“That they might be one.” These are words from the prayer of Jesus the night before He gave His life on the Cross. “…that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:21).
My first encounter with this prayer was in June 1968. I was 11 years old, living in Suriname (South America), where my parents were missionaries with the Pilgrim Holiness Church. In my small ecclesiastical world there were big things going on. The Pilgrim Holiness Church was getting ready to merge with another small conservative holiness denomination, the Wesleyan Methodist Church in America. The merging conference theme was “One —That the World May Believe.” My pre-adolescent heart puffed with pride! I was going to be part of something that would help people know Jesus and make us one!
The pride I felt then continued with me in life. I was very active in my youth group, and after high school, I attended two Wesleyan colleges. I met my future wife, Charlotte, at the beginning of my senior year at Indiana Wesleyan University, and we were married while I was working at Wesleyan World Headquarters in my hometown. After Charlotte graduated, we left Indiana so I could attend seminary in Kentucky. This was in response to the call to serve as a missionary with Wesleyan World Missions. Charlotte had a similar call to serve overseas, stemming from a college mission trip to Honduras.
During the three years I spent in seminary, my world opened to students from other Methodist-like denominations. I discovered liturgy, the Church calendar (including Advent), and I realized that church history went beyond my boyhood heroes of the Wesleyan Church.
Upon graduation in 1983, I accepted the pastorate of a newly-formed congregation church in Michigan. Four years later, in 1987, Charlotte and I sensed that it was time to take that important step to go overseas. We were appointed by the Wesleyan Church to serve as missionaries in Peru (South America). We left the United States with our two young daughters (7 and 4) for the country of Costa Rica to learn Spanish.
The year in Costa Rica opened my world to other Christians: Southern Baptists, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Assemblies of God, Charismatics, Oneness Pentecostals, and Non-Denominational Christians. Our conversations tended to focus on the things that made us distinctive, but in spite of this, we found commonality in our love for Jesus.
A year later, we arrived in Lima, Peru. Our denomination in Peru had a history going back to the early 1900s. It had been a growing, thriving church until 1968, when the merger that was to bring “oneness” had the opposite effect in Peru. A nasty split ensued and, by the time we had arrived, there were two rival denominations. We seemed so far away from Christ’s prayer that “we would be one so that the world could believe.”
Our central mission in the city of Lima was to start a new congregation. By implication, we were there to win over those who self-identified as Catholics, and we were convinced that our neighbors were at best only culturally Catholic. Most of those we attracted were Catholics who had a desire for community and to learn more about the Bible. The congregation that we started is now 32 years old.
The next chapter of our lives took us to New York City. Our initial mission was to plant a new congregation in Manhattan under the auspices of the Wesleyan Church. While that project did not take root, Charlotte and I did not feel released from NYC. In God’s providence, we discovered a year-old congregation called Origins Church that later became Trinity Grace Church (TGC). Over the course of the next eight years, we found a home there and were able to contribute to the mission of TGC to impact the city under their vision of “Joining God in the Renewal of All Things.”
Joining God in the Renewal of All Things
It sounds like an ambitious goal. It is! But it grabbed my heart and gave purpose to why we were still in New York City in 2007.
After all the years in another culture, especially discovering that I was a “third-culture kid” (a term used to refer to children who were raised in a culture outside of their parents’ original culture for a significant part of their development years), I couldn’t imagine settling down anywhere but a large city with plenty of diversity.
The idea of “Joining God in the Renewal of All Things” was more than a mantra. This was the underlying vision and call for ministry and the incredible planting of new parishes. By 2015, the number of congregations in the TGC family had gone from one to 11!
Over the years, I served in various roles. Then in March of 2012, we helped start the sixth TGC congregation in Washington Heights. Little did we know that our lives were going to change drastically as we approached the last few months of 2013.
The Happy Day Express
As mentioned earlier, even before I was a teenager, I was intrigued with the idea of the unity of the body of Christ—His Church. Throughout the years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and know other Christians who did not come from my particular ecclesiastical pedigree. It was an enriching experience, but it also brought up a lot of questions. How could we read the same Bible, yet differ on some very significant doctrines of the faith? Did it matter? And if it didn’t, why did we tend to hold each other at arm’s length?
