Swat Night!

Hey all! Andrew asked me to share a bit from my Swat Night testimony, so here’s a short(er) version of what I said:

I was born into a Christian family, with two ministers for parents. My uncle was the pastor of the church we went to (my grandfather was the pastor before he died), another uncle was the choir director, and my aunt was the youth director. So, growing up my four siblings and I spent most nights of the week at church. I guess it’s not surprising that I accepted Christ and was baptized at six.

Maybe more (or less?) surprising is that it actually felt pretty awful a lot of the time, being at church so often and constantly surrounded by people so involved in the church. I remember at one point when I was around 10 years old my mom putting her foot down so to speak, and saying that we had to make some changes because we were at church entirely too often, and she was worried about the effect it was having on our grades since we were out so late every night. It sounds kind of dramatic, but it was true. At this point in time my father was the minister of music of a church with well over 5,000 members and my mom worked in the discipleship office. This church was also about 45 minutes from my house. This meant that it was not unusual for us to come home around midnight.

I’ve never had serious doubts about God’s existence. What I have doubted, however, is if I’m truly accepted by Christ. I spent a large portion of my childhood fearing that I wasn’t really a Christian and that I would go to hell. I think this partially comes from the fact that I accepted Christ too young to fully understand Him, and partially from my own insecurities. When I was in eighth grade I started going to my church’s teen program and in many ways it was a life changer for me. I was suddenly thrown into a group of teens, mostly older than me, who loved God and loved to have fun. My aunt, director of youth at church, constantly commented on how we were the most special group of teenagers she’s ever worked with. My social life at this point was more dominated by my church friends than friends at school. More than that, my church life became dominated by my church friends to the point where the only joy I had in church was in hanging out. I became a social church goer. I was good at pretending I cared about God but on the inside I was mostly apathetic.

This apathy was fully cemented by my sophomore year of high school. Almost all at one time most of the people in the teen fellowship moved, many of them out of state.A few months later my family also changed churches, moving to a much larger church, with over 23,000 people, because the bishop of this church was ordaining my parents. Having no family or friends here made me care less about church than I ever had before. Church had been the center of my social life growing up and for the first time I had no friends at church to lean on, and rather began to spend more time with my school friends, most of whom were not Christians. While this wasn’t bad, it contributed to me losing interest in God.

By the time I came to college I really saw no need for God. I believed that Jesus existed, but I did not feel I needed to do anything for him or that there was any kind of personal connection. My mother told me she was worried about my spiritual life, but I just didn’t see it as important. I didn’t see the importance of joining a Christian fellowship my freshman year, so I wasn’t a part of any. I did start off the year going to church, but by the middle of my first semester I was barely attending. Church at Swat was and is frustrating to me, because it is not what I’m used to at home. At the time I did not feel I was getting anything out of it (other than a free breakfast), because my concept of church was simply as a social gathering and not as a place to learn about God. I’d grown up in a black church, and I was looking for the same kind of experience, with the same kinds of people and music.

I hit a low point the middle of my spring semester freshman year. I was having problems with my family, and had decided not to come home that summer. Partially as a reaction to this I started attending church more regularly again. Somehow, the last few weeks of school it worked out and I agreed to come home that summer. I wasn’t ready to go immediately home though, and my friend Sonja had been bugging me for weeks about coming to this thing called Chapter Camp. I didn’t really know what it was, but I knew it would buy me an extra week away from home, so I signed up. In the process of all this turmoil I’d realized something I hadn’t thought of before: how I couldn’t separate my own beliefs from my parents’ beliefs, and I felt like I wanted to formulate my own thoughts. At Chapter Camp, for the first time, I was given the chance to discover Christ for myself. This opened up the door for me to really spend the summer exploring God, and to join two Christian fellowships when I came back to Swat.

As I reflect on my feelings about God I realize that so much of how I interact with God and how I feel about church is based on my social standing. While community is important, it’s easy to forget that God is the reason for that community. Although my relationship with God is stronger than ever, I still found myself thinking of the reason for church and Christian community being to satisfy me, rather than to glorify God. I’ve come to realize that putting God first is more than the action of me going to church and talking about Him, but it’s my mental state as well.

That's basically been my spiritual journey up to this point. I'm always happy to talk about this, or anything else, so if anyone ever wants to talk just shoot me an email!