It's been an 'interesting' spiritual odyssey for me:
1. Grew up in the Roman Catholic church. My family was
very Catholic, which is different than just being Catholic. For example, you had to be sick to miss school, but you had to be
dead to miss church; and even then, they'd just call the Priest to administer Last Rites, so you had to go anyway!
2. Went to college and participated in the Ecumenical Movement (free breakfast at the Catholic Church on Sundays, free bagels at the Hillel Center on Saturdays, Wednesday brunch at the Wesleyan Center, occasional BBQs and beach outings with the Baptists, meetings with other groups if they had food....you get the idea.)
3. Got radically saved, born again, baptized, Spirit-filled, and joined the local Evangelical Charismatic independent non-alligned parachurch campus group (i.e., those 'Jesus Freaks' that preached on campus).
4. Attended the local Assemblies of God back home in between semesters.
5. Moved to California for my first military assignment, and joined a local Independent Church, where I was the 'Token non-Hispanic'.
6. Met and married my Baptist husband in the mainline Lutheran Church he was attending.
7. Moved to our next military duty station and joined a local church that was a branch of a group of independent churches that refused to admit they were a denomination (Go ahead, figure
that one out!
).
8. Made our final move and joined an Interdenominational Church (I love it - they are extremely active in the community (jail ministry, working with the elderly, working in the hospital, working with outreach to the poor) and with missions (planted and currently supporting over a dozen churches overseas).
I guess all this 'diversity' helped prepare me for owning and running the local Christian Book and Bible store in our community, where we need to supply materials for and serve every church and every denomination in the surrounding two counties.
