Mark Brown's Faith Story

It seems strange to be sharing my faith story.  For a long time, I didn’t think I had a story.  Well, at least not a story like some other people.  I always thought my story was boring, nothing flashy, no sudden conversions or drastic life changes.  Who would want to read my story?!  For a long time I wrestled with whether I was really a Christian because I didn’t have a dramatic story. 

But I’ve come to find out that among Christians, I’m normal.  It is the dramatic stories that are not normal -- that’s what makes them dramatic!  My story is no more and no less than this: my story.  That’s what it is.  Maybe sharing my story, normal as it is, will help you realize that you have a story, too.  And just maybe it is worth sharing.

I’ve been in church a long time.  Longer, in fact, than I’ve been “alive”.  You see, I’ve been in church from the womb, which is not a bad thing.  Most of my early memories were in church.  Sports and church.  It seems that’s all we did.  Three services a week plus revivals, choir rehearsals, and softball games.  We were one of the “faithful” church families.  That means you didn’t dare miss being there if the doors of the church were open.

When I was six, I realized I was a sinner, bound for hell.  Jesus was the way off of that path, I had heard, so one night at a revival service, I stepped out, walked down the aisle, and took the preacher’s hand.  As I took a seat on the front pew, I noticed others that had also walked the aisle to get saved.  An entire family had come, whose daughter and sister had been killed as a teenager in a traffic accident.  As I sat there next to this grieving family who all had come to Jesus that night, I felt the first twinge of what I later would learn was “shame”, the overwhelming feeling that you just don’t measure up, even after you’ve just walked the aisle.  These people REALLY needed Jesus.  I only needed him a little bit compared to them.

Then I went off to college.  (I told you it was boring!)  Well, I do remember when I was about 15, sitting on the curb in my neighborhood with a friend and saying, “I think I want to be a pastor someday.” 

My freshman year of college, an acquaintance saw me reading my Bible (which was rare in those days, so maybe that is a dramatic piece of the story).  He struck up a conversation with me and from that moment, for the next 8 years, I became a Bible zealot.  The church we started going to was a full hour away from our campus, but that didn’t matter.  The pastor preached right from the Bible, which was new for me.  And I started reading the Bible for myself.  Not just a little devotion in the morning.  I’m talking mega-doses of Bible reading.  At least an hour every day, reading through the Bible at least 4 times every year.  And I was absorbing the knowledge like a sponge.  Maybe I was the only one at the church who felt this way, but nobody knew the Bible like we did!  Those other people that called themselves Christians knew squat about the Bible compared with me.  I was a Bible knowledge super-hero.  And I thoroughly enjoyed looking down on the ignorant.  Strange, though, during that time, with all that Bible reading, I rarely thought about Jesus as a Savior of sinners.  I saw him as a King.  I knew so much “about” him, but I didn’t feel my need “for” him.

Several years go by, marriage, two children, a career with the telephone company.  But I started getting sick.  Losing weight.  Having panic attacks.  Being sick wasn’t really “allowed” at our church, or at least that's what I thought,  because if you were sick, it meant that God was judging you for a particular sin.  So if you got sick, you hid it.  Otherwise you were admitting to being a sinner, which I thought wasn't allowed in our church culture.  One day someone from the church came by our house and I was home...sick.  My wife went to the door, they had seen my car in the driveway.  I shuffled to the door, wondering what I was going to say.  But I didn’t have to say anything.  The person said to me, “Mark, do you know why you have this sickness?”  Then something happened.  A lightbulb went off in my head.  I think it had already gone off in my wife’s head a few years earlier but I wouldn’t listen.  Something was dreadfully wrong.  Not, “how are you feeling?”, or “can I help you or pray for you?” but “do you know why you have this?”

We fled that church and that county.  We moved back to our home town.  I said it was because my job was changing, which was only partially true, at best.  We were afraid to be honest with the church about why we were fleeing.  It took us nearly 10 years to really be able to talk about our church damage.  We didn't seem to have a grid through which to process it.  Thankfully after we moved, we joined a church that was more healthy and the pastor and his wife cared for us and helped us toward healing.  I still had not seriously considered becoming a pastor, but my wife and I began to say at this point that if we ever had a ministry, it would be to people with "church damage."

But I changed very little.  I was still hooked on Bible reading.  What would God think if I didn’t read an hour a day.  (By the way, I didn’t really read an hour a day at this point, I just knew I was supposed to.  That led to a boatload of guilt in addition to my shame, feeling that I didn’t measure up.)  My way of dealing with this guilt and shame was to pour myself into church activities and to inflict the dreaded “family worship” on my wife and children.  These activities were all “chores” to me, but they had to be done.  What would God think of me if I didn’t do them?  For 10 more years I grew more and more tired.  And so did my family.  Yet after so long, I still thought it was those other people who really needed a savior, like my family who didn’t really want to have family devotions like I did (go figure!) and my fellow church members who weren’t as dedicated as I was.  I just didn’t need Jesus.

