How I Got Here, Part One

I was born in 1948 in Stockton, California as Steven Thomas Mackey. In February of 1975, after becoming a Christian the year before, I had a very dramatic experience that convinced me God was changing my name to Abraham. So committed to my “new found faith” the name change seemed perfectly appropriate for my new life as a believer in Jesus Christ. So, over the objections of my father and mother, I became “Abraham”.

The name change was only a small element in my life that had become obviously different as a result of my conversion to Christianity. I gave up the pursuit of what many who knew me believed to be a promising career as an actor. In fact, it was the summer after achieving my Masters of Fine Arts degree from United States International University’s School of Performing Arts that I was introduced to the idea that God was calling me away from acting.

Again over the objections of my family, I joined a Christian discipleship ministry. This organization was founded and guided by a man who experienced such a dramatic encounter with God that he too had left his former career in business and gone into the ministry full time.

The organization was very Pentecostal in its doctrine and practice. The teaching was filled with poignant references and challenges to not only “receive the Holy Spirit” but to continue on into a very personal and powerful relationship with God. The way the ministry functioned relationally was very much right out of the shepherding movement of the 60s and 70s.

As for the leader, anyone who knew him, especially those who worked with him as members of his ministry, knew him to be an amazingly charismatic person and a teacher/leader with uncanny wisdom about spiritual matters. Yet, his methods of leadership could be quite coercive. The result of his powerful approach all too often culminated in the brainwashing of his followers. Many of us would parrot his ideas never having truly thought them through for ourselves.

This man was deeply convinced that his vision would bring to pass the Healing of the Nations. His was a divine mission given to him directly by God. Those who followed him in his mission, including myself, became totally identified with the vision as well. The extreme focus of his belief in his divine mandate, knowingly or unknowingly, produced deep stress in many of his staff members. Several left the ministry and many of us who remained struggled with inner turmoil about our own participation in the work with the ministry.

When this man suddenly died in 1989, the direction and force of the worldwide vision for the ministry lost its momentum. My wife, Mary, and I left the following year to return to my hometown of Stockton, California.

Both Mary and I carry many fond memories of our ministry days and the wonderful people we came to know so well. We felt we had, in many ways, experienced Christian living in a moment by moment reality that most church folks never know.

To this day I consider those years in the discipleship organization as a much truer expression of personal spirituality than the subsequent years of involvement in the local church scene. This is not to say that either Mary or I hold to any illusion that those years in that work were some idyllic example of how Christians ought to be. It’s just that our close knit relational ties that were developed in a daily involvement were much more real to us than the “dressing up and going to church” life we were a part of from 1989 to 2007.