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I have been a member of several Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches.

Currently, I am a member of a Vineyard church which I didn't know when I started going is considered pentecostal.

I grew up in Texas, and moved to Northern California after college about 20 years ago. I had a hard time finding a church in Northern California. Some of the churches were full of old people, and I did not get anything from those churches spiritually. Then there were the churches that seemed very liberal.

Some of my neighbors that I was close to were going to my current church. I visited. In the five years that I have been there, there have been several sermons on gifts of the spirits to explain what they are. I personally have never heard anyone speaking in tongues at our church. People talk about God sending them passages to read to the church, or some say they have had a dream about something that they think is a message from God. We've prayed for people to be healed, and I only know of one person who may have been healed after being prayed over in a sermon. She is a woman I have known for a long time, and has been dealing with a back problem. She only told a few of us that she thought she had been healed.

The worship is definitely more contemporary. I would prefer a more traditional worship, but my husband likes the contemporary worship.

What I like most about the sermons is that our minister goes over Bible passages and then he explains things that he knows about them (what the words mean in Greek, historical references, etc). Our pastor also likes to tell us what he is preaching about so that we can e-mail him questions beforehand.

Most of the people in my church our highly educated. We're in Silicon Valley, so we have a lot of engineers like my husband and I. Some of the women work, and some stay at home (like me).

Anyway, I don't think we're too extreme. We do place a high value on prayer, fellowship, and reading the Bible.

I think there are different churches for different types of people. As long as they are following the Bible, then I think they are okay. Of course, people can interpret the Bible differently, and I would hate to make too many judgements about that.

Just on the side. My church is trying figure out if we are staying with the Vineyard movement. We disagree with their stance on an issue about women pastors.