I count it a blessing that I grew up in a Christian home and that there is a heritage of faith on both sides of my family. I distinctly remember praying to invite Jesus into my heart at the age of six. My desire to follow my Lord never abated, even with the innumerable ups and downs of adolescence.
As a kid, I had a visual image of the church as a train. In my mind, those closest to the truth of Christ found themselves in the engine, where I knew I was with my family and our church. Each succeeding car had churches that differed to a greater degree from what I knew to be the pure truth of the gospel. What is amusing is that, 40+ years later, I shared this image with a friend who grew up in a very different church from mine, and he too had the same image of the train—of course his church was in the engine!
This image was challenged as I got to know other Christians from other traditions. When Charlotte and I were received into the Catholic Church, I found myself among those for whom I hadn’t made any room as a child on the Happy Day Express.
Christ Is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!
For most of my life, I had never thought of Easter as more than one Sunday in the spring when we celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus. Of course I celebrated Easter, but after that, life, even life in the church, went back to its normal pace. In the past, one of the criticisms I had harbored of Catholics was that they focused so much on Good Friday and Jesus on the Cross, but did not give Easter its proper attention. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Catholics celebrate an Octave of Easter, where the seven days following are like Easter all over again — and then there are seven weeks of Eastertide, all the way up to Pentecost Sunday!
I share this as I return to the last part of 2013 and the intensification of the challenge God would place before me: “Are you really serious about Jesus’ prayer that we all be one, even as He and the Father are one?”
It was October 2013. The Trinity Grace Church parish in Washington Heights was now 18 months old. The one-year anniversary was a high point, but following that, there were the normal and persistent struggles that a church plant goes through. As a pastor, I was discerning how to lead the parish forward.
On Sunday, October 13, Charlotte’s mom suffered a heart attack, and by the following Sunday, she had passed away. The next morning, Charlotte’s dad came out of his bedroom and sat down with three of his nine children and me. We could tell there was something heavy on his heart that he needed to express. He talked about faith and how he and his wife had sought to love and follow God and love Jesus. He expressed how important their Catholic faith was to them. He said that his wife loved Jesus just as Charlotte did, which challenged us both, especially Charlotte.
He expressed sadness and confusion over why faith seemed to be such a divisive issue in the family instead of being something that drew us together. As he spoke, I began to regret all the wasted opportunities to affirm them in their faith and find commonality with them. His was a gentle rebuke, but I was convicted that I had discounted the genuineness of their faith in the Catholic tradition. I had stated often that I wouldn’t rule out that there were real Christians in the Catholic Church, not because of the Church, but in spite of it.
Suddenly my preconceived notions were being held up to the light of the experience of someone who was asking me why I held that view. I had no idea at that time where this would lead, but I knew I owed it to my wife’s parents to take a serious look at their faith and give my father-in-law the courtesy I would to another Christian brother.
Fruit Inspector
I confess that I have been a long-time fruit inspector. I’ve never worked for Dole, Tropicana, or Chiquita, but I could have been an asset to their teams. No fruit that was blemished, bruised or aged would pass my approval. It had to look “perfect” to enter my mouth! (I’ve mellowed out over the years.)
Jesus tells us in St. Matthew’s Gospel that “by their fruits you will know them.” Growing up in a conservative Christian environment, there were certain things that were indicators of how spiritual someone was or how committed they were to Christ. The “gospel train” that I referred to earlier was my way of categorizing and organizing how “good” a person’s fruit was. Of course, doing that was way above my pay grade. Yet that had been my way of assessing the faith of a person who hadn’t grown up with the same spiritual DNA.
As I was approaching my 50th birthday, I asked the Lord to prevent me from becoming calcified in my spirit and outlook. I wanted to be open to God so that the Holy Spirit would always have complete access to my life. Until that point, I thought I had pretty much achieved that. Yet God took my prayer very seriously. (Of course it was God who birthed that prayer in my heart!) Little did I know that I was beginning a journey I could never have anticipated.
