Empowered Evangelicals (chapter one)

I didn't realize at the time that my conservative evangelical friends neglected major blocks of Biblical teaching about experiencing God.  They didn't speak very much about personal intimacy with God and they placed a low value on worship.  Singing hymns was really just a warm-up to why we really went to church--to hear excellent expository teaching.

This was me, pre-university.  I'd already lost my religion once by the time I got to university, and I ended up in something that always raises American eyebrows: a charismatic Baptist church.  They got the curious notion that if you preach some of the Bible, you have to do all of it, including the stuff that could get messy, loud, and go on for more than two hours.

To us, the most exciting aspect is the marriage of the conservative evangelicals' historical target--the salvation of the lost--with the charismatic power to get the job done.

I've been in a Vineyard for closing on five years now, it's about time I got hold of some Vineyard theology.  34 pages down, 81 to go.