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Originally Posted by Amcasci
Well...cognitive dissonance is a good way to put it. When I left the LC I spent another year and a half in Cleveland and lived part of that time in an old church near the zoo. I don't know how to describe the work being done there. Warren Campbell an assembly of God pastor was the director. He also served a Covenant church on the west side and I attended there. It was a period of great confusion to say the least. I then moved to Mansfield ohio and became part of Grace Haven farm which became Grace Church Ray Nethery was the main teacher. He was part of the New Covenant Apostolic Order it was a teaching ministry and I studied and soaked up much of contemporary evangelicalism going back and forth with the charismatic thing which was very big at the time. Kevin Springer was asked to go to Ann Arbor Michigan to start a house church associated with Grace Haven. He asked me and several others to go with him. In Ann arbor I began attending Concordia College, a college of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. After much study I decided that Lutheran Confessuons were on target being both catholic and evangelical. I joined a local lcms church, went off to seminary and the rest is history. Of course this cannot plumb the depths of all the struggle with understanding the Sacraments, etc. I hope this helps. If you want to discuss it further, ask some specific question and I will attempt an answer.
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Well put and informative. Thanks much. You've had an interesting journey.
I've followed the journey of many that have left the church. Seems they go in all kinds of directions. Some to a mental hospital. Some to drinking. Some to eastern new age spiritual paradigms. Some to nothing at all, no God, no Jesus, no Bible, no church, no interest.
And some fall back on evangelicalism of some sort, my cradle religion. I left my cradle religion when I came into the local church. When I left the local church I left to forms of Christianity behind. And I can't go back to either. I did try to go back to different forms of evangelicalism, but found no fit.
So congrats to you that you've found a fit.
I've been told more than once, by different people, down thru the years, that, my local church experience damaged me. If being a misfit is any indicator of that I guess it's true. My local church experience did result in me developing a very stout independent mind. I stopped getting out of my mind, which was necessary to stay in the local church. Now I see, with certainty, that I was truly out of my mind, to even join the local church.
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Originally Posted by Amcasci
The older I get, the less I know for sure . . .
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Seems, the more I learn the less I know. And I learn it way toooooo late to be any count.
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Originally Posted by Amcasci
. . . but the little I do know I am more sure of than ever.
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All I can know for sure is, the Awareness writing these words at this moment. I can't even be sure of the Awareness reading these words at this moment ... but I give it the benefit of the doubt.
Thanks Amcasci. And I will, if you hang around, since you don't mind, prolly ask more questions along the way.
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Thanks be to God for his unspeakable grace and mercy to me a sinner!
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And to me, a human primate.