I started life attending a Methodist church with my family until the age of 7. I remember that church fondly and thought everybody was nice. Then I remember my parents starting to talk about how they're found a new church that was actually preaching the bible and we were going to start going there. The new church was of the e-free denomination and is basically the southern Baptist church of the north.
Growing up in that church was no fun to say the least. I like to say that it was and still is a country club with Jesus. Not to mention it felt like we were the poorest people there. Most of the kids went to private Christian schools and were a walking Strongs concordance. During my childhood years I went through Awana and got my Timothy award the crown jewel for the biblical inerrancy boyscouts.
It was a real legalistic environment that sucked and everything that was secular was bad. In the 80s evangelicals had a fear of heavy metal rock music. So much so our church brought in some road warrior hack to tell us how terrible all of the secular rock bands were. My parents bought into it hook line and sinker and I had to take my entire Van Halen cassette collection to the used record store and trade then in on dogshit awful Christian rock music. In the long run it backfired and I made new friends at school who were into punk rock that dubbed me some Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, The Cult etc. The worst kind of music to listen to if you want to fit in at a narrow minded evangelical church.
About this time I was a couple years into the youth group and was actually starting to enjoy church. I went on a youth group trip and rededicated my life to Jesus and did some street evangelism and lead a woman to the lord. I played the game well until I started skatebaording and the youth pastor that was my friend so I thought started to call me out and chastize me in front of the group to humiliate me. That back fired and I would snap back at him or ask a question during the lesson that would derail the teaching. It got so bad during my junior year that I was asked to leave for laughing at somebodys prayer request. I got up and walked out and never came back. One of the youth leaders that is still at the church told me 20 years later that I was the only kid that got up and walked out and never came back when they used that tactic.
Enough for tonight. I will bring up some more stories of my youth group years, after lots of reflection those years messed me up and it took some 20 years to fully get over the negative experiences I had.
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