In the early days of exploring the Catholic Faith, I didn’t share with anyone what I was doing. Looking back over my journal of that time, I was very careful what I wrote. I remember fearing someone would pick up my journal, read my thoughts, and not understand what I was doing. While I presumed I was just being kind to the memory of my wife’s mother, something else was already at work.
Part of me did not want to investigate, yet another part of me felt drawn to it. But how was I to go about it? A book on my shelf — In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest — caught my eye as I was more than a year into a church plant and desperate to be a better leader. A quote from the prologue grabbed my attention:
I… came to see that I should not worry about tomorrow, next week, next year, or the next century. The more willing I was to look honestly at what I was thinking and saying and doing now, the more easily I would come into touch with the movement of God’s Spirit in me, leading me to the future. God is a God of the present and reveals to those who are willing to listen carefully to the moment in which they live the steps they are to take toward the future. “Do not worry about tomorrow,” Jesus says. “Tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34).
Okay, Lord! I trust you to lead me on this journey. You will not despise my sincere heart.
In 2012, I had read a book by the then-Presbyterian sociologist Christian Smith, called The Bible Made Impossible. Several in our local congregation had read the book and found it helpful in making sense of some of the issues that tend to divide and separate Evangelicals as they seek to follow Scripture. In late 2013, I heard through the grapevine that the author had become Catholic. As I googled it to verify, I found another book he wrote after that: How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps. Step by step, the author laid out the misconceptions that I had regarding the Catholic Church. I was beginning to see and hear things from a different perspective. On December 7, 2013, I wrote in my journal:
Charlotte asked me if I was recording my evolving thought process regarding faith expression. I said I was, but realize that I haven’t written anything specific related to my own thoughts (in case someone might read it). I want to be careful and thorough and keep my heart and mind open to what the Holy Spirit is doing in me through the Word and through the other resources available to me. Suffice it to say for now, these are significant times in my life, and I feel or sense that I’m being drawn “home.”
I find my heart continually drawn in one direction as I continue to read and meditate. It is as if I were being led or drawn home to a place of deep roots with deep and rich significance. The implications are massive and must be weighed accordingly. I am in continual conversation with Charlotte, and she is supportive. I certainly want to pursue this with great care and due diligence and with utmost prayer and devotion. Any decision this important merits my full and dedicated attention.
“A Gift for You!”
In the two months I spent trying to fully understand my mother-in-law’s faith after her death, I found myself treading deep waters. I read books from a Catholic perspective. I listened to and read testimonies of men and women who had come into the Catholic Church after being lifelong Evangelicals. The story of Scott and Kimberly Hahn in Rome Sweet Home was particularly powerful. The best way to describe what was going on in me is to revisit my journal from that time:
December 27, 2013 — Feast of Saint John the Beloved
This morning my mind needs to refocus and take in your glory and the majesty of your grace in our lives. I look to you and trust you to show me the way you would have me to go. What’s your plan and purpose for me? I have no desire to cling to something, especially a role or a position that causes your kingdom to stall. Holy Spirit, I ask you for wisdom and illumination so that it will become clear to me what it is you are calling me to. Either these thoughts and readings are the direction you are leading me or they are a distraction to your original call for me. Spirit of God, make that abundantly clear to me. Either lead me unswervingly into the bosom of the Catholic Church or deeper and more committed to where I am with a greater appreciation for what you are doing on a larger scale. I recognize that this is a process and there are questions you want me to ask and allow you to answer. I do ask that in this process you enable me to look to you, to gaze on your face and live in your grace and do all to the glory of God.
Recognizing that moving away from what I had always known would cost me my ministry, my livelihood, and possibly my reputation, later that same morning I wrote:
Father, I humbly come into your presence and ask you to reveal truth to me. I have desired you all my life. I don’t want anything to keep me from fully and faithfully loving or serving you. You know what is happening in my world and how my spirit is restless in this search. I don’t want to go where I shouldn’t, but I also don’t want to resist where you are leading me. I sense deep in my being that you are calling me “home” to the beauty and fullness of the Catholic Church. That feels strange and uncomfortable on one level to say, but on another level, it feels like truth and the natural and logical next step. So Holy Spirit, you are the One who leads into all truth. I come to you and ask you to lead me. Point me to Jesus my Lord, my Savior, my God and my King! You know my heart and my wholehearted desire to obey you. I have always desired that. Make your will for me very evident.
