[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Ohio

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I wouldn't think of trying to unstick you for all the tea in China (in keeping in theme of the thread)

Seriously, and I'm not sure how much this relates to the Asian/Western dichotomy nature of this, but I don't think that many of us had even a slightly unremarkable initial experience of "touching the Church". I was a 17 year old Orange County, Calvary Chapel attending, space cadet with bushy blond hair who looked like a fish out of water...but there was something about the atmosphere that attracted me. I was in a "brother's house" (with a future Blended Brother) on the weekend of my 18th birthday.

I think the thing that set my parents and Christian siblings off as much as anything else was the "Asian flavor". Even though mid-1970s Orange County did have a substantial Asian population, there was not much of an Asian influence among evangelicals at that point. To me, Chinese people were a bit of a cultural/spiritual mystery, and that made Witness Lee all the more of an attraction (much to the chagrin of my parents and family).

Of course as time went by, I boldly declared to my family that "in the local church we don't have any culture!". At that point I was just a little college-aged punk who had no idea that I was firmly entrenched in one of the most "culturally intense" (if there is even such a term) religious movements to hit our fair land. But at that point if Witness Lee said we had no culture, then it must be true...we had no culture.

Looking back, it seems to me now that this was one of Witness Lee's many ruses on us gullible Americans - that we could actually establish and maintain a complicated, involved religious culture without actually having any culture.