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parents were Christian, but belonging to a Christian family does not make you a Christian any more than having a baker for a father makes you a loaf of bread. Each person has to make his or her own decision. According to the teachings of the New Testament, I had confessed to God that I was a sinner deserving eternal torment and I had accepted the death of Jesus on the cross as payment for my sin. I humbly asked Christ to come into my heart and make me a new creature, and I became “born again,” by faith. I had been baptized and I knew I was going to heaven, but I didn’t know what to do with the rest of my life—what little might remain before Jesus returned—until that evening in Anaheim.
     
    Sitting in that meeting, I felt an intense desire to sing, pray and worship and I experienced strong inner sensations that I could only describe as “spiritual.” I was convinced I was communicating with God and that He was talking to me through His Spirit. I had never had these feelings in any other context, and since the “spirit-filled” environment triggered them, I knew that I had confirmation of the reality of God. Today, I would say “assumed,” but back then I “knew.” It felt real, and good. I had been taught, and I believed, that spiritual sensations are not necessary to the Christian life because it is faith alone that saves you, but it was affirming to feel something that wonderful, supplementing my faith. God was not just an idea, He was a reality. I had a personal relationship with Jesus, and he had something to say to me as one of his close friends and servants.
     
    I listened to a sermon about how the end of the world was near, and about how Jesus was returning “any moment” to claim his followers and judge the earth. I heard preachments from the bible about Jesus’ mandate to “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Millions of people still needed to be saved, and the time was short. I knew God was talking directly to me, and I knew right then how to live the rest of my life. I accepted the call. I would spend my life bringing lost people into the kingdom of heaven.
     
    I couldn’t understand or articulate it at the time, but as a teenage boy I was probably starting to wonder about my future and a career. Whether it was “spiritual” or “psychological,” it must have made sense to settle the question of what I wanted to do with my life, making an end run around the important but difficult struggle that so many young people experience. Accepting the “call” to become a minister made everything clear. I wanted the rest of the world to share in the gospel, to be saved, to know Jesus personally, to have meaning in life, to go to heaven, and to create a better world in the short time we had left. It felt right. Satisfying.
     
    Beginning that night in Anaheim, my life had a purpose.
     
    My Dad had done the same thing 15 years earlier. He had been a “worldly” professional musician in the 1940s. He played all over California for the USO during World War II. He was a member of the Teenagers, a band that accompanied Hoagy Carmichael on his weekly Something New radio show. You can see Dad playing a trombone solo in the 1948 Irving Berlin movie Easter Parade when Judy Garland sings her first song, her hand resting on Dad’s shoulder. But after he got married (he met Mom in a dance band) and started having children, he became a religious conservative, renounced his dance-band life, threw away his worldly albums and enrolled in Pacific Bible College in order to become a preacher. But he was unable to continue due to the financial pressures of raising three little boys, so he dropped out and got a job, eventually becoming an Anaheim police officer. I didn’t think I was fulfilling my Dad’s dreams—I was certain that God was calling me, personally—but looking back on it, I’m sure there must have been some influence from my parents. Mom taught Sunday School and