Spotlight on...Brian Smith

I was taught about hell from the time I was five years old. My Sunday school teachers used to scare us with stories of the rapture and what would happen if we weren't ready. Left Behind (the novel series) was our regular Sunday School fare. Not being ready meant being in the wrong place when Jesus returned (like a movie theater) or in a bar (why they taught this to five year olds I don't know), or a skating rink. Also not being ready meant having any unconfessed sin. We were only "saved" as long as we repented for every sin. I asked to be baptized at a very young age simply to escape the fate of being sent to hell. But, my parents wouldn't let me. So, I suffered severe anxiety wondering what my fate would be if Jesus did return or I died before I could be baptized and speak in tongues. I used to freak out if I couldn't find my mother or father in the house, thinking they had been raptured away and I was Left Behind.

I never really loved God (I loved Jesus). But, I feared God. To me, He was big old man who wanted nothing more than to catch me in some sin, kill me before I could repent and torture me eternally. Fortunately, I could hide behind Jesus. But, would He really protect me when the time came for judgment?

When I got out on my own, I stopped attending church. I never lost faith. But, I didn't see the point in going to be tortured every week. I really wanted to love God. But, it was hard. I can't say I really got a lot out of church in those days. When I got married, my wife finally got me to go back to church. But, it wasn't great. I did it mostly for her. I began exploring other faiths, not seriously, as in converting to them. But, mostly out of curiosity. I did some reading on Kaballah (Jewish Mysticism), Paganism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, read the Tao Te Ching and I can't remember what else. I knew I was a deeply spiritual person and couldn't abandon that. But, this image I had of God and my relation to Him was literally killing me. I saw beauty and truth in other religions. But, I couldn't bring myself to dump my Christian roots- as much as I wanted to at times.

Fast forward about some years and the panic attacks I began experience in in church, as a teenager, became overwhelming. I finally let people know I was having them and began to see a Christian counselor who helped me work through them. I had several issues. But the biggest one was that I never felt that I measured up. I never felt I had earned God's love. I knew that theologically our churches spoke of "relationship not religion" and "grace". But, I didn't see those things practiced. What I saw was judgment. And, I saw people worshiping a monster. Anyone who could torture anyone for any reason, for an eternity was someone to be feared, in my eyes.

Sometime around the beginning of 2004, I discovered Universal Reconciliation (UR). This is the belief that God, will eventually reconcile everyone to Himself. Wow! This made so much sense to me. I began reading everything I could on the subject and was blessed enough to find a Yahoo group where that was the central theme. Finally, someone had a picture of a God that I could both love and respect and yes, even admire. I set off on a journey of rediscovering Christianity. But, I did this largely alone. I didn't have a local community of people I could share this with. I did have a group on-line that I could talk to about it.

Around the time I discovered UR, I started looking into meditation. Christian meditation is sometimes called "contemplative prayer". I've been practicing for about 2 years now and it has made a major difference in my mental state as well as the way I view the world. When I heard about emergent or the emerging church, I had some hope for Christian fellowship again. I began attending a "cohort" where I met Chuck Wiggins who told me about Nexus. Until I found Nexus, my interaction with anyone with a theology similar to mine was limited to the Internet. I was a closet Universalist and Liberal when I was around church people. What brought me to Nexus is the opportunity to be myself and to be with people who are willing to explore what the good news really is.

Brian owns and operates an internet hair and skin care company with his wife Tywana. They have two children, Kayla (10) and Shayna (7). He's been attending Nexus since December 2006.