What I Didn't Get - 3

As I continue to reflect on my own journey of faith, ministry, success, failure and church, I continue to new understandings.  I am not interested in "right" or "wrong" -- just understanding.  So far I understand that I cannot go back and "fix" anything, or change anything, or grow any faster than I did.
I didn't "get" that my life experience was substantially different than that of my fellow students, my fellow church members or my fellow pastors and ministers.  All the evidence was present.  I guess I was not present to the gulf in our various experiences.

In the 1950's many, if not most, "free" church congregation and pastors were influenced by the Billy Graham phenomenon.  Billy Graham was an evangelist who preached a simple, possibly a simplistic, message and called for a decision when he was done.  In secular terms he was a salesman who asked his customers to decide to "buy", to "sign on the dotted line".  Even the university church where I was touched by God, moderately liberal, bland and inoffensive, had a pastor who gave an "invitation" at the conclusion of the sermon.  It was to such an invitation that i responded after responding to the touch of God on my shoulder.

I thought everyone understood.  It seems that few expected such a response from anyone.  They were suspicious of the responders at Billy Graham Crusades, and few if any believed even in their own responses as anything but a cultural phenomena.  The notion that a living Being, God, might interfere in someone's life, and that someone might be O.K. with such interference was not believable.

I recall thinking after a few weeks as a "Christian" that it was too bad no one warned us about what God would expect.  We/I gave our/my allegiance in a "for all time" decision and then found out about morals, ethics, discipleship, attendance, people we would be associating with and tons of other stuff.  What I didn't "get" was why no one else was bothered.

Why would they be bothered.  Most of my new friends and acquaintances had never experienced a touch by God, and the "for all time" implications of their faith journey were the ones they had embraced by third or fourth grade in Sunday School.

More on this in another post.  Leave a comment.