My Story (finally updated!)

He who calls you is faithful; he will do it.
-1 Thessalonians 5:24

I have been a believer my whole life. I can not remember ever not believing.  

My story is preceded by my parents story.  My mother along with her parents, were members of the Brethren Church in Long Beach, which is where my parents had their wedding.  My father came from a Mormon (father) and atheist (mother) background.  My grandpa struggled with his mental health, having major depression by mid-life, and died of Alzheimer's disease later.  At some point in after her retirement, my grandma began attending the neighborhood church, and testified to my brother and I of her faith in Christ, before she went into decline and passed away at age 91.

My mother was a public school teacher, in the city of Bellflower, where she met her future mother-in-law and my future grandma, who introduced my mom to my dad, who was an aerospace engineer.

After two dates, when my father asked my mother to marry her, she had only one condition and that was that they would go to church and their children would be raised in the church, which my dad agreed to.  We ended up attending Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Redondo Beach, where my brother and I were baptized together as little guys.  We were 'baptized' with a cup of water poured over our heads.

My mom attended a parents meeting at church where it was announced that they would not be strictly following the Bible any more in Sunday school curriculum and this is when we as a family needed to find a better, Bible based church.  And that church was Rolling Hills Covenant Church, an Evangelical Covenant Church with historical roots in Sweden and Lutheranism.  I attended RHCC from 1st grade through 12th grade.

I was very involved in music all those years, singing in choirs and performing roles in Christian themed musicals.  The second half of the Jesus People movement was happening at that time.

Two things I remember hearing in church is that you need to be born again and about the Rapture and the coming seven year tribulation that we were told by Hal Lindsey would probably come no later than 1988.

Hal guest spoke at our church many times and my best, non-Christian, non-church-goer friend's dad, was a business partner/associate of Hal Lindsey and Hal autographed a couple of his books for me.

I do not remember ever seeing people getting baptized, but many, many times, there was the invitation, "with every head bowed and with every eye closed", to slip our hands up to ask Jesus into our hearts, which I did, many times.

When I was about 13 years old, I felt nudged by God to let go of the steering wheel of my life and give up control to God, making Him Lord of my life.  And I quietly said, "no, I can't do that".  Many very bad things happened to me after that.  But this was the worst day of my life, because I turned God down.  I lost my innocent joy in life that day.  I believe God called me to account, having reached my age of accountability.

From that day, I began to rebel against God and my parents, while still attending church and all the youth activities.  At age 18, I was allowed to make my own choice to not go to church.  

In the early 1980's, I met and became best friends with an older by 2 or 3 years, Christian man, who had started his Christian life, saved as a teenager, in the Baptist church, who ended up encouraging me while I was going through the darkest chapter of my life.  By 1985, when I turned 24, I began to try to figure out what had gone wrong in my life.  I took long walks by myself, thinking about things.  In 1985 and 86,  I attended a calvary chapel church that met in a school auditorium in Seal Beach and all these new songs I sung there made me cry and I didn't know why.  I do not recall ever crying while singing in church before that.  In about May or June of 1986 I hit bottom, repented and regained a very strong belief.  Over the next year, I was in a state of renewal and on Father's day, 1987, I started going to a large church in Anaheim and was a member there till 1999 and I then attended a church in Malibu from 1999 till 2001.  What took me to Malibu is that my best friend David had moved to Ventura and Malibu was half way and that's how we found the Malibu church!

The leaders of the church I joined in Anaheim, had a Quaker background, and Quakers do not baptize with water, similarly to The Salvation Army, but emphasize the baptism of the spirit in a quieter and different way than Pentecostals or Charismatics do.  I also did an internship at The Salvation Army in the 1990's and my mentor/supervisor was a psychologist who had worked for Dr. James Dobson in the 1980's.

I eventually found out that these leaders at the Anaheim church did themselves get baptized, before I joined this church, but they did not mention nor emphasize baptism.  But the invitation to be baptized came up once in a while, at that church, which another best friend of mine with a similar mainline church background as mine said yes to, but I did not, because I just didn't know and had not studied out the importance of baptism.

I was confused about the importance and the meaning of baptism and was also proud or stubborn about it.  All my close friends who were Christian men were either originally baptized as adults or re-baptized as adults and some spoke of the great blessing that it was and one spoke to me about the necessity of baptism.  But I demurred.

When I was finally taught how Presbyterians, from Calvin, believe that our baptism is somehow equivalent to circumcision, and part of what they call 'covenant theology', I did not buy into that and was even more confused.  This was about 1999 or 2000.

At the church I grew up in, I heard that one needed to be born again, but I never knew about or saw a baptism.  Many times, I slipped my hand up when the preacher asked us to do so, "with every head bowed and eyes closed", if we wanted to receive Christ into our hearts.  

My friend that I met in the early 1980's recently told me that when he joined the church I grew up in, in 1985, that I stopped going to in 1980, that they began having adult baptisms during their Sunday night services.  

Sometime when I was in high school, (1977-80) my church built a new building that would have included a baptistry, where my friend saw baptisms when he joined that church in 1985, while I was in the wilderness.  Back when I was a senior in high school, I went through a confirmation class, which is where young people are taught all the basics of Christianity.  And when the class was completed, we were all offered baptism, and I said, "no, I have already been baptized".  My heart was hard.  

If I had accepted the Lord's offer or request to make Him Lord of my life back when I was 13, I would have been willing to do anything to be right with God and perhaps I would have joyfully been baptized as an 18 year only, but instead I was set on being rebellious.  My own brother, 2 years later, went through the same confirmation class or process culminating with baptism because his heart was soft towards God.  And I do know that my brother was baptized again about 5 years later in the ocean by some brothers and told me it was a great blessing to do so.  Even though I had gone through repentance and returned to belief and was also a very faithful church attender, I was still confused about the meaning and need for baptism and I was still stubborn.

In 2002, I met and a year later married my bride Janine, who came from a Church of Christ family.  Her family and all the Churches of Christ, loved and accepted me and some gently confronted me about  baptism.  My wife and I began a church journey together and fellowshipped with other Christians who in one degree or another believed in baptism but none really emphasized its importance.  We even attended a local Church of Christ, that was nice in many ways, but did not emphasize baptism.  And years before we began attending that church, I shared at my grandaddy's funeral and our attendant at Forest Lawn was the Long Beach Church of Christ preacher and he complimented me on my sermon.    

I was stubborn, but I slowly came around to believing in the importance of baptism.  My brother, and four of my very best male friends were properly baptized and witnessed to me about it while patiently loving me over the years.  My wife had a dream, her heart's desire, or great wish that when my son was ready to be baptized, that I would be baptized by a man and then I would turn around and baptize my son.  Could this happen?  Would this happen?  Although I now know it is wonderfully common, I had never seen a father baptize his son before.

My dream that seemed impossible, was that we would find and join a church nearby, led by elders, that was family where everyone loved one another and followed Christ together.

My wife, then her mom and brother, and then my son began attending the closest Church of Christ to our home in the summer and fall of 2024.  Over Christmas, my son decided he wanted to get baptized and since I was ready, on New Year's day evening; January 1st, 2025, I got baptized and then baptized my son.  Oh happy day!

I now believe that what the Bible plainly says about baptism is the truth that we should obediently follow.  I believe our sins are washed away and the blood of Christ is applied to us in the waters of baptism (Acts 22:16).

I believe that the steps to salvation are:

Hearing the gospel
Believing in Jesus
Confessing Faith in Christ
Being Baptized
Being Faithful