Well, after 8 years as a Bible zealot, and 10 years in another church working my spiritual fingers to the bone, we ended up at Redeemer Presbyterian in Winston-Salem, NC.  One of our friends who was a member there (and who also knew me, probably better than I knew myself at that point) said to me, “Mark, I don’t want you to volunteer for anything here at Redeemer for at least a year.  You need to rest and to be still.”  You would think that was a relief for me to hear, but it wasn’t.  My entire identity was wrapped up in spiritual busy-ness and now I was being told just to be still??  What would GOD say?  How could I just rest?  Wouldn’t that be sinful?  Two things happened to me early on at Redeemer.  First, I wept through the worship services.  Something was happening there I had never experienced.  And second, I wrestled like crazy with being still.

Then came Sonship.  Sonship is a course that asks some hard questions like, “where is your joy?” and “what do you think makes you right with God?”  What I heard in Sonship, and what I had been hearing in the preaching, and in the freedom that I saw in the people at Redeemer was that what actually made me right with God was Jesus.  Period.  Not Bible reading, not being a church teacher, not having family devotions.  Jesus, his blood and righteousness.  My reaction?  That’s too good to be true!  I was scared to believe it because what would God say if I stopped trying so hard to get into His good graces?  To actually begin to believe that Jesus was my only righteousness required a death in me.  Literally, it was a death.  I felt like I was led to a cliff at the end of myself and my only choice was to jump and believe that what they were telling me was right.  Jesus.  It was Jesus alone.  Period.

And they were right!  But the first thing that happened to me wasn’t relief, which did come and is still coming.  The first thing that happened when I surrendered to the blood and righteousness of Jesus alone was that I became a big sinner.  I was no longer a theoretical sinner, I was a REAL sinner.  A sinner I wasn’t proud of.  A sinner who was as bad as anyone else.  I was a dad who could be so angry with his 6-month-old that I could bruise her leg in my grip.  I was a husband who could dabble with pornography thinking it didn’t really affect me or my wife.  Some Christians see the magnitude of their sin and then they see Jesus.  I saw Jesus and then he showed me the magnitude of my sin.  For the first time, I needed him.  For the first time, I loved him and knew I was loved by him.

How did I get from phone man to pastor?  Some other time, but suffice it to say, 9 years later I was sent out from Redeemer to plant a church in Yadkinville, NC.  I believe there are all kinds of sinners out here.  Some with dramatic stories and some with boring stories, like mine (LONG, boring stories).  Some are religious sinners like me, and some are non-religious sinners.  But I’m sharing the same message that God sank into me.  Its Jesus.  Jesus alone.  Period.

Now I want to hear YOUR story!
Redeemeryv@gmail.com
(336)426-8771

Mark Brown's Faith Story

It seems strange to be sharing my faith story.  For a long time, I didn’t think I had a story.  Well, at least not a story like some other people.  I always thought my story was boring, nothing flashy, no sudden conversions or drastic life changes.  Who would want to read my story?!  For a long time I wrestled with whether I was really a Christian because I didn’t have a dramatic story. 

But I’ve come to find out that among Christians, I’m normal.  It is the dramatic stories that are not normal -- that’s what makes them dramatic!  My story is no more and no less than this: my story.  That’s what it is.  Maybe sharing my story, normal as it is, will help you realize that you have a story, too.  And just maybe it is worth sharing.

I’ve been in church a long time.  Longer, in fact, than I’ve been “alive”.  You see, I’ve been in church from the womb, which is not a bad thing.  Most of my early memories were in church.  Sports and church.  It seems that’s all we did.  Three services a week plus revivals, choir rehearsals, and softball games.  We were one of the “faithful” church families.  That means you didn’t dare miss being there if the doors of the church were open.

When I was six, I realized I was a sinner, bound for hell.  Jesus was the way off of that path, I had heard, so one night at a revival service, I stepped out, walked down the aisle, and took the preacher’s hand.  As I took a seat on the front pew, I noticed others that had also walked the aisle to get saved.  An entire family had come, whose daughter and sister had been killed as a teenager in a traffic accident.  As I sat there next to this grieving family who all had come to Jesus that night, I felt the first twinge of what I later would learn was “shame”, the overwhelming feeling that you just don’t measure up, even after you’ve just walked the aisle.  These people REALLY needed Jesus.  I only needed him a little bit compared to them.

Then I went off to college.  (I told you it was boring!)  Well, I do remember when I was about 15, sitting on the curb in my neighborhood with a friend and saying, “I think I want to be a pastor someday.” 

My freshman year of college, an acquaintance saw me reading my Bible (which was rare in those days, so maybe that is a dramatic piece of the story).  He struck up a conversation with me and from that moment, for the next 8 years, I became a Bible zealot.  The church we started going to was a full hour away from our campus, but that didn’t matter.  The pastor preached right from the Bible, which was new for me.  And I started reading the Bible for myself.  Not just a little devotion in the morning.  I’m talking mega-doses of Bible reading.  At least an hour every day, reading through the Bible at least 4 times every year.  And I was absorbing the knowledge like a sponge.  Maybe I was the only one at the church who felt this way, but nobody knew the Bible like we did!  Those other people that called themselves Christians knew squat about the Bible compared with me.  I was a Bible knowledge super-hero.  And I thoroughly enjoyed looking down on the ignorant.  Strange, though, during that time, with all that Bible reading, I rarely thought about Jesus as a Savior of sinners.  I saw him as a King.  I knew so much “about” him, but I didn’t feel my need “for” him.

