Salvation

Tonight I began a class through my church that discusses the Doctrine of Salvation. More importantly, it discusses the two different "schools of thought" within the Protestant Branch of Christianity; Calvinism vs. Arminianism (not to be confused with Armenians, which are an ethnicity not having anything to do with Armenius, the Dutchman whom the belief system is named after).

As a born and raised Catholic, this is a new world for me and one that I find interesting and thought provoking. Because there are many people out there who have never actually thought to question their belief system, I thought I would at least document for you what I am learning.

Background

Our church is 150(ish) people so far, so we are small. Our pastor and his wife are young, sweet, educated parents who really love people. I was drawn to this church because it is neither "cliquey" nor exclusionary in its' teaching. I saw a lot of similar beliefs to my own the moment I spoke to anyone in attendance. For this reason, when I heard they were offering classes in theology led by either the pastor, his wife, or our Director of Missional Community I thought it might be a good idea to see what exactly this church believes that is so different from what I have seen or heard from other non-Catholic churches.

My Beliefs

While I love the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic Church, I have never been able to embrace entirely several of the teachings. And having been forced to attend "Calvary" churches a couple of times has always left a very bad taste in my mouth for non-denominational Christian churches. This class answered my big question already as to why.

First Class Overview

When I arrived to the Church hosting our classes, I was met with tons of people whom have quickly become my regular circle of faces. I not only see them on Sundays, but also at group meetings during the week. Everyone was chatting and I ran into a friend of mine on my way in so we walked in together, albeit he on his cell phone.

The energy in the “lobby” area was fun. There was a slight chaos due to the number of people there and trying to get everyone into their respective rooms; but we all chatted and hugged and laughed until we got where we needed to be.

The particular class I am taking is being taught by the pastors’ wife, who is quite honestly one of the sweetest people you could ever meet. And the fact that she has a little twang to her accent doesn’t hurt any either. She was rearranging tables as I came in and laughing with friends and making sure we all put on our name tags.

As she began the class, she wanted to make very certain we knew she was in no way trying to actually “teach” us anything. She wanted to simply expose us to the two schools of thought, show us the bible references that are used to support both sides and allow us discussion time. She began with a prayer and then had one of our classmates lead us in worship by singing a couple of songs as she played her guitar. She has a beautiful, soulful voice and it really helped to set the mood in the room.

When that finished, we went around the room and introduced ourselves while also telling why we wanted to take the class. I very honestly said that I had never heard the terms Calvinism and Arminianism and would love to know what they mean. Many in the class either have bible college experience or are married to a theologian, so I think we will be able to have really great conversations.

After giving us a brief history of who Calvin and Arminius were and where these two belief systems come from, our pastors’ wife listed to us the 5 points of each. She tried very hard to be neutral in her explanations and fairly represent the two sides.

Over the next several weeks, we will be delving into these points, so I will get into discussion on each individually as the weeks continue; but if you’re looking for places to look it up online, just google the terms and you will be met with thousands of hits. I’m stunned I didn’t know what all this was called until now!

Once she finished explaining everything, she closed us in prayer and then we all got to go back out and chat with the other classes. Many of us have our weekly group meetings together, so we all gave hugs and high-fives and chatted with friends.

The law of attraction is a very interesting thing to me. I feel very grateful to have found a group of such amazing people who really love others; not skin-tones or sexual preferences or job titles or donation levels but anyone and everyone with red blood running through their veins. If these sound like your kind of people, you can google Acts: 29 churches in your area.

See ya next week!