I grew up in a big family that fit every Catholic stereotype except one — we weren’t Catholic. We attended church every Sunday. Mom stayed home, ran the household, and corralled us six kids. Dad was a small-town attorney struggling to keep his large family fed.
I was a third-generation Episcopalian who loved the church. The music, stained glass, and Scripture readings made me feel a peace I didn’t get much of at home. And the parishioners, many of my parents’ closest friends, were like extra aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
Things changed dramatically when I was about 12 years old. Dad was hospitalized. Mom returned to teaching. I was confirmed in the Episcopal church. Then I had my first experience with Pentecostalism. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of a 25-year journey that led me to become a Pentecostal deacon by 23 and—shockingly—a Catholic by 37.
Episcopalian to Pentecostal
The summer of 1975 was a season of transition in a stressful year. It began with a gift from my Episcopal parish that was an emotional lifesaver. With Dad sick and eight hungry mouths to feed, money was tight. Stress and anger boiled through our home. Perhaps sensing my distress, the good people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church paid my way to a week of summer church camp. I’m sure they hoped the fresh air and beautiful hills of Brown County, Indiana, would do me some good.
One of those St. Paul’s friends drove me to the camp and, a week later, picked me up. On the way home, he said we’d be going to a picnic at a house church, where we’d meet my parents. That seemed odd. I’d never heard of such a thing. But if my parents were there, it must be okay.
An hour and a half later, we turned down an isolated country road, slicing a narrow gap between corn fields, woods, and pastures. I saw nothing but barns, farmhouses, and a few cattle. We slowed and turned down a long, graveled lane. Behind us trailed a thick cloud of dust as the fields to our right and left shimmered in the hot July sun. But ahead, beneath a cool cluster of shade trees, I saw a tiny one-bedroom cottage. The house church was just that — a little red house that served a congregation of maybe 25 people.
Stepping out of the car was like visiting a foreign country. While our Episcopal church lived up to its reputation as the spiritual home to a professional class — doctors, lawyers, teachers, and businessmen — I met different people at the picnic. These were an openly friendly group of farmers, laborers, mechanics, and factory workers. They dressed and spoke differently from the Episcopalians I’d known. At St. Paul’s, I called adults Mister or Missus, followed by their last name. Not these folks. Everyone here was Brother or Sister so-and-so. The pastor was Brother Merrill, and his wife, Sister Jeannette.
After the picnic, we gathered in the little house for the service. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. We began with singing, but there was no entrance hymn followed by liturgical prayers. Instead, it was one song following another, beginning with lively songs, then slowly moving toward gentle, spiritual tunes. They sang a cappella, accompanied by just a few tambourines. As they sang, they raised their arms and cried out, first in English — “Praise God” and “Hallelujah” — and later in something like babbling that I couldn’t understand. Then Brother Merrill stood in the kitchen and began a passage-by-passage teaching from the King James Bible. Sister Jeannette read the passages; he explained them. I’ve long since forgotten what verses he taught that night, but I remember his deep passion and simple, heartfelt explanations. He focused everything on building a personal relationship with Jesus. This was a new concept to me. I thought I was a Christian, yet Brother Merrill was telling me I had to get “saved.”
Not too many weeks later, my mother and I attended another Sunday evening service at that little red house. The small congregation sat on folding chairs packed tightly in the little living room. At the end of the service, Brother Merrill said God told him that all the children should come forward. I was amazed. Except for the Bible, I’d never heard of God actually speaking to someone. While nervous about standing in front of strangers, I went forward.
We were lined up youngest to oldest. Being the oldest, I was last in line. Brother Merrill began to pray. At the end, he cried out, “In the name of Jesus!” and placed his hand on the forehead of the littlest child who stood first in line. Like a line of dominoes, each child tumbled backward — except for me. I was startled and confused as I gaped at the children sprawled on the floor. Later, my mother explained that these children were “slain in the Spirit.” They were so overcome with the power of the Holy Spirit that they fell to the floor.
As I stood, awkward and embarrassed, in front of the packed living room, I had my first encounter with a fear that God did not know me. Why would every child in that line experience God, except me? This dread was to haunt me for more than 20 years.
Augustine, Aquinas, and Deacon Jeff
I attended that house church with my mother for six years as they grew into a newly built red barn. As an older teenager, I missed more Sundays than I went. In high school, I found I could focus on fun and still get adequate grades. Things changed in 1981, when I headed off to try the same at Butler University. I quickly found I was not ready for college. After one semester, I had a choice: quit and enlist in the military, or learn to be a student. I wanted to quit. My mother persuaded me to try one more semester.
In my second semester, I took an Introduction to Logic class. I loved it! A good grade in that and a few other courses propelled me to the Dean’s List. More importantly, I found the joy of academic learning for the first time. I loaded up on more philosophy courses with my logic professor. He introduced me to great thinkers, old and new, including Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis.