Several years go by, marriage, two children, a career with the telephone company.  But I started getting sick.  Losing weight.  Having panic attacks.  Being sick wasn’t really “allowed” at our church, or at least that's what I thought,  because if you were sick, it meant that God was judging you for a particular sin.  So if you got sick, you hid it.  Otherwise you were admitting to being a sinner, which I thought wasn't allowed in our church culture.  One day someone from the church came by our house and I was home...sick.  My wife went to the door, they had seen my car in the driveway.  I shuffled to the door, wondering what I was going to say.  But I didn’t have to say anything.  The person said to me, “Mark, do you know why you have this sickness?”  Then something happened.  A lightbulb went off in my head.  I think it had already gone off in my wife’s head a few years earlier but I wouldn’t listen.  Something was dreadfully wrong.  Not, “how are you feeling?”, or “can I help you or pray for you?” but “do you know why you have this?”

We fled that church and that county.  We moved back to our home town.  I said it was because my job was changing, which was only partially true, at best.  We were afraid to be honest with the church about why we were fleeing.  It took us nearly 10 years to really be able to talk about our church damage.  We didn't seem to have a grid through which to process it.  Thankfully after we moved, we joined a church that was more healthy and the pastor and his wife cared for us and helped us toward healing.  I still had not seriously considered becoming a pastor, but my wife and I began to say at this point that if we ever had a ministry, it would be to people with "church damage."

But I changed very little.  I was still hooked on Bible reading.  What would God think if I didn’t read an hour a day.  (By the way, I didn’t really read an hour a day at this point, I just knew I was supposed to.  That led to a boatload of guilt in addition to my shame, feeling that I didn’t measure up.)  My way of dealing with this guilt and shame was to pour myself into church activities and to inflict the dreaded “family worship” on my wife and children.  These activities were all “chores” to me, but they had to be done.  What would God think of me if I didn’t do them?  For 10 more years I grew more and more tired.  And so did my family.  Yet after so long, I still thought it was those other people who really needed a savior, like my family who didn’t really want to have family devotions like I did (go figure!) and my fellow church members who weren’t as dedicated as I was.  I just didn’t need Jesus.

Well, after 8 years as a Bible zealot, and 10 years in another church working my spiritual fingers to the bone, we ended up at Redeemer Presbyterian in Winston-Salem, NC.  One of our friends who was a member there (and who also knew me, probably better than I knew myself at that point) said to me, “Mark, I don’t want you to volunteer for anything here at Redeemer for at least a year.  You need to rest and to be still.”  You would think that was a relief for me to hear, but it wasn’t.  My entire identity was wrapped up in spiritual busy-ness and now I was being told just to be still??  What would GOD say?  How could I just rest?  Wouldn’t that be sinful?  Two things happened to me early on at Redeemer.  First, I wept through the worship services.  Something was happening there I had never experienced.  And second, I wrestled like crazy with being still.

Then came Sonship.  Sonship is a course that asks some hard questions like, “where is your joy?” and “what do you think makes you right with God?”  What I heard in Sonship, and what I had been hearing in the preaching, and in the freedom that I saw in the people at Redeemer was that what actually made me right with God was Jesus.  Period.  Not Bible reading, not being a church teacher, not having family devotions.  Jesus, his blood and righteousness.  My reaction?  That’s too good to be true!  I was scared to believe it because what would God say if I stopped trying so hard to get into His good graces?  To actually begin to believe that Jesus was my only righteousness required a death in me.  Literally, it was a death.  I felt like I was led to a cliff at the end of myself and my only choice was to jump and believe that what they were telling me was right.  Jesus.  It was Jesus alone.  Period.

And they were right!  But the first thing that happened to me wasn’t relief, which did come and is still coming.  The first thing that happened when I surrendered to the blood and righteousness of Jesus alone was that I became a big sinner.  I was no longer a theoretical sinner, I was a REAL sinner.  A sinner I wasn’t proud of.  A sinner who was as bad as anyone else.  I was a dad who could be so angry with his 6-month-old that I could bruise her leg in my grip.  I was a husband who could dabble with pornography thinking it didn’t really affect me or my wife.  Some Christians see the magnitude of their sin and then they see Jesus.  I saw Jesus and then he showed me the magnitude of my sin.  For the first time, I needed him.  For the first time, I loved him and knew I was loved by him.

How did I get from phone man to pastor?  Some other time, but suffice it to say, 9 years later I was sent out from Redeemer to plant a church in Yadkinville, NC.  I believe there are all kinds of sinners out here.  Some with dramatic stories and some with boring stories, like mine (LONG, boring stories).  Some are religious sinners like me, and some are non-religious sinners.  But I’m sharing the same message that God sank into me.  Its Jesus.  Jesus alone.  Period.

Now I want to hear YOUR story!
Redeemeryv@gmail.com
(336)426-8771