I first came to Christianity at around age 25 thru watching what became CBN while I was attending military training in Virginia Beach. I fluttered around, reading several pop books of the day, like those of Hal Lindsay, but never joined a church, or even attended any churches regularly. Because I was moving every four or five months in those days, it was hard to think about a “church home” but I certainly never thought about a denomination.
About a year later, I did join a church, in San Francisco, called Voice of Pentecost, a member of the United Pentecostal Church. I was water baptized in that church, and was a member for a few months, until the Jonestown catastrophe, at which time I left it, and also stopped thinking about Jesus for a few years. The People’s Temple of San Francisco was just a few blocks from where I lived, and I saw some similarities between that cult, and the one I was in, in terms of personalities. I don’t want to demean the fine people of UPC, but this particular church family just got too weird for me.
A few years later I re-converted, this time into non-denominationalism, and stayed there for a few years, until the group I was in fractured over doctrinal arguments, at which time I started to see the light of Catholicism, and made the move.
