Poll: How did you reform.

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Option #3

Former Roman Catholic seminary trained, which included seven years in the Jesuit order.
Then So. Baptist and after coming to grips with paedo baptism, echatology, and church polity, and running afoul with the local So. Baptist leadership, now PCA.

Given some of the goings on within the PCA, am starting to prayerfully consider a change, too.

We would love to have you covenant with the FCC. Arizona could use a historically Reformed, Scottish Presbyterian, Kirk that sings God's Word exclusively in corporate worship!

Would love to have a pointer to more information, too.

 

[crimsonleaf]

Born of an atheist father and uncommitted mother, I felt the need to attend church aged 25 and chose the Church of England. Eventually I studied to become a Lay Reader in the Church before being stricken with non-belief some 19 years later. After 11 years of militant atheism I was called by God during a simple and otherwise uneventful car drive from London to Bristol. Positive about my salvation I found that the Reformed Faith was the only one which fitted my experience and my understanding of the Bible. I studied for hours a day for a year following my conversion before deciding my true beliefs.

I still don't know whether I was called aged 25 and lapsed only to be pulled back, or whether it was all self-delusion until I was 54. Nor do I really care.

 

[AndrewOfCymru]

Raised outside of the church until my early teens when my parents started going to an independent baptist church that was led by a former pentecostal minister. I have remained within baptist circles since, but first became aware of my reforming inclination after a discussion about election with an arminian friend, in my 30's. Most of my subsequent reforming has come from personal study and a few like minded friends.

 

[Wololo]

My very first post!

I grew up Roman Catholic and was in Seminary for a year when someone (Holy Spirit) tickled my funny bone and said to me, "That something isn't quite right here." After years of searching and studying, I have come to believe that the doctrines of grace make the most sense. I truly believe that Reformed theology is Biblical theology. It has really helped me answer some lingering questions. Sometimes, I sit and wonder why it took me so long to see it haha! The best part about it is that this is where I ended up. So, I am definitely in category 3 in the poll. Started Catholic, then went Arminian for awhile and could never resolve issues with that thinking either. Reformed is my last stop

 

[The Calvinist Cop]

I grew up as a Southern Baptist (Arminian) and then attended "raise your hand and be saved churches", but it took a life before realizing...I would have to say #2, because my true salvation came after attending a Reformed Church.

 

[Lindsay]

It's fascinating to hear how the Lord leads His people.

As for me, I fit best in #2. I grew up in Lutheran, Church of Christ, and Nazarene churches. Over all, I learned little of the Bible. Yet at 17 I discovered theology books through finding a novel called Christy at Walmart. In college I briefly went to the Vineyard, then a PCUSA church, because I could walk to them. Meanwhile, when I asked if a college friend's comment referred to C. S. Lewis' chess player metaphor of free will, he said the metaphor sounded bad. In response he emailed me excerpts of Edwards on the will. Plus he told me about Monergism.com. So I read and thought. I was shocked and full of questions. I sobbed. Yet I saw the compatabilist view of the will is true--and (more importantly) that TULIP is scriptural. Still, I was dead and blind. Late my senior year I attended a Southern Baptist church with a Calvinist pastor. When I told him I couldn't see my sin, he tried to make me see. After that his words would often come to mind when I tried to deny my nature. Then I moved home, still unsaved, hoping for a Reformed church--or at least one that preached the gospel. Two months into the search and out of ideas, hoping for something different than the PCA church I'd found, my uncle told me about an OP church. I went the next day and am there 6.5 years later. Years into attending the church the Lord supplanted my stony heart with one of flesh!

 

[JML]

Option #3 as well. I grew up in the United Methodist Church, was agnostic for most of college, and was then converted in a Southern Baptist Church my senior year of college. I went to a SBC seminary and served in SBC churches as a youth pastor and associate pastor for 5 years. I was studying the book of Romans in my office alongside a highly Arminian commentary and realized that the two did not match. I honestly had no idea there was such a thing as Reformed churches at the time and for a little while was troubled in my mind that there was nobody else out there that believed these things. Soon after I came to the realization that this was not the case. At which point, I left the ministry and we joined a Reformed Baptist Church. I have been in Reformed Baptist churches ever since (6 years) with one year as a part of a fantastic RPCNA church in that 6 year span. I would now consider myself a Reformed Baptist with multiple Reformed Presbyterian characteristics.

 

[Curt]

Well, after growing up in a nominally RC home, and remaking unconvinced and unconverted, in my thirties I was saved while at L'Abri in Huemoz.

 

[SinnerSavedByChrist]

Paul Washer

+ I guess was listening to Romans chapter 9 on repeat while driving long distances. I had always read Romans chapters 1-8, but left 9-16 "for another day". And when I started to listen to Romans 9, everything just clicked. God was unimaginably Mighty, Sovereign and All-encompassing. God just became bigger and bigger and bigger until I was led to the DoG etc.

 

[Shawn Mathis]

I was reared in an unbelieving home where my mother dabbled in various cults and my father watched basketball on Sundays. In the early 80s they both converted and we joined a charismatic, dispensational, mega-church of 2000 members. Like the Colorado murderer, Matthew Murray, I grew up in some form of legalism, and like him even attended Bill Gothard seminars, being taught that the Cabbage Patch Dolls were of the devil (as was rock and roll). But I was obedient (in general) to my parents and God protected me from a "rebellious stage." I was "slain in the Spirit" and spoke in tongues mid-way through my teenage years. I struggled with sin, sensitive to motivational sins of the heart. I feared being "left behind." I was always "seeking the will of the Lord" which lead me to the Air Force. There, by God's grace, I read some Banner of Truth that my father mailed me. It was in Ian Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon that I learned about these unlikable "Arminians." I quickly became a five-pointer. But wanting to be fair, I studied a book written against Calvinism (The Other Side of Calvinism) which referenced Dr. Coppes' book the Ten Points of Calvinism. That is where I learned he pastored in my hometown of Denver at Providence OPC. So when I left the Air Force, I joined Providence, was mentored by the pastor and quickly assimilated the full-orbed faith. Eighteen years later I am still here and by God's grace I am their pastor.