stricken young man to attend a very tough academic institution. While there was some waste, I still ended up with a good GPA.

And one of the most important things I learned was not in any class. Some speaker in our weekly assembly said that Christianity is an eastern religion, the Bible is an eastern book, and Jesus was an eastern man. I don’t remember anything else he said that day, but it took root and grew in my soul. Eventually it became a consuming passion as I sought to understand all the implications.

And a critical part of my education there was classical Western Civilization studies, trying to insure I understood what shaped our western heritage. But instead of making me a fan, it allowed me to see the moral flaws. I learned how to do independent study, but was never encouraged to pursue it by anyone on the faculty of that college.

For some decades I tried to make my way through the system by which Baptist churches develop and employ pastoral ministers. As long as I volunteered and worked for free, I got lots of support and accolades. My leadership was welcome, but no one would even discuss my chances of actually getting paid to do the work. And I still had never once gotten mentoring. I willingly submitted, but it never happened. I tested the waters with other denominations (two kinds of Presbyterian, Missouri Synod Lutherans, several independent churches). Very little mentoring and no opportunities, as before. My volunteer ministry work in the military chapel system was easily the highlight of my ministry career, when the whole community knew my name and my work. They were open to whatever God wanted me to do.

People in uniform might make a regular attendance at chapel simply because that’s their custom. However, for the majority of those who showed up, they had to really want it. We didn’t have any silly gateways where people would be walked through an interview of set questions to join in membership. If you wanted to work, they gladly gave you room to do something, limited only by military regulations. I did a lot, leading long-term organized Bible studies, leading the youth program for a while, occasionally preaching in the chapel service.

But then my knees failed and I could no longer serve in uniform. Back home in the churches again, things had only gotten worse. Finally, during the early 2000s I knew I’d have to make my own way. The fire of God burned hotter than ever in my soul, and I got involved in some verbal conflicts when the church I attended at the time blew up. I was betrayed by people I had supported, so I left. I started leading home worship, always with an eye to avoid the abuses I faced from the system.

If I could be welcomed as a full member with such a flimsy procedure called “evangelism” that changed nothing in my soul, that would by itself explain why those churches and their larger denominational organizations were so politicized. But on a much grander scale, I realized from my exposure to religious news sources that the whole mainstream system was coming apart in the same way. I realized that it was a major element of my future ministry to prepare a community of some kind to welcome those spat out by the system that struggled to put God in a tiny box.