Hello all:
I have been very sick for the last several days, which has kept me home from work, and allowed me catch up on reading…and in fact, has enabled one of my bad habits, that of reading more than one book at a time. Right now, I am actually reading three books: “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848″ by Daniel Walker Howe, which is part of the Oxford History of the United States series; “The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century: Homer Hailey’s Personal Journey of Faith” by David Edwin Harrell Jr., and “Renewing God’s People: A Concise History of the Churches of Christ” by Doug Foster and Gary Holloway.
“What Hath God Wrought” is general history of the United States from 1815 to 1848, however, Howe spends a decent amount of time covering the religious history of the era, which is one of the reasons I bought the book. I’ve wanted to learn more about American culture during the time of Alexander Campbell, and this book has been quite helpful to that end.
“Renewing God’s People” as the rest of the title says, is a short, concise history of the Churches of Christ. I’m reading it mostly to cross it off of my list, since the book doesn’t go to in-depth. However, it is a good starter volume for introducing the history of the Churches of Christ.
The book that I’ve been enjoying the most has been David Harrell’s history of the church/biography of Homer Hailey. Having grown up on both sides of the institutional split in the Churches of Christ, I’ve been quite interested in the history of the split between the mainline and the “anti’s” as they hate to be called. While I love Richard Hughes book, he didn’t spend nearly enough time on the split to satisfy my curiosity, so I’m glad that Harrell has.
Reading Harrell’s history has made me reflect a bit on my own religious experience and history. I was adopted by my parents through Colorado Christian Services, CCS is, according to their website, “A Ministry of the Church of Christ.” My first several years were spent in a mainline church-plant that my parents helped to found…and which they left when things went “liberal.” I spent the next several years at a non-institutional congregation in the small town of Forest Grove, Oregon. There were two congregations in that town, our non-institutional church, and a one-cup congregation a couple of miles away. We stayed at Forest Grove until things settled down at the small church-plant we had fled several years earlier.
We returned to the Tualatin Valley Church of Christ, until financial pressure and low attendance forced us to merge with the church that had originally planted us, the Westside Church of Christ. We stayed at Westside for several years, until my family left, along with many others, because of what we saw as “liberalism.” We attended Southwest Church of Christ, which today is the largest COC congregation in the state. It is ironic to look at Southwest now and see the innovations we fled from at Westside in full use at Southwest.
We stayed at Southwest for a couple of years, but the long drive to Southwest brought us back to the non-institutional church in Forest Grove. I stayed at Forest Grove until I graduated from High School and went to Cascade College. I believe I had written before, and I am still amused at the fact that in the congregation only myself and the minister were aware that the college existed. While I don’t think he really approved of the school, our minister didn’t discourage me from attending there, which I think is ironic.
Upon leaving Forest Grove, I really didn’t go to church much, even while at Cascade. I kind of fell through the cracks. At the time, I hated going to Cascade, and felt that many of the people there were fake and stuck-up. I didn’t manage to make many friends there, and felt pretty alone and alienated there. I left Cascade at the end of the school year and went to Central Oregon, where my parents lived. There, I attended the Prineville Church of Christ, a small, conservative, but mainline congregation, and probably the healthiest congregation in Central Oregon, though there are several in the tri-country area. Prineville was a good congregation to be at at the time, though I don’t know that I would want to be a member there now. Interestingly, Stuart and D’Esta Love now spend their summers in Prineville and attend the church there with my parents.
Once I moved back to Portland, I again strayed from church. Looking back, I didn’t too much time thinking about religion during this time period, but I considered myself a Christian, even though I didn’t attend church. I lived in downtown Portland, and had no car. I was interested in attending a church, but none were within my immediate reach. I contemplated visiting the Disciples of Christ congregation in downtown, but never did. My mind was elsewhere.
