A
History of Our Home Church
By
Brian and Scott McPherson
In the spring of 1999, we graduated
from a small state university in Missouri. Although we were born Roman Catholic,
by our second year in high school we had become non-denominational charismatic
Christians. During college, we were part of a fairly large inter-denominational
campus fellowship. But the same spring that we graduated, we began reading a book
that had been recommended to us by some of our close, Christian friends from college.
The book challenged our long-held charismatic doctrinal views. With the utmost
confidence in our charismatic faith we were sure that we would be able to tackle
any arguments that the book had to offer. However, by the end of that summer we
had finished reading the book and were looking for a new church home.
We spent the next few months visiting a variety of local churches. We visited
Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and other denominational and inter-denominational
churches in the area. We looked in the phone book for churches. We even visited
churches that we saw on billboards along the highway. We eventually settled at
a new church that had been informally planted by a Baptist fellowship from out
of state. The pastor, assistant pastor, and music minister were all very young
and approachable and the worship music was contemporary, a lot like the music
from the campus fellowship we had been a part of in college. We even ran into
a few Christian friends from high school there.
But finding a church
was not the most pressing issue raised by the book. In fact, changing some of
our long-held beliefs was not even the most pressing issue. The most pressing
issue was answering the following question: how in the world were we so sure for
so long about doctrine that now seemed so obviously flawed? There
were clear facts that we had previously never even heard of, relevant church history,
and straightforward biblical questions that we had never asked - just merely assumed.
This was the elephant in the room. This was the eight-hundred pound gorilla. There
was no getting around it. It was staring us straight in the face. For a decade,
we had believed very strongly in a kind of Christianity that we had never looked
into or critically examined. More than finding a new church, more than simply
adjusting a few of our beliefs, we had to start asking questions like "what should
we believe?" and "why?" And we needed to find real, reliable answers.
We
kept going to that small, new church until late 2001. Around that same time, we
had a discussion with some friends in which someone suggested that we should all
start having bible study together. Everyone liked the idea. And since the two
of us had already been doing some studies, we took the first turn presenting a
topic. In February of 2002, on a Thursday night at 8 o'clock, we got together
for our first bible study at our apartment. There were about 8 to 10 of us.
A
few months later, we bought a new house in the area of Old Towne St. Charles (just
outside St. Louis). Over the next two years, some new people joined the group.
Others stopped coming, but a core group of us kept at it. Some of us stopped attending
institutional and corporation style churches. Others kept going. We kept doing
more and more studies on our own time. And we kept presenting them every Thursday
to the bible study group. We opened and closed with prayer and took communion
together. By the spring of 2004, our older brother had even started attending
over the phone from Michigan.
In
those three short years between winter of 2001 and spring of 2004, we built this
website with the bible studies from our home church. And in spring of 2004 we
left our salaried jobs as graphic designers, sold our house in St. Charles, and
moved to Michigan to spend some time with our older brother and his family. Some
moved with us, some stayed in Missouri, joining us by phone on Thursday nights.
But the home church continued. In Michigan we found new people who joined in.
We found part-time jobs so we could have more time to study the Bible. And over
the next few years, the website grew as we added more and more articles on more
and more topics.
In
2007, after three and a half years in Michigan, we had an opportunity to spend
some time visiting Israel. We sold our home, left our jobs, and packed all our
things into two small storage units. And in September, we got on a plane taking
with us only three small bags and a laptop. We spent three weeks in Jerusalem
praying, studying the bible, and touring the city. Every day we walked around
the old city of Jerusalem. In the morning we would go to the archeological site
for David's Palace and pray. In the evening, we would go and pray on the steps
overlooking the Western Wall. We were able to stay through all the fall feasts,
including the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles, and returned to the
U.S. in early October.
After
a brief visit with friends and family in Michigan, we moved to Virginia Beach.
Once again we took part-time jobs so that we could spend more time studying. We
took some time learning the basics of Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek
and posted a few new studies to the website. But we spent a lot of that year considering
what to do next. And even though we were spread out all over the U.S. at this
point (some in Missouri, some in Michigan, and some in Virginia), the home church
continued to get together every Thursday night. Those living in the same city
would get together in someone's home and then each group would get on the phone
with the others who were living out of state. We were essentially about three
or four groups meeting over the phone. And while modern technology allowed our
little groups to continue in fellowship despite our great distance from one another,
we remembered how great it was to be gathered together in one place. So, in September
of 2008, we moved back to Missouri to reunite with the friends we left behind
when we moved to Michigan. In fact, one of the guys from Michigan gave his employer
notice and moved to Missouri so he could be a part, too.
In
the months since we returned home to St. Charles, Missouri, we have been able
to enjoy having a room full of Christian friends all in the same place, studying
the Word and sharing communion. Of course, not everyone was able to move. But
the few who remain out of state still call in for the study every Thursday night.
It's been over eight
years since the handful of us got started in that small apartment back in St.
Charles. We've stayed small but we've stayed together. As we have continued to
center our lives around God's word, we have shared the benefits and challenges
that bible-centered relationships bring. The website has grown considerably since
that first year as well. We now have over 5,000 pages of study articles on Christian
apologetics and theology as well as Christian history. And we continue to post
new studies to the website as new topics come up.
But
now we want to add a new side to the website. Instead of just a place to host
our studies, we want to let people know about the community side, the home church
behind the online studies. We continue to hope that people will find our website
helpful and informative as a free, resource for personal and corporate study,
but we also hope that people will get to know us as a community of Christians
(especially if you are in the St. Louis area). And, if you are interested, please
feel free to get in touch with us. We're a small home church, but there's always
room for more.
