GBenfold

Having our old pastor preach at LABC this morning was quite surreal. I mean I didnt think that it would affect me as much as it did, into thinking about the past. When he spoke, with his familiar tone and style, it transported me back to the earlier years of my life and the things that have happened in that church. The friends I had made, and kept, or lost contact with for various reasons. His voice made me feel really at home, more at home that i've felt in a while. I suppose because it started me thinking nostalgically. His voice also sounded like it had never left LABC. It was like that 8 years of my life hadn't even existed fully. It wasn't strange at all to see him in the pulpit. The songs we sang were surprisingly new(!) ~his 'legacy' was still intact with the older generation, and he can now never put a finger, or never say a word out of line. I found this to be quite disturbing, as in the end, he's only a man. And you know what...I don't even think he recognised me! I mean he didn't really say anything to me, but then again I was always quite scared of him for some reason when I was little, so all the times when people have said that they've had really good conversations with him etc... I had never experienced that before. I remember being too scared to even tell him that i'd become a christian.

His sermon was encouraging, and yet it was on one verse in particular (Romans 14v17) and he spoke a fair bit about C.S Lewis which I enjoyed, and then he spoke about how becoming a christian is a joyful thing, and that your whole life would be filled with 'surprising joy' and it made me think of the times where as a young christian I thought I had failed in some way because I wasn't joyful all the time, it was quite misleading I thought for him to say something like that...bt anyways I didnt go to London Theology College. Then he spoke about Grace which was good, but there was so much that he seemed to have left out, and he wasn't as good as I remembered him to be.

I think it was a wake up call, especially to me, if no-one else, that we can't worship this guy, for, in the end he's just a guy, a guy that's been appointed by God to preach, yes, but its strange the affect that he's had on me. I subconsciously compare every teaching that I hear, with what he would say, or think or how he would put things, and this is so wrong.

I remember when I was at Northampton uni, I couldn't find a church there because I wasn't willing to try a new style of church, but now, at Chester, because I have been in the same church for a year now, and its so different to LABC, that if anyone knew what kind of church it was, then I would be afraid if they came to it, because you'd almost feel that there would be judging glances, made towards the style of worship,- the drums for example, and the raising of hands (which is in the bible) and the talking in tongues etc... I just feel a bit indoctrinated into the 'church traditions' and growing up to be wary of the Holy Spirit and Charismatic churches,(that c;eary didnt preach what was from the bible) I just feel that my growth has been stunted from this exerience, and i'm not blaming it to be the key issue here at all, but a part of me wishes that i'd grown up in a more freer church.