When I met the woman who is now my wife, I found that her father had been a preacher and had been very religious. Sara grew up as a holy-roller, attending Pentecostal churches, mostly the Assemblies of God. When her family split apart, her church attending days were over. However, both of us had a positive attitude towards Christianity, and both of us felt fairly secure in our salvation. I decided to take her to church one Sunday, but, I had to decide where to take her since I was not a member of any church. Now that I look back I’m not sure why, but I took Sara to the Beaverton Church of Christ, a very conservative non-institutional congregation. The preacher was one of my old preaches from the church in Forest Grove. We went to church there and sat through a sermon on “the Social Gospel.” Mark Dunagan preached on the evil of kitchens and recreational facilities in the church building. My girlfriend was quite amused, but did find herself agreeing on several points in the sermon, mostly centering on the fact that the church is a spiritual place, not a social club.
After we were married and our son was born, we decided that we needed to return to the church so that our son would be raised with the same values that we held, as well as the fact that both of us felt that we should probably be going to church. We visited a couple of churches, and ended up at the Eastside Church of Christ in Portland. We went there for a year or so, but didn’t really feel like we fit in there. We decided to look for another congregation, and ended up at the Linwood Church of Christ (which would later become Southeast Church of Christ) down the street from our home. We stayed there and worked hard for several years until the situation there got really bad, much of the congregation had left, and even though I was in a leadership position there, one of the members was particularly abusive and was able to exert considerable influence on the church. We left, and decided that we would spend a good while looking before choosing a congregation to settle down with.
We visited one of the most progressive Churches of Christ in the area the first Sunday that we left Southeast, but it just didn’t feel right, even though I knew a decent amount of people there. The next three churches we attended were Independent Christian Churches. We visited one, Harvest Christian, for about a month, and decided that it just wasn’t quite the right fit, even though we both enjoyed the people there. Next, we attended Abundant Life Church, a true mega-church. We had visited Abundant Life quite a bit while we were at Southeast, and enjoyed the music and the preaching. We even knew a couple of members. We visited one more church, Corbett Community Church, which was a Christian Church, but decided quickly that that wasn’t the church for us, even though we were quite amused with the slideshow before the sermon showing the youth group’s visit to Great Wolf Lodge, bikinis and all.
For a while, I thought Abundant Life was where we were supposed to be, however, one morning Sara and I got coffee at this coffee shop down the street from Sara’s school. I was reading “New Covenant Theology” when the guy behind the counter asked me if the book was good. That ended up being the first conversation of many with Robbie Foster, who pastors Estacada Community Fellowship. Robbie had attended Abundant Life after a messy split at Estacada Christian Church, so we had some things in common to talk about. After we got our coffee, we heard Bobby talking to some other people in the coffee shop about the church, and we really liked what we heard. It seemed right, so Sara and I decided to visit his congregation, which is more or less a non-affiliated independent Christian Church. We went there and haven’t even thought about looking at another congregation since. The people are friendly, and its a church that is actually trying to be the church. My parents finally decided to come to town on a Sunday and worship with us, but they made the mistake of bringing Grandma, who got quite upset about the instrumental music, especially the guitar and drums, though that didn’t surprise me. While I think Command/Example Necessary Inference is somewhat useful in a limited way, I don’t find it to be the be all end all of my theological thinking.
So, after meandering down the long path of my history, whats the point? I’m not even sure if I know. I’ve been a member of mainline Churches of Christ, a non-institutional Church of Christ, and now a very independent Christian Church. As one observer has noted, in many ways I’ve ended up at a church more conservative than I am (seeing as I’m not a fundamentalist, especially in the religious-nationalist sense of the term). However, after being a member at all three, I feel no big difference. Sure, there are some differences in practice, and a little more in theology. In some ways, the biggest difference is attitude, but even then I don’t know if I can point to the type of church versus the individual congregations and Christians in those churches. In a weird way, I still feel like I’m a member of the Churches of Christ…though I am reminded that I’m technically not when I look at job openings at our Christian Colleges that exclude me from applying because I’m not a member of the right type of congregation.
So, I guess part of the point is, is that after all these different experiences, I feel like I’m in the same church I’ve always been in…and I think that is because I really am. The physical, visible unity might not be there, but the spiritual unity is, even if we don’t acknowledge it. The sign might say “Church of Christ” or “church of Christ” or “Christian Church” or even “Community Fellowship,” but below the surface, the DNA is the same.
Josh
