I don't want to let too much time pass before revisiting Marcos' sermon from Wednesday. If we take to heart Marcos' point that Mark 16:15 is one of Jesus' key, critical teachings, I'd hope that more of us pay attention to detail on delivering our own stories of coming to Christ. I'm not sure I have mine down to a solid 3-5 minutes, but here's mine.

I'll start with the short and sweet version: guy wants to go to college more than anything on earth, runs into some issues that make that a challenge in his first semester, realizes that some help is needed to deal with the challenges now on my plate, accepts Christ into his life, gets back into college, kicks tail in just about every class, lives happily ever after.

Now, of course, there's details to flesh this out a bit. My family did drag us kids off to church when we were little and lived in a small town. We were Episcopalians ... much like all the other nice, normal, upright folks in Indianola, MS. There wasn't a country club as I recall, so the Episcopal Church had to suffice. I was even baptised at St. Stephens. So it's not like going to church, praying, sitting through Bible Class, or fidgeting during Rev. Murray's sermons was anything new to me. But it never really took. Besides, I kinda preferred the music that all the non-churchgoing folks listened to at the time. Still do, truth be told.

By the time we moved back to Texas, going to church got dropped. For some reason, though, I was blessed with good friends and a few good influences. My best friend & I once decided we were going to see who could get the best grades in classes we shared. He beat me out, but I was fairly quick to catch up and enjoyed the incentive to do better. By the time High School rolled around, I had a new friend who was great about sharing his own faith - a more charasmatic faith at that. We usually exchanged listens to each other's music, which I chalk up to starting my appreciation for music as a means of growing in faith. Although I didn't know the difference between being born again and dragged off to church by Mom on Christmas Eve, we were good friends. Specifically, I recall playing some early Stryper songs. I've got no explanation as to why I enjoyed listening to Stryper despite not being born again or really even considering myself much of a Christian. Divine appointment, maybe? Who knows.

The introduction to college was a rough one. As a kid, I'd spent countless hours killing time just thinking about what it'd be like to go to any number of colleges, just savoring the potential experience. If I'd heard that Penn State has a good program for some field of interest that sounded good to me, I'd probably go wherever I could to see how much it cost to go, what classes I might take, and so on. Same for just about every other school in the U.S. But by the time it got down to brass tacks, I guess I just had it within me to go back to Houston - our family's home. I applied to Rice and Univ. of Houston. Rice would have been interesting and rewarding, I'm sure. But dad went to UH and so did I.

I had it within me to conjure up the notion of majoring in Biochemical Engineering. Looking back, I've got no idea why, but it sounds incredibly cool. Besides, I didn't want to be one of those people who spent years seeing what they wanted to be and took a lot of Psych. classes while trying to "find themselves." I was focused, I was on a mission.

I also failed Chemistry and only survived Biology due to the Lab grade being included with the coursework grade. Not good news for your up & coming Biochemical Engineer. Adding insult to injury, there were some financial difficulties at home.Even though I didn't really want time to rethink my grand plan for the rest of my life, it seemed I'd have quite a bit now. So I sat out a semester, went back to the drudgery of work and eventually resettled into community college for a semester. Later, the family would move back to Houston. At least this was some good news.

Somewhere in the process of rethinking the entire rest of my life, I picked up a book or two - most notably Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I think it was my own unique way of testing whether or not there was any answer for me in Christianity - not really having a good sense of what that entailed outside of mom dragging us kids off to church, wearing uncomfortable clothes and missing football games. At some point, however, the synapses clicked, I said a prayer, and now go about living happily ever after.

Oh, and another point in the backstory ... all this was around the same time that every televangelist in the world seemed to be caught with their pants down, their hands in the collection plate, or their prayer requests being found in trash dumpsters. 1987: Jim & Tammy Faye ... out. 1988: Swaggart ... down. 1991: Tilton ... mercifully exposed. If I wanted a good time to come to Christ (1988 to be precise), I couldn't have picked a worse time. And in case anyone's looking for the insult-to-injury moment here: the parents weren't too thrilled either. Apparently, the candle they got from Rev. Murray at m baptism was all they needed to know that I'd be an Episcopalian for life and there were no takebacks ... certainly not for any son of their reciting anything that sounded like this newfangled pentacostal gobbledeygook. That was best left in the weird churches that nobody talks about in polite company.

