The story of my involvement in the Church of God begins with my parents. My mother was born into a Christian family that attended the local Church of God congregation in southeastern Ohio. However, for private reasons, her family began attending a local Nazarene congregation, where they have remained ever since. Yet the roots of the Church of God run deep in that family: to this day, my grandmother and aunt (my relatives still living in that town) faithfully support their Nazarene church but are not members there. I believe their non-membership is due to the Church of God influence against man-made church membership requirements.
My father’s family was not church-going, but they were befriended by a strong Christian couple who attended a Church of God congregation in Cleveland, Ohio. The wife of this couple introduced herself to my grandmother after she learned of a factory accident in which my grandfather was seriously injured. The friendship between these two women made a tremendous impact on my father and his brothers. In the course of time, my father was saved at the Church of God congregation as a teenager and soon felt a call to vocational ministry.
My parents met and were married at Anderson College in the late 60s and early 70s. After my father completed a seminary degree at the same school, they journeyed off into the uncharted territory of senior pastorate ministry. They first landed in central Indiana and then were called to West Virginia.
I was born in the middle of my father’s seven-year pastorate at the Hurricane Heights Church of God in Hurricane, West Virginia. That small congregation is no longer in existence, but I have visited the location on a handful of occasions. We lived in a mobile home immediately next to the church building, and to my everlasting dismay, I lost a play-money $100 bill in that trailer when we moved to Anderson in 1984. I was four years old.
From that time on, Anderson was my hometown. I grew up in a house immediately across from the Church of God campgrounds. In those early years, I remember mobile homes filling the land behind our backyard at campmeeting time; my brother and I had to be careful not to hit the whiffleball too far when we played outside in late June. When it wasn’t campmeeting time, which was most of the year, we entertained ourselves by riding our bikes around the campgrounds and the college campus. Sometimes we pretended we were Ponch and John from the 80s TV show “CHiPs”; we chased imaginary bad guys around Warner Auditorium and saved the day numerous times.
All our familiarity with the Anderson campgrounds made campmeeting not so exciting for me. As a family, we were very dedicated to our local Church of God congregation, but national events (and certainly less-advertised state events) were not as important in our experience. Yet without a doubt we were a Church of God family. Our identity was tied up in the music, history, and theology of the Church of God movement.
When I was a teenager, I received an important document from my Sunday school teacher. The document, which I still have in my office today, is entitled “This We Believe, This We Sing.” It outlines some of the major tenets of Christian theology and Church of God theology in particular; it illustrates important points with well-known hymns of the faith (Church of God and otherwise). This document has been formative for me in shaping my understanding of the relationships among hymnody, theology, and identity.
The Church of God was my church home all the way through high school. During my college years, I attended a Christian (but not Church of God) school and attended a United Methodist church in Upland, Indiana. Next, while I worked on a master’s degree in mathematics, I attended another UMC congregation in Oxford, Ohio. These congregational choices were due mostly to convenience and comfort; I visited several churches in each location and stayed with the one where I knew people and could worship God comfortably. I remember driving half an hour from my home in Ohio to visit the nearest Church of God congregation one Sunday morning. That experience left me really nonplussed, because the congregation felt stiff and formal, cut from a different kind of cloth than I was. I just didn’t connect with the people at all.
I suppose those were my “wandering years,” in which I wandered not so much from the Lord but from the Church of God. The best way to describe my thoughts may be that I simply didn’t know what the Church of God was about or whether I wanted to invest myself in it.
God called me to pastoral ministry when I was a senior in college. As a “tent-making” experiment I pursued a graduate-level math degree before transitioning to seminary studies. I deliberately chose to attend the Anderson University School of Theology because (a) it aligned with my church background and (b) there was a solid scholarship opportunity (the Blackwelder fund) that would reduce my tuition expenses by about half. Always the frugal person, I moved back to Anderson and began the seminary journey.
After my first year of seminary, Tara and I were married, and, like so many couples, we had to decide what church to attend together. Through a long process of deliberation, we decided to attend the inner-city Indianapolis Baptist congregation at which we were married; this had been Tara’s home church for the preceding few years. Our decision was to remain there until my seminary education was complete, at which time we would move wherever I found employment as a pastor.
It was during these Indianapolis years that my connection to the Church of God grew strong within me. Conversing with Church of God professors and classmates, attending General Assembly sessions, and explaining my church situation to the Indiana credentials committee were experiences that solidified my personal identification with this movement. I did not feel forced into the Church of God because of my upbringing; instead, I found that my personal convictions about Christian faith and practice did in fact line up with what the Church of God has upheld as centrally important.
I had no trouble worshiping with a Baptist congregation during my seminary years. I saw myself as a Church of God person doing what Church of God people do: they live in unity with other believers. I even went through their simple (yet important) ritual of church membership, because I understood this is what Church of God people do: they are wholeheartedly dedicated to the work of God in the local congregation. Since becoming a pastor, I have enjoyed working with pastors and Christians from other congregations, Church of God and otherwise, because I see this as what Church of God people do: they reach their hands in fellowship to every blood-washed one. Unity, holiness, and salvation are incredibly rich terms which have deeply influenced every step of my spiritual journey.
In recent years I have participated as much as possible in local, state, and national Church of God events. I do these things not because the Church of God is right and other groups are wrong; I do these things because I believe in our identity and I want to take every opportunity to contribute to our conversation. In my opinion, this conversation should be about how salvation in Christ and sanctification in the Holy Spirit can bring about increased unity among the people of God as we serve in local communities around the world.
Why am I committed to the future of the Church of God? Because the Church of God is my home. Because our historical message is more relevant in these opening years of the 21st century than it was in the closing years of the 19th. Because there is something freeing and joyful about walking into a credentials committee meeting as a seminary student and declaring, “I am a member of God’s church, I am a member of a Baptist congregation, I will be a pastor of a Church of God congregation, and I see absolutely no contradictions or problems with this arrangement.” Belonging to the Church of God has enabled me to see the best in other denominations and not feel threatened by them.
The other day, I was in a coffee shop housed in a large Lutheran congregation down the road from us. A group of their church leaders sat across the room from me, and I found myself eavesdropping on their conversation. They were talking about the different strains of Lutheran churches and how little it means to people in the community whether this church is ELCA or Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod. What matters, their senior pastor said, is whether or not the presence of God is in this place. What matters is whether or not people’s lives are transformed by the gospel of Christ. What matters is whether or not this is a place of encounter, where the Holy Spirit can fill the lives of believers.
I am committed to the future of the Church of God because our brothers and sisters at the large Lutheran congregation down the road are part of God’s church too. We just have to catch up with their conversation.