"Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 1:3,4)"
It's been a long time since I have wrote anything, but I feel it is time to start again. I will start posting on my original blog again, but this is a new one for a new season in my life. I have 48 years in this world and all in the Pentecostal church. I have spent 30 years in church ministry. I am a preacher's kid who followed in his Dad's footsteps. I began evangelizing when I was 18, and pastoring in my early twenties. Family crisis caused me to leave the pastorate to focus on my wife and children. My wife, Paula, passed away in 2011. I returned to evangelism and then focused on being a praise and worship leader. It was at this time, I got married and my wife, Misty, joined me in ministry, This is where I am today.
The church has truly changed since I was a kid. That is what this blog is about. The changes that are happening in the church. I consider myself a classic Pentecostal, who has become somewhat progressive in his beliefs and convictions. However, in my doctrinal stance I am very much a traditional, classical Pentecostal. My orthodoxies haven't changed. My orthopraxis has changed somewhat.
I was raised in the Church of God, which has its roots in Wesleyan holiness doctrine. My parents were not Pentecostal growing up. Mom was a Catholic and Dad was Baptist although his older sister was Pentecostal. They both dedicated there life to Christ in the late sixties. Dad was called to preach and was mentored by some great elders of the Church of God. It was in this era that there was a great deal of "clothesline" preaching. Women were not to use cosmetics and not to wear slacks. Jewelry and shorts were prohibited. Holiness was inward that reflected in outward dress. I still believe in holiness, but it starts inward and will result in outward modesty and purity.
The change in outward attire and adornment hit the church in the eighties. It was very hard for my Dad to accept the change. Honestly, he didn't adjust. Worldliness had entered the church world. He would eventually be acceptable of those who modernized the church, but he never compromised his personal convictions. Under this mentality, I too had trouble accepting the change.
As a teenager, I went to Christian school that was part of the progressive Pentecostal church. I began to see that inward purity had nothing to do with "clothesline". I began to broaden my thinking. I also became a diligent student of the Bible. Studying and reading commentaries and books on what made Pentecostal distinctives and doctrine. I also began studying the history of the Pentecostal church. I came to the resounding idea, that much of the "practical commitments" of the church were just the convictions of the time. However, I followed what the Bible said was right and wrong.
That's enough about me for now. I will tell more in other blogs. My goal with this blog is to explain how the changing church is affecting me. How many are not justchanging convictions they are compromising and accepting sin. Some neo-Pentecostals believe it is okay to drink alcoholic beverages, fornicate, and now accepting homosexuality as normal.
These are more than just generational or practical changes, its allowing sin.
I will explain more in additional blogs, this is just the beginning.
God Bless
Steve
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