My Spiritual Foundations

A bit about myself, my husband, and our journey out of Word of Faith and the New Apostolic Reformation

When I was a teenager I got serious about the Lord. I always knew about Christ, and I never had a conversion experience or a moment of salvation in the traditional sense- I merely grew up with an understanding that Jesus was the Lord and our only hope of salvation. I accepted it and never questioned it. My desire was always to grow in my knowledge of God, and I never had a skepticism about Christ. I am thankful for that. I grew up seeing my mother read her Bible and enjoy studying, often with a Dictionary and a notebook alongside a well used Bible. I digress- When I was a teenager I got serious about the Lord.

I asked for a Bible. I began to listen to Christian radio. I began to watch TBN every night in my room, angling the bunny-eared antenna just right to tune in and watch before bed. I also read the books on my mother’s bookshelf about religion; I particularly remember reading I Believe In Miracles, by Kenneth Hagin Sr. Mostly, though, I read my Bible. I read my Bible, I read the cross-references from the margins, and I wrote down notes. I created Bible studies that would only be read by me, but that process gave me a solid foundation of scriptural understanding.

My family didn’t attend church, even on holidays. Our church was watching The 700 Club in the morning and praying with Pat Robertson at the end of the program. When I was a senior in high school, we started attending an Assemblies of God church. We were drawn in by the sweet, inviting people there and a tent revival service that was advertised on the wall of a local grocery store. At that revival, some of the pastors from a Vineyard Fellowship a few towns away came and spoke. They told stories of seeing angels, hearing from God, and seeing miracles. My hunger for the supernatural, to know God in a new way, was a fire being stoked.

I still read my Bible quite a lot, but I also began delving into the world of Charismatic faith more and more. I started listening to sermons from leaders at the infamous Bethel Church in Redding, California. A church that, ironically, had been asked to leave its roots as an Assembly of God church, because it was endorsing practices and teachings that the Assemblies could not put its seal of approval upon. I didn’t know that factoid until much later.

I became very involved in the youth group at the Assemblies of God church and eventually took over the youth ministry, leading with the title of pastor for 3 years. I learned a lot during that time, but I also fear that I may have done some damage with the things that I taught over the years there. I was immersed in Bethel teachings, listening to Kris Vallotton sermons daily. I took time off to attend Todd White’s Power & Love Conference. I took my youth to meetings at the Vineyard Fellowship church from the tent revival years earlier (It is notable to add that this particular church is no longer a Vineyard Fellowship, & that they are most well known for their contribution to the Charismatic world in the form of The Elijah List, a website that promotes the prophetic messages of a myriad of Charismatic speakers, as well as a yearly conference in which prophets & apostles are invited to speak about what God is saying about the coming year.)

The youth ministry dwindled and I felt the need to move on to greener pastures, to seek the Lord in a church where I had a better chance at meeting some people my own age. I was around 23 when I started attending another church that was affiliated with Bethel. I was particularly intrigued by this church because I knew that they offered a satellite version of Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry. I spent a year in this church and wasn’t successful in meeting any friends my own age, but I made friends with some of the leaders there, and my Charismatic expression of faith was further solidified.

I spent a short time back at my Assemblies of God church, all the while courting a young man named Jeff. Jeff and I had met through a mutual friend and were chatting via Facebook. He was local, but we only met once in person before he moved to Oklahoma to attend Kenneth Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training College in Broken Arrow, OK. We stayed in contact and eventually began dating long distance. I remember my mother was excited that he was at Hagin’s Bible college. I got to visit there twice in the two years that Jeff attended. Once during their Christmas Banquet and once for graduation. I was able to sit in on classes one day as well, taking notes and being excited to experience the school. Though, I do recall telling Jeff that it wasn’t quite my cup of tea, but that I was interested in one day attending Bethel or maybe going to Alabama to attend The Ramp’s ministry school.

Jeff came back to Oregon and we began attending his church together for two years, until shortly after we got married. It was a nice family-centered church pastored by a Rhema graduate who also graduated from Christ for the Nations International. To be honest, I don’t have much memory of what I learned in this church, but I do recall thinking that the pastor there reminded me of Dutch Sheets, someone I highly respected at the time. Jeff and I planned to stay there indefinitely, but the location changed and it became a strain to travel to when we got a house together in my hometown.

