I don't mind to tell my story, so here it is..
I was born into a pentecostal family and basically raised in the doctrines of pentecostal churches and the word of faith movement. Despite these doctrinal connections, we were content to attend other churches at times, maybe because the pastor seemed spirit filled and spoke to the heart and not just from academic knowledge even if the pastor was not officially "pentecostal." We weren't of the pentecostals that are very legalistic. I guess you could call us evangelical pentecostals vs. the others which add works to get saved. I had a few connections to the Baptists, later back to the Holiness churches. In 1995 I had a transforming experience during the study of the Bible in a time when I felt I had failed beyond forgiveness. Anyway, that experience confirmed in me the surety of my salvation and of God's existence. Later I came across the Laestadian movement and have close connections to friends in the Laestadian Lutheran Church. One of them assured me of the forgiveness of my sins in the name and blood of Jesus. Later though I had my doubts about protestant christianity of any kind and joined the Roman Catholic Church. This didn't last long due to conflicts in my conscience about Catholic doctrine and I left the Roman church behind and intend to remain Protestant at all costs(hence my alias Faithful Remnant). As for the Laestadian connection, I am still loosely affiliated with the Laestadian Lutheran Church. Some of the literature is good and I like the traditional hymns on their CDs. I have my reservations over some aspects of control among members and their idea of being the only true group of Christian congregations, that believers can lose salvation, that you must hear the word of forgiveness from one of them, not from another church or just from the Bible. They also believe God's word is the written words of the Bible, the spoken words to explain these texts, and all the written words by a believer enlightened by the Holy Spirit about God's grace through the gospel and this is probably the biggest fallacy and probably the root of all the other problems of legalism and exclusivity.
It seems their biggest concerns are TV(only church or family videos) and dancing, movies and music. Personally I know a lot of TV is garbage today and I understand the concern, same with music, but I don't agree with forcing everyone into a mold all at once or on something not clearly demonstrated in the new testament. TV can be used for good and not all music except for hymns or select songs are harmful. They are not near as controlling as the OALC(the LLC considers the OALC to be heretical and maybe law-minded). Preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins is important(Jesus ordained it and the Apostles followed), but I don't see how this is limited to one group, because the testimony of forgiveness is read from Bibles sitting on the pulpits of many churches..even Catholic ones!(I have heard it during Catholic worship...things like Acts 10:43 read aloud to the congregation, but a lot of Catholic dogma still obscures this simple message of forgiveness) and that transforming work in my life by the word of God happened without anybody else. It was Spring break in college and the dorm was empty. I call it my personal upper room experience. There is no Laestadian congregation near me and I faithfully attend worship at a local Evangelical Lutheran church and soon will be a full member there and have asked to serve in worship as the reader of the scriptures. The people are friendly, gracious, not counting each others "failures" to live up to a code of conduct, the pastor is like a real shepherd of the flock--enthusiastic, loves his calling, speaks to the heart, prays for me, personally wanted to know my life story, visits the sick, etc. I am also this church's property manager and this job has really given me insight to the pastor's duties. So, are you dizzy yet? Sorry if you are, but you asked me to tell my story. That's it in a nutshell.