So, how I go about leaving that scene to sitting in a little bitty church in Houston with a smiling preacher on more televisions than any other man of God? I call that divine irony. But between the point of accepting Christ in my life and landing at Lakewood, I'd not had a church home. At all. Tried visiting a few churches, but nothing took. The people were nice as all getout, but the rituals of each church took a lot of getting used to.

I remember visiting a Full Gospel church near home. The pastor was nice as can be, met me before the service, talked with me and even gave me a shoutout from the pulpit. The guy sitting next to me, I recall, was dressed like your everday ordinary punk rocker of the late 80s. Very cool and he was a nice, welcoming person as well. As hopeful a sign as I ever saw to this point. But by the time he asked if I wanted to break bread with everyone during communion, I think I mistook it for a sign that I shouldn't impose. Ya know, on the off chance there wouldn't be some for someone else who was hungry. Yeah, I still laugh at that, too.

I remember visiting the church up the street from home, thinking proximity was on my side. Heck, I could walk to church and feel like an Orthodox Jew for the fun of it. I figured a Bible Study night visit would do me well - I wouldn't have to fake singing 500 yr old hymns that seriously did nothing for me at all. Just dive into the Bible and go. And then I see so many other parents dragging their kids to Bible Study. I'm convinced this saved from having any repressed memories of my childhood ... because they all came out that night.

In the 19 years between then and setting foot at Lakewood, I owe every positive step of my journey to a pen pal in McAllen, good music, and the occassional good book. To this day, there are songs by Stryper and the Altar Boys that have thoroughly enriched my life for reasons that go beyond having a nice sound to them. That they also encompass my love of both heavy metal and punk music is perhaps no small coincidence.

Of course, over a year and a half ago, I did finally find my church home. And I might like to think that my contribution to building the body of Christ is to share the importance that has in one's spiritual growth. There were always hints to me that being in church is a good thing ... and I was acutely aware of the Bible's call for us to be in community. But until you know what it does for your wellbeing to actually be in church with fellow believers, it's a tad difficult to appreciate what it is you're missing.

Now, all this longwindedness is to merely paint what might as well be nothing more than backstory. My life today is certainly far richer than it was before - both in terms of being born again and in having a church home. I recall moments before Lakewood that I'd be hard at work and get stressed out over the slightest possible thing, recycling whatever sense of pain or agony might exist in my life at the time, and not knowing what to do with it. There was a pretty low period in my professional life for a number of years that affected that way too much. The good news, for me, was knowing how to put that into proper perspective and getting back on track with God's plan for me.

Perspective may or may not be the end-all to every person that reads this. That's fine. I'll trust that it means something splendid to the few out there it's supposed to reach. While there may be a better example to give, try this for a visual: if you've ever seen a train wreck on the news, have you ever thoughto to wonder how they get those things cleared up? Trains aren't exactly small items. And they don't all happen where it's easy to reach. And I'm guessing you can't just haul off a container with a Ford F150 truck. It takes a lot of heavy machinery to clear up that mess. And good luck getting a crane (I'm guessing one might help in this instance) dropped off in a cow pasture in the middle of nowhere.

And for each of us who's had a certain level of messiness in our lives that we know we're unable to clean up without a bit of help ... that, to me, is where I see God in my life. Whether it's helping me put my plans for college back on track after a bad semester, helping me find the means to grow in Christ without a sense of community, putting my professional goals back on track, or putting me in the right place at the right time when a church like Lakewood happened to move a few miles closer to me - God moves a lot that we sometimes close our eyes to. Even a church.

Got a story? Hopefully it's much shorter than mine. But if you'd like to have yours posted here, drop me a line or post it in the comments.