I left Raytheon amidst a conflict with upper management. I'm thankful, however, that Raytheon respected my work ethic and secured my pension (at least so far). The end came with Rev. N's church over how to handle discipline within the church. Because I was respected by so many people there, I felt that the Lord would have me leave rather than be a source for contention and division.
The girls were much older, so concern for a youth group did not figure in with our search for a new church. After a brief period we discovered that the church that met at the YWCA was still in operation. The pastor there had left the church to take on a larger church on the coast. We learned later that he had died due to complications with a heart valve replacement in California.
We were welcomed back, and one of the older men and I began to take leadership responsibilities. We shared preaching/teaching duties and basically had to forgo Sunday school because of the diminished size of the church. We also discovered that we could no longer afford our space at the YWCA. We began to look around the area for another place to rent. We finally located a store-front in nearby Blountville.
An elderly church member allowed us to use her old rickety piano, and, after a laborious effort to move the beast in my little yellow truck, we finally gave it a new home in the church. I proceeded to press one of my daughters into playing hymns, figuring that she could use the experience, and the captive audience (they had to go to church!) would overlook her playing flaws on keys that were already musically challenged.
The highlight of our little church was the arrival of a young man named Kevin, who brought with him his wife and three small children. Kevin was a defrocked Presbyterian minister. His troubles began when he started questioning some points of the Westminster Confession in seminary. Despite his difficulties with his professors he finished seminary and was assigned a church that afforded a one-year residency period, after which he would be given full minister status.
According to Kevin his teaching at the starter church was not well accepted, and word got back to the Presbyterian leadership, and he was asked to leave the ministry. He was descended from a long line of Presbyterians, so this was a major setback in his life.
Like the Mormons, God continually puts unique people in my life, perhaps to test me, or, better yet, to show that anyone can have a genuine love of Christ, regardless of what coat they wear. Kevin and I almost immediately formed a friendship. The other church leader and I met with Kevin in a restaurant in Johnson City, and, following a brief interview, were considering asking him to be our new pastor. I know that we were concerned (at least I was) with his Reformed theology background (see blog 11/3/10), but I don't recall whether we chose not to pursue the offer, or if he declined. It was clear that we could not afford to provide enough monetary support for him and his family.
Lois and I felt that God was beginning to open our eyes to new ideas, and, looking back, we see Kevin's teaching role in that change. Like Rev. N, Kevin and I had many personal discussions on spiritual matters. I remember him saying at one point that belief is all about the packaging, that if we were honestly willing to open the packaging, we would be surprised how close to each other we are in thinking. The problem is that we accept our doctrines all bound up in impressive wrappings and are not often willing to even take even the bow off.
Kevin began to teach us about the end times. It was the first I had heard, or wanted to hear, about the position of Amillennialism. Millennialism refers to the 1,000 year reign of Christ as recorded in Revelation 20 (mill in Latin means 1,000). So the debate down through the ages was about when Christ would return for the saints --- before the thousand years (pre-mill) or after the thousand years (post-mill). Some broke it down even further with the tribulation period (seven troublesome years before the 1,000-year reign), whether Christ would return before the tribulation, after the tribulation or mid-way through the tribulation.
Kevin taught all of the positions, without showing a preference for a particular one. But on a personal level I found that he was most interested in the Amill position. This view held that Revelation was all symbolic and could be broken down into several sections that showed the entire Biblical, and mankind, spectrum ending with the church age, and the ultimate destiny of man.
This was my first experience of really looking at the Bible as possibly meaning anything other than what I had been taught for years. It began to awaken in me the idea that Biblical interpretation was both a blessing and a curse, that the Bible was written in a way that afforded just such a diversity of interpretations.
It turned out that Kevin came to us because he was finishing up his masters degree at ETSU, and then he and his family moved on to the midwest where he was from. While Kevin and I never came to a common ground on his Reformed position (probably due to my fundamental foxhole), we had a great friendship, and, yes, like the others, I wish I had kept in touch.
Shortly following Kevin's departure we realized that our small, struggling church was not going to make it. So we lugged the old piano back to its home, put the church stuff in storage, and limped along with some home Bible studies.
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