I grew up a Christian at Augsburg Lutheran Church in Winston-Salem, NC. My parents are Christians who raised my brother and I to love God and believe in Jesus as our savior. I remember going through the struggle that many people go through at some point during their teenage or young adult lives ... trying to rationalize God and apply human logic to something divine and non-human. Unfortunately, I didn't really turn to my parents or church leaders. Instead, I elected to internalize this debate and come to the conclusion that I believed in God and Jesus but didn't have to believe in organized religion. After all, organized religion was man-made, right?

You may be wondering how I could believe in God and Jesus but not the Church. Well, it's pretty simple when you consider that I was trying to reason through this topic in what I considered a logical debate. I had enough events in my life occur where I believed God was giving me a second chance and trying to guide me down a path but at the same time did not believe the Church was from God. Afterall, there are so many denominations and how was I ever going to figure out which one was right? So, logically, I chose to accept God and believe in Him but did not set out to follow the Bible or take advantage of what it had to offer. "My religion" was just trying to be a good person and pray to God when I needed Him to watch out for me. It's what we should call a selfish religion. I wanted God to be what I wanted Him to be. This is about as silly as me expecting my children to be who I want them to be ... but that's something I recognize in hindsight now that I have kids. 

"My religion" led me down a path where I would pray occasionally to God but chose to live life some and enjoy my weekends and no-church Sundays. This covered me through college and my twenties. Let's now fast-forward a decade or so and get to where I understand the value of organized religion as it relates to faith in God and my belief in Jesus. As I approached my thirties I came across and focused in on the Tim McGraw song, "My Next Thirty Years". This caused me to do some soul searching and reflecting on my life and how I was raised. During this time, God opened another door for me and through it entered Melissa, now my wife. As my dad said when we were getting married, "Only God could see that a guy heading to Vegas and a woman doing missionary work would be a great couple."

During our dating, it was very clear early on about how important God and Church were for Melissa and due to my soul searching I was open to going back. She invited me to the church she was attending in Durham, The Summit Church. It was the first time I had attended a contemporary church service and she remembers the look on my face as I sat and stood throughout the service but was more fixated on the sheer number of people and the style of service than on what was actually being said. After we were engaged and she moved to Winston-Salem, we started the search for a church we could both attend. While we initially attended Augsburg, we wanted to find a contemporary style service and bounced around between a few churches. It was while we attended River Oaks Community Church and were involved in a small group there that I really began to understand the FULL value of being part of a church. (I'll do another blog article on the value of the church and organized religion in a few days.)

When we learned that The Summit Church was going to be part of planting a church in Winston-Salem, we reached out to Kyle Mercer of Two Cities Church and decided to become part of their launch team. I have continued to enjoy the contemporary style of service and like how engaging Kyle is during his sermons. It is for this reason that when I set out to launch OneGod.info to help share my faith and that of others, I talked with him about Two Cities being our first featured church. Since their launch, all sermons have been taped and we are in the process of taking each series and putting it onto the sermons.OneGod.info portal where you can watch sermon series and take your own notes. It is through his preaching that the open door concept became crystal clear (after all he literally said it and it was another "ah-ha" moment).

While I would never have considered myself not to be a Christian as I never lost faith in God or Jesus Christ, I definitely believe that over the last few years my faith has grown significantly as I became more plugged into the the churches I attended and am now attending. In an effort to grow OneGod.info organically, I decided it was best to start from scratch and build day-by-day. New blog posts will be added at least 3 times a week starting out and sermon series will be added to the portal quickly over the coming weeks.

If you would like to share your story through our site, I would love to talk with you over video call or in person depending on where you are located. Together we can share God's Love and how it has impacted our lives in an effort to help impact someone else who needs to hear His message.