If you’ve ever done something that you didn’t think mattered to you but then, as it was happening, something inside you changed, you know how I felt driving home from the candlelight service we attended three nights ago. I’m talking about something changing you at your very core. A fundamental change that changed how you viewed or felt about something in particular. That’s what happened to me three nights ago and it’s forced me to reevaluate my views on some beliefs and experiences of my past and how that might shape my future.

Ok let’s start with a little background. About 15-20 years ago, I used to be a hard-core five point Calvinist. And I loved being a hard-core five point Calvinist. So much so that, in my juvenile faith, I let those beliefs become more important to me than my relationship with God. I knew the all five points of Calvinism, a good portion of the Westminster Confession of Faith and I aggressively pushed those beliefs on any and every one. But as time went on, I realized all I had was my faith in those beliefs and not God Himself. I’d allowed my theology to become an idol. I crashed and I crashed hard. So, in that infantile faith, I walked away from those beliefs blaming my lack of relationship with God on those beliefs.

Also, as I have discussed with my wife at length, I am having trouble with some issues with being part of a “mega-church”. The main issues being tied to corporate worship. First and foremost, I find it impossible to lift my brothers and sister up in worship when I’m surrounded by 1,000+ other people. I’m just another face in the crowd and, with a few exceptions, I know no one around me. The other is the choices in both musical style and choices in songs. The more my faith grows, the more I long for and hold dear the deeper, theologically-rich hymns sung in smaller congregations. And there is nothing our current church, with it’s 7,000+ people running through 5 different services every weekend, is going to be able to do to rectify these issues.

So fast forward to Christmas Eve. The current (mega) church we attend does not offer candlelight services and my wife and I really like to attend candlelight services. So we were searching for a candlelight service to attend. There were numerous services scheduled all over town and we had kinda decided on one offered by another non-denominational church. Christmas Eve morning I watched last Sunday’s service from that church and something didn’t sit right with me. So I decided to go back over the list of candlelight services I’d compiled. In this search I wanted to watch/listen to the church’s previous sermon in order to help me decide. One stood out above the other two I had narrowed it down to and what do ya know … it was a covenantal Calvinist (PCA) church. I remembered how wonderful the candlelight services were at the PCA church of my past so I talked to my wife about it and we agreed to go.

As I mentioned before, the service did not disappoint. In fact, so much so that I started to think about and reevaluate my previous experiences with covenant theology. And that is when I came to my previously mentioned conclusions about those days. So what do I do with all this? Simply put, we are going to begin exploring the PCA and covenant theology (CT). For me, I get to approach it with a more mature faith with more mature experiences. My hope is that I can better understand CT as it intertwines with my relationship with God. For my wife, it’s all new. I believe she will start to see that, with the few obvious exceptions, the beliefs of PCA church is mostly the same as we already believe. They just use creeds and confessions to better explain that faith.

~ Shalom! Shalom! ☧