A Balancing Act

I suppose most people of faith understand that it is possible to know doctrine forward and backward and still not know Christ. I believe that a personal interaction and relationship with Christ takes precedence to knowing loads of doctrine any day. I get the feeling that this concept has been drilled into our heads due to previous generations of Christians dealing with this struggle, and they thought best to warn us of this.
What I wonder is this: is this mindset creating a whole new generation of Christians that have a very shallow understanding of the basics of their own personal faith because they are too focused on the "feel good" parts of Christianity?  I feel justified in saying this because I grew up as part of that group. I was raised attending Christian school, church, and was strongly encouraged in my faith by my loving family. But as everyone does, I reached a point where I needed a deeper understanding of Christ that could only be found through personal exploration. I was strongly encouraged by my fellow Christians to ask questions and put to the test the foundations of my faith as a means to obtaining a deeper understanding. Unfortunately I found out too late that once I started asking the questions, those that had encouraged me to ask them were not there with a solid Biblical means of answering them. This led to many years of confusion for me that, by the grace of God has brought me to a more thriving spiritual life than I feel I have ever had. But it took years. Years people.....probably like 10. Painful questioning, hard learned lessons, and all this from a gal who had been raised in a Christian environment. I can't imagine how hard the church is to navigate for those who aren't so familiar with its idiosyncrasies.
While doctrine should never take precedence to our personal relationship with Jesus, I believe it is still a very important tool of our Christian faith that provides us common ground with our fellow believers and should not be neglected. In order to live our faith, we have to understand how to do that in the first place, which is outlined where? Doctrine. I have seen too many people ( myself included) following someone else's version of the Gospel wholeheartedly without ever bothering to understand Christ's teachings for themselves. We must have a balance of both time tested and Biblical doctrine AND  personal testimony in order to effectively reach others for Christ and simply understand Him for ourselves.