PaulChristensen
Member
Greetings everyone.
I am a retired person living in Christchurch, New Zealand (the shaky city), attending a Presbyterian/Methodist Union church. Last year I moved here from Auckland, where I had been an elder and treasurer of a Presbyterian church for 23 years. For the first 12 years of my Christian life after by conversion to Christ in 1966, I attended Pentecostal churches, and in the late 1970s became disillusions with my last Charismatic church and so decided to "see how the other half lived" and joined an Anglican church.
After three weeks I became as mad as the rest of them. I discovered that beneath the formalism there was a lovely group of people who accepted me as one of them very quickly. One thing was that I could set my clock on the order of the services, where Pentecostal services would drag on and on, and some preachers would have been great if they finished half and hour before they actually did!
During my 19 year school teaching career I moved cities a number of times, and attended Baptist churches and finally moved to Auckland where I settled in the suburban Presbyterian church where I was quite happy and productive. It is interesting that these fellowships accepted me as just me, and didn't reject me because of my Pentecostal background. I think it is because I never pushed it, and where it seemed that others might be coming into the push to push it, I offered my services and experience as a Pentecostal to the minister to support him. That was very much appreciated and he was very glad to have someone who knew what it was all about but respected the culture of the church.
I am not ashamed of being a continuist as far as the Spiritual gifts are concerned and I am always prepared to enter into discussions in a respectful and civil manner. At the same time I have a Calvinist Puritan theology, although I stop short in supporting the notion that God deliberately predestines people to hell. Election, predestination, and God's foreknowledge are largely mysteries, and there is much that He does not explain, but requires us to accept by faith what we don't understand, and to do what we can to make disciples for Christ anyway.
I am married to "she who must be loved and obeyed at all times", and have two adult daughters. For the last 10 years of my working life I was a victim adviser with the Ministry of Justice, dealing mainly with domestic violence victims. I have a website: http://www.personal-communicaton.org.nz which has a good resource section of domestic violence articles.
I am a retired person living in Christchurch, New Zealand (the shaky city), attending a Presbyterian/Methodist Union church. Last year I moved here from Auckland, where I had been an elder and treasurer of a Presbyterian church for 23 years. For the first 12 years of my Christian life after by conversion to Christ in 1966, I attended Pentecostal churches, and in the late 1970s became disillusions with my last Charismatic church and so decided to "see how the other half lived" and joined an Anglican church.
After three weeks I became as mad as the rest of them. I discovered that beneath the formalism there was a lovely group of people who accepted me as one of them very quickly. One thing was that I could set my clock on the order of the services, where Pentecostal services would drag on and on, and some preachers would have been great if they finished half and hour before they actually did!
During my 19 year school teaching career I moved cities a number of times, and attended Baptist churches and finally moved to Auckland where I settled in the suburban Presbyterian church where I was quite happy and productive. It is interesting that these fellowships accepted me as just me, and didn't reject me because of my Pentecostal background. I think it is because I never pushed it, and where it seemed that others might be coming into the push to push it, I offered my services and experience as a Pentecostal to the minister to support him. That was very much appreciated and he was very glad to have someone who knew what it was all about but respected the culture of the church.
I am not ashamed of being a continuist as far as the Spiritual gifts are concerned and I am always prepared to enter into discussions in a respectful and civil manner. At the same time I have a Calvinist Puritan theology, although I stop short in supporting the notion that God deliberately predestines people to hell. Election, predestination, and God's foreknowledge are largely mysteries, and there is much that He does not explain, but requires us to accept by faith what we don't understand, and to do what we can to make disciples for Christ anyway.
I am married to "she who must be loved and obeyed at all times", and have two adult daughters. For the last 10 years of my working life I was a victim adviser with the Ministry of Justice, dealing mainly with domestic violence victims. I have a website: http://www.personal-communicaton.org.nz which has a good resource section of domestic violence articles.
