A Most Unlikely Tongues Speaker

I grew up in a fairly traditional Southern Baptist church in Knoxville, TN. I rarely missed a Sunday in those first almost 20 years living under my parents’ roof. I don’t ever remember a sermon or a bible study on spiritual gifts in those years. Especially the gift of tongues was something I had rarely ever read about or heard discussed.

When I moved to San Jose, CA on my own a few months shy of my 20^th birthday, because I only knew one person in the western 2/3 of the country, and because he invited me to attend his church, and I had no wheels and no real desire to attend any other church, I began attending South Hills Community Church with him. For the next four years I never attended any other church unless for some special occasion. SHCC was a spinoff from Pennisula Bible Church in Palo Alto. The lead pastor of SHCC had his ThM and Doctorate from Dallas Theo. Seminary. Everyone on staff as far as I can remember believed and taught the “charismatic” gifts were no longer given. I don’t remember them hammering the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement. But when they taught or preached through books that touched on these gifts and issues, they consistently sided with the cessationist side of things.

Not only was I increasingly involved with (and significantly ministered to) by this church, but I also in those first two years was involved with the Navigator ministry first at West Valley Community College and then at San Jose State University. The leader of that ministry spoke strongly against the charismatic/Pentecostal movement. And I remember he gave me a booklet by Theodore Epp that sought to propound and promote the cessationist position on the gifts (= they are no longer given now that we have the Bible; the gifts (such as tongues, prophecy, etc.) died off with the apostles).

Towards the end of my first year there my dear friend and former youth leader who had persistently coaxed me into coming to San Jose until I gave in (and thank God he did) invited me to attend a concert held in a very large charismatic/Pentecostal church. Before the concert started the pastor walked out of a side door onto the platform and his mannerisms reminded me of Johnny Carson (first iconic late night show host). I was not impressed and a bit turned off by his slickness. The singer, Tom Netherton, had been a life long friend of my friend Steve and at one point in his concert he pointed out Steve to this large audience and spoke highly of him. I of course was sitting next to him but had never met Tom. After the concert several people walked up to Steve and had him sign their Bibles. And one or more of them - when they figured out I was with Steve – had me sign their Bibles. That was enough to convince me that all of the teaching I had heard or read about charismatics was true. They were deceived and possibly demonized (or so I thought).

During that first year in San Jose I worked at a hospital. Over time I ran into and interacted with a medical professional there. I fairly quickly presumed he was not saved and possibly gay. I began to reach out to him and eventually invited him to my apartment where I intended to share the Scriptures with him. As we talked he claimed to be a Christian and when we were almost finished I wanted to pray for him. He grabbed my hands and began to pray in tongues. That freaked me out and left a very bad taste in my mouth - further convincing me that the cessationist view was true.

Probably in the third year of my time in San Jose my friend Frank arranged for a missionary from Costa Rica to come and minister to our college group, which I helped lead. He joined us for a snow skiing retreat and throughout the weekend shared the Scriptures with us. He was charismatic and I was confused because he was clearly godly, clearly versed in the Scriptures, and he also kind of prophesied to me personally that I had some marital destiny with my wife, whom at that time I was not pursuing in any way. I kind of wrote that off but never forgot it.

In the early fall of 1979 I headed off to Dallas Theo. Seminary, having graduated from San Jose State Univ. a few months prior. I lived in the dorm that first year and the very first morning sat down in the cafeteria right next to a second year man, who happened to have grown up 30 minutes from where I did, and who happened to be attending a Chinese church. I had no idea there was a Chinese church in Dallas and immediately began to attend that church – sensing by then that I was to be a missionary to the Chinese somewhere someday. The pastor of that church – Lawrence Khong – was a passionate preacher, an A student, and a passionate anti charismatic. I never attended another church for the next two years, though Lawrence after he graduated from DTS eventually moved back to Singapore to continue pastoring Grace Baptist church. So with the combination of Lawrence’s teaching and exhortation (which I also received at a mid week Bible study) and the frequent indoctrination from DTS, on top of my previous experiences, I was more and more happy to be free from all Charismania.

In my second year in Dallas, knowing I would be getting married in early February, I decided to get a full time job, take a break from scholastics, and focus on building a relationship with my soon to be wife. I got a job with an office furniture delivery and installation company owned and run by a DTS grad. Of the 20-25 employees most were DTS students or Dallas Bible College students. Maybe 5 of the employees were non Christians. And then two were charismatic Christians not going to any school. After working there for a while, I discerned we believers were having little to no positive impact on the unbelievers, and there were other things that concerned me and that caused me to start an every Wednesday morning at 6:30 prayer meeting. I invited all the believers, and guess who came?  Yep, the two charismatic guys. We met and prayed week after week, and one of them even had Anne and I over for dinner. The longer this went the greater my struggle to fit these guys into my demonized, emotionally disturbed Charismatic caricature.

Then in my third year or maybe fourth year in Dallas I had to write a 40 page paper in one of my Greek classes in I Corinthians on either Tongues, divorce and remarriage, or the role of women in church. I chose tongues – greatly looking forward to demolishing the charismatic/Pentecostal theological arguments. By the end of many hours of study, I was a bit troubled. The treatment of commands like: “Do not forbid to speak in tongues” and “Do not despise prophetic utterances” or Paul’s stated desires like, “I wish you all spoke in tongues” or Paul’s stated testimonies like, “I pray in tongues more than you all” - - or should I say the lack of treatment of such passages began to cause me to scratch my head. In no way did I want to experience any of this stuff. But the arguments against the exercise of or the pursuit of these gifts were not as airtight as I thought they were. My grade on that paper reflected my growing inner turbulence with the lack of airtight scholarship among cessationists. Some of the solid principles of Bible study and exegesis that I learned at DTS were not being followed when it came to these passages.

After graduating from DTS, we eventually moved to spend seven months or so in Pasadena near my wife’s parents and grandmother before we headed off to Asia. While there I represented our mission agency Overseas Missionary Fellowship in the greater L.A. area, and had a small office in the U.S. Center for World Mission. I had taken the six week Perspectives on the World Christian movement course there in the summer of 1978 so it was good to get re-connected with the staff there. By this time in history the Vineyard movement (also referred to as The Third Wave) was exploding especially in So. CA, and Anne and I seemed to hear about it wherever we went. In no way was I drawn to it, but I did want to understand what was driving it, so before we headed to Asia I called C. Peter Wagner (long time professor at Fuller Seminary) and arranged to meet with him. I had never met him before, but I knew he was in the thick of this movement, so I asked him for a bibliography or something that I could read to help me better understand what this movement was about. He gladly obliged and I left his office with a pile of propaganda ( :- ).

Because O.M.F.’s international headquarters is in Singapore, and every missionary with them going anywhere in Asia has to go there first for general training, Anne, Joshua and I were soon headed to Singapore, where we lived for two and a half months. While we were eager to receive whatever we were to receive from the OMF leadership, we were especially excited to get to Grace Baptist church in Singapore that first Sunday and get reacquainted with Lawrence and Nina Khong. To our great surprise they were not there and the church/congregation seemed a bit depressed. Turns out Lawrence had left the church perhaps a couple of months previous and had started a new church called Faith Community Baptist Church. This was shocking to us - especially when we learned why he left. I believe I will stop here and resume this story hopefully soon as I have other work I need to do. God bless you and keep you in these exciting days before our Savior returns.