I mean, I'm telling you something. When I was growing up in church, I was upset by the mediocrity.
I was bored by church. I mean, I sat in church bored.
And I said to myself, why doesn't anybody ever get saved? Why doesn't anybody ever get baptized?
Why doesn't anybody go out solar? I was looking for something that was going to take you to the next level.
It's boring. It was lame. It was halfway. And you know what?
I came to a point where I literally was going to church almost every day when I was a teenager just trying to find something.
Because I went to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night at the church of my parents.
I went to the Wednesday night service. I went to a different church on Thursday nights because they had a youth preaching service on Thursday nights.
I went there on Thursday nights. I went to a teenage Bible study on Monday nights.
I went on Tuesday night to a different Bible study. And then Fridays and Saturdays I was going to some youth activity at one of the other four churches that I was doing something with.
Why? Because I wanted to do something for God. I was excited, but I couldn't find anybody that was hardly excited about it.
I asked the youth pastor at our Baptist church, will you take me out and we can knock doors and just try to tell people the Gospel?
He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't take me.
I mean, nobody would take me. Nobody would do me. I never wanted anybody to cry in Jesus my whole life.
I tried a few times, didn't know what I was doing.
Until finally, when I was 17 years old, somebody invited me to an independent fundamental Baptist church.
I walked into this church. There was no air conditioning. It was August and Sacramento, which is almost as hot as Phoenix.
Sometimes it's that hot. It was well over 100 degrees. No air conditioning.
The chairs were metal chairs. You know those brown metal folding chairs?
They said on the back, nuestra casa. I don't know why. They got these things cheap or something.
They had some Spanish stencil on the back and they were messed up chairs.
It was a big auditorium. It was about the size of this whole building.
But it was all just like an auditorium. It wasn't broken up like we have the mother baby room and the bathroom here and these offices and everything.
It was just kind of one big, it was shaped like this and just like this. Same size building as we're in right now.
And I walked in there and it was packed with people though. Packed from front to back.
And the pastor got up and he was preaching harder than any preacher I'd ever heard in my life.
He was ripping on everything that I did. All the music I listened to. Everything I watched on TV was wrong.
Every movie I watched was wrong. He was yelling about going soul wedding in the ghetto and we need to roll up our sleeves and go to the ghettos and preach the gospel to people.
And I sat there. I was worldly. I was dressed worldly. I was zealous in the things of the world.
I was listening to all the music. I was going to the rock and roll concerts. I was into the world. But I sat there and I said, this is real.
And within two weeks I was not soul wedding. I mean I jumped into that thing. Within a couple weeks I quit all the Bible studies and other churches and everything.
I jumped in and got involved in that church. I sat there sweating pouring down my face in a building with a hundred and some people in it.
Everybody sweating. It's a hundred and some degrees. There's no air conditioning. All the doors are open. We're sitting on a metal folded chair.
I said, this is great because somebody's preaching the Bible like they believe it with action, with power.
And I went out and watched people get saved on soul wedding. I said, this is what I've been looking for.
Because you know what I entered? The promised land. That's what it was.
I mean I've been on the other side of Jordan. I've already been baptized. I've gotten rid of some things in my life. I've won some victories in my life.
But I've worked the Bible through once, cover to cover. I've caught the siren and the aughts in my life.
But it wasn't until I walked into that independent fundamental Baptist church. I said, this is the promised land. This is it right here.
It didn't matter what the chairs were like. It didn't matter what the temperature was like. We didn't care what it was decorated like.
The building was bright green on the outside. I mean it was like lime green. It was the ugliest building in the United States.
Ugly lime green, stuccoed. The buses were bright green. The invitations that we handed out to people. Bright green.
None of that mattered to me. As a young, worldly, punk teenager, I was attracted to something that said, let's go all the way.
That's what I heard from across that pulpit. Let's go all the way. Let's go win souls.
And the first time I went soul winning, the guy took me out for two and a half hours. Almost three hours we went soul winning.
And I watched him win people to Christ. I mean he won several people to the Lord in that time. He won about three people to the Lord. I think maybe four.
And I watched, and I mean this was my dream come true. And you know what? People aren't looking for a half man, half out Christianity.
And if they are, then you know what? They can go find it somewhere else. I want to go all the way with it.