Becca is a seeker and a thinker. For her, Woodland is a place where she can keep asking questions, even when there aren’t necessarily answers. Here’s how she describes her story:
Growing up in the Pentecostal church in the ‘80s, intellectualism and questioning were never rewarded. Performing the right behaviors, however, was deeply appreciated (especially ones that proved you were “in the spirit”). When I “learned” to speak in tongues in exchange for a Hershey’s bar as a sixth grader, my descent into distrust of the church began.
After a failed attempt at Bible college to please my parents, I left the church when I just couldn’t reconcile some of my questions about faith. I had been a worship arts major, and I never stopped playing the piano or singing—I just did both things for myself instead of for God.
When a college friend found out I played, he asked me to sub for him as a pianist at his church. As an Anabaptist gathering in a college town with a female senior pastor, his church seemed palatable. I ended up coming back to faith through that Anabaptist church, in worship ministry, and eventually went to Seminary at Bethel University.
I’d heard Greg Boyd speak at a conference in Montana in the early 2000s, so when I came to Bethel in 2005 for the In-Ministry program, I started attending Woodland Hills. The Bethel program was designed so that I was only in the Twin Cities for two weeks every six months, but I always arranged my travel so I could be there for three Sundays at Woodland Hills.
Even from Montana, I “attended” Woodland Hills for probably two decades. I had a small group of friends who would often discuss the sermons, and we had a book club that regularly read Greg’s books, in addition to other thinking Christian authors. I took Cultivate classes online, and always appreciated the learning environment here.
In 2022, I had the chance to move to the Twin Cities and I immediately started attending Woodland Hills in person. In the interim years, I’d been a worship pastor, founded a relational ministry youth center and started a pub church in my hometown. I tended toward church expressions where questioning was accepted and encouraged, and where we were always seeking to discover the “Jesus-looking God,” as we often hear around here.
There will always be something experiential about my Spirit-centered roots in the Pentecostal church, but I remain grateful to Woodland Hills for being the place that shared a more intellectual faith with the world. My favorite sermons were the ones where the speaker would say, “time to put your thinking caps on.” I don’t ever want to have a faith where I take my thinking cap off, or where I stop questioning my own premises.
I love a God who is mystical and unknowable, but who never expects me to be other than what He made me to be, which is a seeker. Even if the answer is, “It’s not time for you to know that yet, Becca.” Gotcha, Jesus. But I have absolute faith that one day, in his presence, I will get to know all the answers. Or spend eternity discovering them.
Have your own story to share? We’d love to hear from you! Fill us in here.
I can totally relate to Becca’s story. A lot of churches expect us to believe their doctrine without question, and I could never be that type of Christian.
I found out about Greg Boyd, and Woodland Hills while I was doing a Bible study on the book of Job. It was from a church I was a member of, but never felt totally comfortable in, even though I loved some parts of their teachings.
I started listening to Greg’s sermons, and to The Meeting House. I was drawn to both of those churches, being a person that calls themselves a Jesus follower and a peace keeper, who loves all of humanity, the animals, and the earth. So from then on I have been a ‘podrishoner’, as I live in Wisconsin. (Packer and Bucks fan, lol).
I am so thankful to have found Woodland Hills, Greg, and all the other open minded pastors and teachers, who’s teachings always point to Jesus and the cross
Love and peace to the world.