Traveling the Winding Path with God

I was born in 1958 on a dairy farm in upstate New York. I essentially grew up in a two-church family. My father was an Episcopalian, while my mother was a Fundamental Bible Baptist. Mom's personal faith in Jesus found expression in her evangelistic fervor. It was at her feet as a child when I first met Jesus. A faithful husband, father, and churchgoer, my dad's faith was dutiful though distant and somewhat impersonal. Though my parents loved one another, in expressing their individual faiths I grew up in an adversarial environment. Mom was quite concerned about whether Dad was born again, and Dad could not understand why Mom couldn't simply attend Saint John's!

In response, I shared Christ with my best friend, David, who eventually asked Jesus to be his Lord and savior and prayed that other classmates may have the same experience. However, I knew I wasn't as close to God as I could be. I knew there was more. Upon entering my senior year of high school, I decided to attend a Christian liberal arts institution – Houghton College.
    
In college, my life in Christ truly exploded. It was there that I discovered the wonderful richness of God's written word and the life-giving joy that comes through fellowship with other believers: Koinonia ! Chapel, prayer groups, missionary gatherings, contemporary Christian music, and even fasting were all new and exciting. And that was just my first semester.

It was also around this time that I first encountered the person of the Holy Spirit through the ministry of Professor Hugh and his wife – Mary Morken. My experience was much like that of Isaiah 6. As a result, my prayer life has never been the same!  From them, I came to understand something I’d never received from my mother’s tradition: the need for the power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life.

I found my mother's tradition was – at best – skeptical about my experience. The Episcopal Diocese of Albany New York received me gladly. They were in the midst of what is known as the Renewal,or the Charismatic Movement. It was at this juncture that I returned to the Episcopal Church. Within a few years, I married Linda and eventually raised four wonderful daughters.

Beit Shalom was a Messianic Jewish community that was both ethnically Jewish and committedly Christian. This community opened its arms to my family, and God moved in our lives in powerful ways. It was here that we truly experienced the Jewishness of our faith and its deep and beautiful roots which stretched back thousands of years of God’s faithfulness to his people.

One discovery – in regard to my genetic heritage – was made a few years back. My mother and her twin brother were adopted. Though they knew their birthmother was English, their birthfather was a mystery.  At the urging of my daughters, I had a DNA test. To our astonishment, the test results indicated I had Jewish blood! With assistance from Andrew, my son-in-law, we discovered my mother's birthfather was a Sephardic Jew. I see this as both a gift and God’s sense of humor!

In time, the Lord called us back into the Episcopal Church; however, our connection with the Messianic community continues to this day. One of my greatest surprises upon entering back into the sacramental world was evangelical Anglicanism's prophetic understanding of the in-gathering of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. It was only a few years ago that I first heard of CMJ. It was a delight to find a sacramental tradition that took to heart the biblical mandate “to the Jew first.” It was in CMJ that I found the streams of my life coming together.