Seven years ago, David and Terry Ensminger found a home. Not a house in which they can put their feet up, but a place they can rest their hearts and souls.

"It's hard to describe the feeling when I walked out of [Living Word] seven years ago and said, 'We can go to church here. This is it.' " says Terry. "It felt like coming home."

David and Terry had been struggling for years to find a church body that adhered to the Bible, even though at times they grappled with knowing exactly what those teachings entailed. At Living Word, Johnson City, Tenn., they found what they were looking for. "Scripture alone is a reality in WELS," says Terry.

BEGINNINGS

Terry grew up as a strict New York Irish Catholic, obeying all the rules and regulations. In 1972 as she was walking her three-month-old son, she had an epiphany. "I looked down on him and thought, 'Do I want him raised the way I was raised?' The answer immediately was no," says Terry. "That was a God moment because I could never have predicted that this would have happened."

After exploring Catholicism more deeply, Terry says she discovered how it departed from God's Word. "For 30 years, God has been working on me—just pointing me to 'It's Scripture. It's my Word alone. You don't add to it; you don't take away from it. There is one standard, and that is God's Word.' " But at that time Terry didn't know where to find it.

David, on the other hand, was raised Methodist. "My father was known as Mr. Methodism in this area," he says. But David also remembers his parents' love for the Lord and for Scripture. "Dad was a liberal, but he still tried to stay in the Word. I had that in me."

David went on to become a pastor. "I have a seminary background and spent four years in a Methodist college, but we didn't study the Bible very closely," he says. "My message was always ultimately social gospel—to go out there and do and be. I still tried to get there through Scripture, but I didn't really know Scripture."

Searching for answers

Terry met David when she attended a Methodist church in Tennessee where David was a pastor. David's marriage deteriorated into divorce, and he left the ministry because of the divorce and the changing theology of Methodism. Both divorcees, they began dating and were married in 1990. They soon began church shopping. "We were married in an Episcopal church by a Presbyterian minister," says David, chuckling. "We were all over the map," Terry adds.

A few years later, David was asked to preach at a Disciples of Christ church. "I intended to focus on the Word of God," says David. "Get away from everything but Scripture," Terry adds.