How I Became the Vineyard Calvinist, Part 2

In my last post, I detailed a little bit of how I became a Christian and the beginnings of my life in the Church. By this point, I had decided to leave my previous church and join a church affiliated with Calvary Chapel. I did this largely because I really got a lot out of the expository preaching that they employed.

During this time, I got heavily involved with the youth group, but also went to the main service. The youth pastor was also the associate pastor of the church. I did a tremendous amount of growth there especially in getting grounded in the essential truths of the Christian faith (the Trinity, Deity of Christ, faith alone being the instrument of salvation, etc.) as well as learning the Word of God. I remember the time that they preached chapter-by-chapter through the Psalms and Proverbs as well as through the Gospel of Luke (Sunday mornings they went through the New Testament, and Wednesday evenings were through the New Testament. They also later added a Sunday evening service where they went through another portion of the New Testament). The early days there were very fruitful and I was initially discipled very well.

It was during this time that I came to the conclusion that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit had not been withdrawn from the Church. I had decided that I wanted to become a pastor one day and although I was interested in Calvary Chapel Bible College, I really desired to stay local (CCBC is located in Murrietta, CA) and they weren't accredited.

I went and toured a Baptist college that was about 45 minutes from home but discovered that they really took a hardline stance against the miraculous gifts and the gift of tongues in particular. I really didn't even know what the gift of tongues was at the time! I had a conversation with a Christian gentleman who was also a Baptist (and apparently a fan of John MacArthur) who basically told me that the key to determining the issue was to determine when does "that which is perfect" come (1 Cor. 13:10). I learned that many (apparently including this gentleman) believed that the completion of the canon of the New Testament was that time.

I determined to study this issue myself from the Bible and come to a conclusion. Interestingly, although Calvary Chapel is technically a charismatic church, I didn't get a whole lot of help from them. I kid you not, the whole time I was there (about a year and a half), I never once saw anything that resembled the charismatic gifts. The only thing they really contributed when I asked about the issue was that they believed they were for today.

Long story short, I came to the conclusion that the coming of the perfect was the time after the return of Christ and thus the gifts were for today. That obviously made it impossible to go to that particular school. I eventually ended up at Trinity College of Florida where I went for three semesters and met my wife.

More on that at a later time.

-Christian