Jeff and I visited the Bethel affiliated church that I had spent a year at, and the pastor there was very warm and welcoming. Jeff and I decided to begin going there to save ourselves a commute. We stayed for 4 years. We made friends quickly (which is funny, because when I was there as a single person I didn’t meet anyone, but Jeff is a huge extrovert and makes friends everywhere). The community there was rich and vibrant. We got involved in a home group, and still have great friends from that. We also got involved in the School of the Supernatural, attending together for 3 years.

As we went through the third year of the school, COVID hit. We finished classes via Internet calls. The church closed its doors and began hosting Facebook Live streams on Sunday mornings. My husband and I bought a house and adopted a rescued puppy from Oklahoma. Jeff was able to continue working, but my job was put on hold after only a few months of remote working. I had a lot of time to train the dog and work on the new house. I also discovered YouTube, and it became my main form of entertainment.

When our church started doing small services again, we were invited as a core group to produce videos of Sunday morning services and worship in person. I worked the projection technology and Jeff helped with cameras. It was difficult, though, with a newly adopted dog who had severe separation anxiety. We would drop the dog off at my parents’ house, driving an hour out of our way to do so before and after church. Or we would leave him at home and hope that he wouldn’t destroy things and poop on the floor. We came to church in person less and less. But, the dog got more time to be properly trained and I spent more time watching YouTube.

I primarily used YouTube to watch art related content, but I also used it as a search engine for informative videos about whatever subject that I wanted to learn about. One day, I saw a friend of mine talking about the Law of Attraction, and I knew it sounded suspect, so I looked it up on YouTube to inform myself about it more. I looked for Christians who were giving their perspective on it. Once I understood what it was, I was a little uneasy with how much it sounded like the Word of Faith doctrine taught by Hagin/ Rhema. And now, the YouTube algorithm knew that I was interested in Christian perspectives, which would impact my learning more in the coming months as various videos were suggested to me. I began to have a renewed hunger for God’s word.

I remember walking into the living room where Jeff was sitting one day and asking him “Do we ever get taught the Bible at church?” He paused for a moment and then shook his head and said no. Sure, Bible verses were given to support arguments and it was sort of assumed that everyone at church should be reading their Bible, and it was assumed that everything the pastors preached was based on biblical ideas, but there wasn’t a session that we could remember when the Bible was preached as the main subject instead of being used to support a topical sermon. Likewise, in the School of the Supernatural, we never studied the Bible. The reading list was extensive, but none of it was out of the Bible. One of the last books I had bought from the reading list was a thick volume by Harold Eberle titled, Systematic Theology for the New Apostolic Reformation.

Around Spring of 2021, the dog was doing awesome. He could stay home alone without issues. As long as there was no food on the counter or trash available to knock over, he was a good boy. We started going back to church. But I soon noticed teaching that I was uncomfortable with. I brought it up to the pastor one day after the sermon, and we chatted briefly about my discomfort. (This is probably a story better left for another article.)

We ended up taking a break from serving and stepping back from the church to examine our own doctrine more closely. I studied my Bible and I studied the Systematic Theology book I had bought from the church. I also searched for the term “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR) on YouTube, because I had never heard that term before, and if my church was promoting a book of theology pertaining to the NAR, that probably meant that I was a part of it, and I needed to know what it was.

That was a deep rabbit hole, and I will certainly write about it further in another blog post. The NAR has been a hot topic in the past and is still talked about a lot today among Christian thinkers and apologists, and some Christian influencers have actually been quoted as saying that it doesn’t exist. But, I own the book.

Suffice it to say, I did my homework and I came to the conclusion that I could not continue in the NAR stream. Frankly, I have changed my mind on much of what I used to believe. The ministries and names mentioned above are no longer endorsed by me. (That’s not to say that there are not good, well-meaning, honorable individuals mentioned above, but that much of the doctrine that is represented by these ministries and ministers is not endorsed by me.) I recently decided that I will not be referring to myself as Charismatic any longer. I’m studying, I’m “testing the spirits”, and I’m finding that I have a lot to un-learn. My husband, too, has come alongside me on this journey. We are both reconstructing what it means to be Christians who have sound theology, and are not blown by every wind of doctrine. We talk often about the need to dig into the scriptures and be taught by those who are faithful to the biblical texts, who teach line by line and leave nothing hidden by taking scriptures out of their proper context. We are figuring out where we fit in the Body of Christ.

I wanted to share my backstory to give some context to my future blog posts. This has been a brief overview of my spiritual foundations.

To be continued…