Unbinding Heart Testimony - March 11

Here's the testimony that Clarence, McCoy, our Director of Worship Arts shared with the congregation on Sunday morning.  During these six weeks of Lent, several people in our congregation have been sharing their faith story.

A few weeks ago, during our weekly worship planning sessions, we began discussing the fact the planning materials from Unbinding Your Heart asked for a testimony this week from someone who began going to church as an adult. I told the group that if they didn’t find someone better, I am actually someone who fits that description. So, here I am.

I grew up in a home that was unchurched. In fact, both of my parents also grew up in homes that were unchurched. My parents displayed faith in God, but my entire church experience involved going to an Easter service once as a child with our neighbors, and being hired to play my trumpet for a few church services when I was in high school.

I headed off to college, and faith had an even smaller role in my life. I’m a fairly cerebral dude, and my world view was based on what I perceived as measurable facts. There was little room for faith. As part of one of my honors classes in school, I even studied portions of the Bible and compared what I read to other books containing philosophy. So, I learned some things about the teachings of Jesus, but I had no relationship with Jesus. At this point in my life, I would have to say I was at least an agnostic, and maybe even an atheist.

During the summer after my second year of college, I was hired to work at a band camp by a man named Jim Morgan, who many of you have known. He also hired a woodwind and flag corps instructor named Sandy Shaw. Sandy and I began to date, and a few months later we were engaged.

Sandy was a person of deep faith, and she had grown up in a churched home. She introduced me to various Christian books, including CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, but I was a very tough sell. She didn’t give up though, and she just continued to be a good Christian example for me. When we decided to get married, she contacted a pastor who had been influential in her life to be the one to marry us. He asked about me, and when he found out that I was not a Christian, he reminded Sandy of 2 Corinthians 6:14 where we are told not to be yoked with unbelievers, and he refused to marry us. We found a more willing pastor, however, and we were married the next summer.

As a newly married couple, we again worked a summer band camp job for Jim Morgan. During one weekend, Jim had a camp for his church choir from Shalom UMC in Carroll. He needed a piano player for his rehearsals, and he invited Sandy and me to be a part of the weekend. She agreed to play, and we spent the weekend around some wonderful Christian people, including the Morgans and Bob and Marty Lambert, who are now part of our choir here at First Church. We had a great time, and I didn’t know it then, but I began to see Christ in these wonderful people. Through these and other Christians I would encounter along my life’s journey, I saw the evidence my brain needed to prove the reality of God.

Sandy and I moved to North Baltimore in northwest Ohio as we began our life together.  We were invited by someone at the school where Sandy was teaching to be a part of the choir program at Good Shepherd UMC there, and partially because of our experience with the Shalom choir, we agreed. Church was beginning to be a part of our lives. My faith was still very shallow, but it was beginning to develop.

A couple of years later, it was Jim Morgan (again) who invited me to be part of a weekend experience called Walk to Emmaus, which proved to be the next step in developing  my spiritual life. Sandy and I moved back to Lancaster, and we became part of the church and the choir at Shalom. That summer during the choir camp weekend, I was baptized in the band camp pool! Christ was finally becoming an important part of my life, an evolution that continues to this day.

More than twenty years later, I’m still a very flawed man, but my wife is still my Christian example. Bob Lambert and I still have a weekly time of sharing that dates back to our Emmaus experiences so long ago. There have been many other invitations along the way that have allowed my faith to continue to grow. I’m still part of church music, though I do the directing now. And I’m part of a wonderful church here at the corner of Wheeling and High Streets. None of this is because of some great conversion moment in my life, but it’s all because of a series of invitations from great Christians who were just like each of you. Thank you.

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