An Introduction

Hi!

I'm Jamey.  Yup, that weird Terminator-looking guy you see at the right of your screen is me.  A couple of friends of mine have been bugging me to start a new blog about spirituality, and frankly I need a way to put all this pent-up energy out there, so here I am.  Hopefully, I'll still have those friends after they read my writing.

Here's the first thing you should know about me:  I'm 36 years old as of this writing, and I grew up in the Church of Christ.  My father, who is a kind and wonderful man and one of my personal heroes, is a preacher in that tradition.  (They prefer not to call it a denomination.)  I was in that tradition up until a few years ago.  I am no longer a member of that particular group, and it has been a long and difficult transition out of it.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to sort out those spiritual odds and ends that may or may not have been tied up as I left.  To be completely honest, this blog is definitely going to serve as an emotional outlet and sounding board for me.  I want to open sore spots and talk about my understanding of what that church is and what it does.  I also want to be free to explore my own evolving faith and path.  Sometimes I may do it in a humorous way; other times I may do it in a thoughtful way, or I may even sometimes get a bit angry.  It's a bit of a rollercoaster ride, emotionally, when one breaks with a long-standing tradition in one's life.

A bit of further background:

The first time I questioned the Church of Christ was when I was very young, and I couldn't reconcile their dress code to the second chapter of James in the Bible.  The next was when I was forced to break up with a high school sweetheart because she was Baptist, and therefore, in their eyes, not a Christian.  I wanted to know why we were the only ones that were going to Heaven!

Still, I put those things out of my mind, eventually, and was very ardently devoted to the Church of Christ.  I went to Freed-Hardeman University, which is controlled by the Church of Christ.  It was there that I first began to have serious doubts.  I can't get into everything in one post--and if I could, there'd be no need for any further posts--but the way people acted, the churches I attended, the wrongs I saw committed, all caused me to take a more critical look at the church of which I was a part.

I first quit the Church of Christ in 1999 and stayed out for almost 2 years.  I didn't do anything religiously during that time.  I was tired of religion, tired of faking it, and mostly tired of failing at what the Church of Christ considers to be righteousness and salvation.  By their standards, I couldn't do enough to keep from being lost, so I just said "the hell with it" and gave up.  (Right now, there are Church of Christ readers who have completely stopped and lost it and who will miss the whole point of everything I say, simply because I just said "hell" in a manner other than referring to eternal punishment.)  But I would later succumb to guilt and go back.

When I did go back, it was with a blinding purple passion.  I was ready to reclaim that old faith, and I moved back to Henderson, determined to find myself that "good Christian wife" who had eluded me at Freed-Hardeman the first time.  For a while, I worked for a TV station, and then, once I found the excruciatingly wrong girlfriend for me, I decided it was time for me to go into ministry.  I talked a church into hiring me, and it was an unmitigated disaster.

After that failed, I moved on with a secular job, and once again, I found myself desiring less and less to be part of the Churches of Christ around me.  I still went, but it was very sporadic, until I finally found a congregation that clicked with me.

Then I met and married my beautiful wife, and we decided it might be time for me to make a go of the preaching thing again!  That was yet another horrific mistake, and after a year of it, we were fed up with them, and they were equally done with us.

So we made the move to China, and that was the beginning of the end of us and the Church of Christ.  I hope to explain that in more detail as I post on this blog.

I am still a Christ-follower.  I have no particular denomination to which I have given my allegiance.

My intentions here are:

• To sort out my reasons for leaving the Church of Christ for good.
• To review some of the literature that helped me reach my decisions.
• To commiserate with those who are also making their way out of that tradition.
• To communicate with those who still are in that tradition.

I hope you will join me on this adventure.

Oh, and I'd like to put this out there now:  I invite any and all comments, and I will not moderate them, other than to remove spam and bots.  If you are a member of the Church of Christ, I welcome conversation with you.  But understand this:  I often already know everything you're going to say, because I've said it myself.  If you want to debate, you have to stay on point, and if you're thinking of trying to railroad the conversation and control it, you're in need of another thought.  I'm fully ready to defend what I believe.  You may be quite frustrated, but I promise I will keep my demeanor at least as friendly as yours!  

In the next several posts, I intend to talk about this book. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America by Dr. Richard Hughes of Pepperdine University.

God bless!