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Jim Gruenholz, ALPHA Director

I was born in Whittier, CA, so I could be near my mother. It was 1950. We were very close for several months and then, bang! I was on my own. She said later she just had to cut the cord. It was a tough life, growing up in south California. When I was eleven I was forced to play baseball 'till it got dark every day, all summer. When I was fifteen I endured going to the beach three or four days a week with my buddies who could drive and had borrowed their parents cars. By the time I was nineteen things had gotten so bad I was looking at having to get a real job. So I moved.

I moved to north California, where I now live with my wife and nine year old son. We have two daughters, thirty two and twenty nine who don't live with us anymore. The younger was twenty when the boy was born - she now complains of having middle-child syndrome. I don't blame her. Let's see, it's 2005 now and it was 1970 when I migrated north, so that leaves thirty five years for which I have not accounted.

That's okay. You don't want to know everything anyway. But it must be said here that I have been on a journey. So I must point out that we're all on a Journey. My spiritual Journey began when Jesus arrested me when I was twenty one. I don't mean he pulled me over and cuffed me - but it was kind of like that. I was your run-of-the-mill hippie kid who got invited to a church where they praised the Lord loudly, and with great enthusiasm. Something about that kind of worship shattered my defenses and I had to admit that Jesus was real and present and wanted me.

You'd think that would be the happy ending but it wasn't. It was only the beginning to my Journey. Did I mention that we're all on a Journey? As a disciple of Jesus I majored in mistake-making. My Journey has led me into being part of many varied, and very goofy church groups. I have witnessed charismatic gifts that were neither charismatic nor gifts. I have slavishly tried to impress "shepherds" who really just needed their house painted for nothing. I have let people lay hands on me and pray for me that I had no business even talking to. I have tried to keep the Law (modified version). I have tried to be "sanctified." I have even tried to "crucify" myself (OK, so you get your feet and one hand - then what?). I was once introduced at a speaking engagement this way, "If it's true one can learn from one's mistakes, this man should have a PhD. Ladies and gentlemen I give you ..."

Alright, so I wasn't the brightest light on the tree. In fact, after all that mistake making, I gave up church-going and essentially forgot that Jesus was the Lord - for about fifteen years. In 2003, misjudging my strength and violating my convictions, I made the final mistake of attending a church where they praised the Lord again. I only went to hear my son sing in the kid's Christmas choir; but I didn't make it out. Jesus arrested me again. I went home a weeping blubbering mess and I still become a weeping blubbering mess weekly, whenever I get a whiff of God's real grace. I have to say that it smells real good around this church most of the time. But I am now uniquely qualified to detect male bovine excrement from a long way off. My nostrils are attuned to the scent. It doesn't matter which brand of stinking error you want to talk about, it all has the same basic flaw - it conflicts with, or obscures grace.

As the renowned author, Gerald Rosen, wrote in the opening chapter of his famous tome, "The Carmen Miranda Memorial Flagpole,"FUETEO ERGO SUM. I stink, therefore I am. Descartes was French, right? That's the problem with the French. Always putting Descartes before the horse."

And that's where my Journey has taken me. That's my job (at least inside the church) - to see that the carts of behavior or work or ambition or holiness or commandment keeping, or charisma, or even praise - are once-for-all placed behind the horse of the gospel of God's grace. Forever!

It is by grace you have been saved, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.

May God's grace deliver us all from religion, fear, and nonsense,

Jim Gruenholz