About 20 minutes later, I went downstairs to get the mail. What I found in the mailbox was either an answer to my prayer or just a coincidence. In those days of searching, I used a membership to help get books at no cost. One of the books I had requested arrived that morning: A Catechism for Adults. There was nothing unusual about that. However inside the white paper wrapping was not only the book I ordered, but a card and another package wrapped in Christmas paper from a woman in Lexington, Kentucky, whom I did not know. The card had these words: “What’s in the package is a gift for you!” Inside the package were two books I had not ordered: Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth: The Catholic Church and God’s Plan for You and The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic: How Engaging 1% of Catholics Could Change the World. In my journal, I wrote:
Honestly, I can’t take this as anything less than the beginning of the answer to my prayer. Even as I write this, I feel scared and a little warm. O God, show me the way!
I wrote to the woman in Lexington and asked her about the package she sent me. Since it came by media mail it had been on the way several days before I asked God to give me a clear sign as to what He wanted in my life. She wrote back and said she was prompted to do so because someone else had sent her some gift-wrapped books. God only knows why she chose those specific books to send me. I thanked her for being an instrument that God used in that part of my journey.
From the Shadows into the True Light
Two years before my conversion, in the course of my reading, I came across Karl Adam’s The Spirit of Catholicism. In it, he laid out the sacraments and showed how Christ ministers directly to His Church through them. I read about the reality of all that Christ has done, is doing, and will do, are experienced in the sacraments that He established and entrusted to His Church. This was new to me.
I began to realize I had been living in the shadows. Hebrews 10:1 says, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves.” We understand that Christ is the fulfillment of the law in every way. What hit me, though, is that in the Protestant Reformation, we threw out five of the seven sacraments, and the two that remained were watered down until we were left with a “shadow” of the reality once again. We long for the fullness of what Christ offers, but we are hamstrung by our pernicious interpretation of his ministry to us through the Church. Hence, we can only offer something greatly reduced or weakened that lacks authority or saving grace to our lives.
In my previous Christian tradition, the Lord’s Supper or Communion was observed at least four times a year, but we didn’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The bread and grape juice were symbols. Yet, what I remember most is that our pastor would strongly emphasize that we should never receive Communion unworthily.
As I read myself into the Catholic Church, I came to believe what the Church taught—what our Lord taught: Christ is present in the Eucharist — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The highlight of RCIA for me was when our priest gave us a walk through the Mass and told us that many Catholics repeat the words of St. Thomas when the host is elevated at the consecration: “My Lord and my God!” In those months of going to Mass and not being able to receive, I felt actual pain at not being able to receive my Lord.
On March 26, 2016, at the Easter Vigil, my wife Charlotte and I were received into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Manhattan. I received our Lord in the Eucharist for the very first time. The shadows receded; the light of the truth came on. I recognized that something dynamic, life-changing, and unmistakable had taken place.
The first three months after coming into the Church, I was reading Apologia Pro Vita Sua by St. John Henry Newman, who in the mid-nineteenth century made the journey from the Anglican Church to the Catholic Church. His journey was prolonged, misunderstood, and second-guessed. In this book, he attempted to explain how God led him to do what he did. A quote from Cardinal Newman written in 1845 after he was received into Catholic Church captured my sentiments twelve weeks in:
From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I have never had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption. (p. 155)
It wasn’t until recently that I learned St. John Henry Newman’s tombstone is engraved with the phrase, “Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem” — “From shadows and symbols into truth.” As I move ever deeper into the light of the Truth, I experience regret on one hand, and gratitude on the other. Regret because I did not come to this light earlier in my life, something that would have shaped me through the faithful reception of the sacraments, impacting my life as a man, a husband, a father, and a friend; but also great gratitude that God in his great mercy constantly pursued me and brought me into Christ’s Church at the age of 59! My life has never been the same.
