[LWC]

Tough. I've never heard those two terms before.

But I married a beautiful catholic girl, who game me two wonderful children, and we had to find a home that would work for both of us. I'd say we have found a good medium, and bottom-line, I feel as blessed walking out as I did at any church of my upbringing. I learned a long time ago LWC, that's it's not the relationship with "Church" that will get me to heaven. Church is a conduit, but my personal relationship to Jesus Christ is my only ticket.

The church I attend is bible based. The message presentation of the Invitation is certainly different. I grew up being preached "at" with a message very much centered around how to get to ****. The message is different now and more centered on how to get to heaven. I certainly miss the "fire and brimstone", the shouting and glory of a Church of God service, but having a wife that was born and raised catholic was not conducive to allowing God's message to get to her without her turning her heart off with her "ears". We tried baptist, and she heard the message all too often that Catholics are sinners. We tried catholic, and I could not tolerate the ceremony. God has lead us to where we are at today.

Early in our marriage, I was telling Rhonda what was wrong with her faith. The whole time I thought I was doing Gods job and try to "Save" her. That's not my job, my job is to allow her to hear the message, and for her to make her own relationship with God. My job was to pray for her as well as my children and myself. Like I said, I have to maintain my own personal relationship with God, through Jesus and the Holy spirit, but for me to be naive and think that the only one's worthy of going to heaven are those who believe as I do and the way of the Church of God, then heaven might be pretty lonely!

Amen! Stardust, I have been to so many different churches that it is scary, lol. It was tought to explain to a lot of my friends that I am preaching at two United Methodist churches, when the county I am from had ZERO of those churches, lol. Without confusing them and taking a very non-theological approach to explaining it, I told them it was like a calmer holiness church.

As i said before, that was the only was I could explain it to them because there is no church like it in my county. No more Nazarene churches, no methodist churches, and 4 or 5 different type of Holiness/Pentecostal/Church of God/Assembly of God, etc...

My 2nd sermon at the UMC churches that I preach at, I told them that I am a potpourii (spelling?) Christian and that as long as we all agree that Jesus is the only way to Heaven and that a personal relationship with him is essential, we can have a happy fellowship together.

I am gonna ask you a personal question, that you can feel free not to answer, answer here, or answer in PM if you choose. I have just always heard about protestant-catholic couples that allow their children to choose where to go to church, but they had to go to some type of Catholic schooling. Did you children go to Catholic school? Confirmation? Anything like that? I have always wondered how that works.

Also, praise the Lord that you two figured something out because I was raised in a Southern Baptist church with a mother that was raised Holiness, and I married a United Methodist preachers daughter. That was a struggle enough, I am glad that you two worked out something, so nicely.