Hi everyone,
My names is James Eilenfeldt I'm 26 y/o and I became a disciple of Jesus in January of 2016 (at that time I was in the Navy). I was reached out to and baptized in an International Church of Christ fellowship in Norfolk, VA, and is currently where I fellowship. When I was baptized I was blown away by the love of the disciples, repentance, and their commitment to sharing the gospel. From my perspective it was a radical church committed to following scripture.
It was very different from the churches I grew up in where you would just go to church on Sunday, leave, and never actually build relationships. However, after I read David Bercot's book "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up", listened to almost all of his CD's on the early church beliefs, and started reading the "Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs" I quickly realized that the church I am apart of and myself are far from radical compared to the early Christians.
Honestly, looking at my life, I think I probably would have been kicked out of the church in the 1st,2nd,and 3rd centuries. Thankfully, there has been a lot of repentance in my life in regards to purity, lust, modesty, convictions on violence, oaths, etc. It has been amazing to read the gospels, specifically the Sermon On The Mount with clarity. This sounds obvious but I found that there is power in taking Gods words literally. My life has been flipped upside down in the best way.
I am currently reading Finny Kuruvilla's book "King Jesus Claims His Church. This has been an incredible but challenging time because I have built so many deep relationships in the church I am apart of now but am beginning to see many inconsistencies in lifestyle and holiness and I want to follow King Jesus exactly as he says but I don't want to abandon the fellowship w/o spreading what I'm learning with the hope that their will be a change.
I have been sharing a lot I've been learning with the people in my church but it doesn't seem like people are taking it seriously. At least not yet. I ran into this website when I was watching sermons by the "Fellowship Of The Way" YouTube channel. I subscribed because I want to align myself with the truth w/o compromise and be able to communicate/defend it to those I know.
I have about a 3 week break until the fall semester at Old Dominion University starts so I want to learn as much as I can during this break. I am also hoping to visit one of these Fellowship Of The Way churches in the future. I know this is a lot of info but I want to give you all an idea of where I am at.
