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About Sports and Family
COMING SOON: THEOLOGY ILLUSTRATED
The Sports and Family website is undergoing major changes to become THEOLOGY ILLUSTRATED. THEOLOGY ILLUSTRATED will be a layman’s tool to study the doctrines of the Bible. These studies will include topics such as, the Holy Spirit, man and his relationship to God, Angels, Man and Sin, the Bible, Salvation, End Times, the Church, just to name a few.
I grew up in the Methodist church in the 1960’s and early 70’s. Due to a split in the Methodist camp, my parents joined a Presbyterian church (they too split in 1972). The pastor there for many years came from academia; he was a former seminary professor. Most of his messages were filled with fifty-cent theological terms that got as far as the front pew (front pews are always empty). While dating my future wife, I attended her Baptist church. Though the preacher didn’t say much, at least I could understand him. I was later baptized (dunked) in the Baptist way, though I had been baptized by both the Methodists and the Presbyterians.
1972 at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama was where I first heard the Gospel message clearly and succinctly. It was when my parents took me to hear Billy Graham preach. At the end of the message, during the invitation, I was compelled to make my way from the stands to the altar and there accept Christ as my Savior. Other than my parents, I’m not sure if any else knew of my conversion. I’m not sure I fully understood what had taken place. I did not attend a new Christian Bible Study, no one talked to me about what it meant to be a Christian, nor the expectations that God had for me as I was now one of His children. I just continued to live my life as I had done the day before.
There was one evidential problem though – Christ was not Lord of my life. I was.
As the years wore on, my life did not exactly match on the outside what had taken place on the inside. I joined the Marine Corps in 1976, enlisting in the Marine Corps Reserve ( 4thBattalion), at its present location in Bessemer, Alabama. I was married to my beautiful wife in 1980, and by 1985 had two wonderful children. But my life was going nowhere. Having no career goals, I worked at jobs that would pay the bills, but had no real future. After many moves, we settled back into Birmingham with little money but high hopes. Careers began to sprout as I finished my undergraduate degree in Business, and my wife began teaching, finally using her teaching certificate she had earned from the University of Montevallo where she also was to earn her Master’s.
We moved to a small town south of Birmingham in 1994 due to my wife taking a job at the local elementary school. That same year, as I graduated from Faulkner University, something was compelling me to go into the ministry (I now know Who). With little direction on how to accomplish that since I had no seminary training, I sent letters to the Director of Missions, the Baptist administrators of churches usually defined by locality in a given county. After moving into our house, I received a call from one of them asking if we could meet.
What transpired was my accepting a position at a small (very small, numerically counting) church in the country who were looking for a pastor (they weren’t too picky). My home church ordained me into the ministry and off I went – the lamb to the wolves, so to speak.
My first Sunday to preach, besides me, there were three in attendance; two of them were Methodist. Over the next couple of years it occurred to me, on more than one occasion, that I needed an education in church. My daughter was taking ballet at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, and one evening, while waiting for her class to end, I picked up a track for their seminary, Birmingham Theological Seminary. One thing lead to another and several years later I graduated with a Masters in Biblical Counseling with a concentration in Theology.
Among many things, I learned that the vast majority of Christians are like I was, born into the family of God through faith, but no one, including the church, teaching the fundamental truths of our faith called Theology.
So, this website, that was formerly Sports and Family, by Divine Guidance of the Holy Spirit, will be slowly transformed into a teaching format of biblical theology. You may contact me through the CONTACT tab to ask questions or give recommendations as to what you are looking for in a Bible study.
Welcome to THEOLOGY ILLUSTRATED, and may we learn together, and share with others, God’s truth.
In Christ,
John
