Comments by Joan Boney:
In 1958, I moved to Odessa, Texas, where I had been hired by the public schools to teach elementary strings in 5 elementary schools.
Technically I played clarinet but I had taken one semester of string class at ACC and I believed I would be able to hire a private violin teacher and stay ahead of an elementary school string class, so this is what I did.
The violin teacher with whom I began studying in Odessa, taught a Sunday School class at First Christian Church.
I had made a very bold statement to God.
The Church of Christ taught they were the only church. I said to God, "If the Church of Christ is the only church, I would rather go to hell than go to the Church of Christ."
So I began attending First Christian Church.
I didn't notice much difference between that which I heard taught at Church of Christ and that which I heard being taught at First Christian Church.
(Except they had a piano at First Christian Church and the man I was dating at that time was hired to play piano and be their choir director also.)
Today I don't recall anything they taught at either the Sunday School class or at the church service at First Christian Church.
The only thing I remember was the time in between Sunday School and the main church service.
We had coffee and donuts and all the talk was about TCU Football, in season and out of season.
I had never seen a football game at that time so I had no interest in that which they were speaking.
Although we were forced to go to football games when I was in college at ACC in the band, I didn't pay any attention to the football game and after we performed the half-time show, they let us go, and I left the game.
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In 1960, I was hired by the Dallas Independent School District to be orchestra conductor at Kimball Senior High School.
While in Dallas, I met a woman who attended First Methodist Church so I often went to church with her.
The preacher there was colorful and told interesting stories. People at that church really liked him and he was sort of an icon in Methodist circles.
(Later God showed me what Paul did when he preached and God warned me about being "clever" in speaking at church.)
I Cor. 2:4-5 Paul said: And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
I once went to this Methodist preacher and asked him if I could borrow some tapes of his previous sermons.
(I was not born again at that time.)
He seemed terrified of me. And he was very reluctant to allow me to borrow tapes of his previous sermons.
All I wanted to do was listen to his stories.
One of my friends got cancer at that time, and I went to the chapel at First Methodist Church to pray for her. It seemed a very religious and proper thing to do.
Betty died.
I don't recall anything taught at my time at First Methodist Church.
This was the last church I attended before I was born again.
(Notice this: So far, I have attended Church of Christ, Nazarene, First Christian Church, Methodist: In most of these I remember nothing taught. ... sort of social type doctrines and clever stories of man ... In the one church where heavy doctrine was taught, that doctrine was incorrect doctrine and later had to be uprooted by God.)
Several years later, God gave me the following dream:
I went into a very large church building where a meeting was going on. There were no seats available downstairs so I went upstairs where there was one vacant seat which was behind a large pillar which was holding up the roof of the building. A woman sitting in front of me turned and said to me, "You can't see much from that seat." I replied, "Oh ... there's never much to see at these places anyway."
To be continued ...
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