It was in these courses that I first discovered why I even believed there was a god, let alone a Judeo-Christian God. I found a lifelong friendship with the ancient philosophers and a stronger belief in God. What I did not fully appreciate at the time was that my atheist professor did an excellent job of exposing me to what I later learned were the Doctors of the Church.
While the Doctors competed for my mind, something new — the collision of Evangelical Christianity and pop culture — grabbed my ears and touched my heart. I loved the rock music of the late 1970s, with Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Kansas, and Styx among my favorites, alongside Dylan, Fogelberg, and The Eagles.
Sometime around 1983, while tuning the radio, I found a sound I liked and settled in to study. It was a guy named Mylon Lefevre, and he had some Christian lyrics. This was not surprising since Kansas, Bob Dylan, and Paul Davis had been singing Gospel-tinged songs for years. But then I noticed the next few songs were also contemporary sounding with Gospel themes. I had stumbled on Contemporary Christian Music and one of CCM’s early full-time FM stations. As they sang, my heart sang.
By this time, it had probably been four years since I had regularly attended any church. I don’t remember why, but I decided to visit that house church that had since grown into a big red barn church. While there, I learned they had just opened a church in Indianapolis, near my school. I visited the church and was quickly hooked. The Indianapolis branch had adopted the contemporary Christian music style I had grown to love. I threw myself wholeheartedly into life at the church. After graduation, at the age of 23, I was named a deacon. Mostly, I ran the soundboard and made sure the diaper pail was emptied.
A Decade of Restlessness
My main draw to the Indianapolis church was the modern praise and worship music. So many of the contemporary worship songs made me feel close to God. However, I became increasingly uncomfortable with spontaneous prophecies from attendees, often in King James English and at other times in unintelligible tongues.
I wasn’t ready to give up believing that speaking in tongues was the litmus test for every Spirit-filled Christian, but we ignored the instructions on prophecy, tongues, and orderly worship (1 Corinthians 14).
Through it all, I remained haunted by that childhood fear that God did not know me. Each Sunday, I watched as people sprang to their feet, hands in the air, rejoicing loudly as guitars and drums banged out songs of praise. I longed to consistently experience that same joy and happiness, visible signs of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Yet inside, I faced continued doubt.
It was my dark secret. My pastor had asked me to be a deacon, to minister to young people, and to encourage the old. Yet, I felt like a pretender. What else could explain the inner fear I battled?
Finally, I yielded to that inner conflict. I told my pastor I could no longer be a deacon. I wasn’t entirely honest about why, or my plans to leave the church. I didn’t want to admit how I felt or that I was coming to disagree with the Pentecostalism I saw in action.
About this time, in early 1988, I read an article in a charismatic Christian magazine titled “Renewal in Missouri.” The article profiled a movement of the Spirit in Missouri Synod Lutheran churches. “What a great option,” I thought. “Combine openness to spiritual gifts with the discipline of a liturgical church.” I immediately wrote to the Renewal in Missouri organization. They referred me to Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Indianapolis, part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Lord of Life’s early Sunday service was liturgical, and the later morning service was “contemporary.”
I spent two meaningful years at Lord of Life until a new job took me 70 miles away to Richmond, Indiana, near where I grew up. However, my pastor, Stephen Farrar, and I spent significant time in one on one weekly discipleship in those short years. Before Pastor Farrar’s teaching, I believed that understanding the Bible came mainly from personal interpretation led by the Spirit. If my interpretation wasn’t yours, one of us wasn’t hearing the Spirit. I learned at Lord of Life that you could have both emotional praise and intellectual rigor.
After moving to Richmond, I attended a traditional Lutheran church, where I made good friends, taught Sunday School, and happily celebrated Reformation Sunday. However, I struggled spiritually and emotionally and blamed it on the lack of contemporary Christian music and weighty sermons. While I did not miss Pentecostalism, I clearly missed the Evangelical style, which I equated to “openness to the Holy Spirit.” I began searching my small city for a new church home — of any brand — that would lift my spirit and mind.
Despite a large Catholic community in Richmond, attending Mass was out of the question. Since my teen years, I had picked up a strong anti-Catholic undertone common in Pentecostal and Evangelical circles and media. It was under that influence that I embraced the teaching that the Catholic Church was the “Whore of Babylon” in the book of Revelation. And I was horrified by the perception that Mary and other statuesque saints were worshipped.
My church search — the fourth in six years — took me to Christ Presbyterian, a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) church that embraced Reformed theology. Again, I met wonderful people, and in its pastor, I found a man with a love of God and as sharp an intellect as any I’d met.
I learned about Calvinism for the first time, and while perhaps it was not what was intended, I realized what my problem with God was. I had always thought of Jesus as a sort of life ring tossed to me — a man drowning in sin — so that I could grasp it and avoid death. Through Calvinism, I learned it was more accurate to see myself as a man drowned and entirely dead on the floor of a lake. If I became saved—one of the elect—it was because Jesus chose to breathe new life into me. If he didn’t, I would not be saved.
With that understanding, my fear that God did not know me seemed plausible. Perhaps I was simply not one of the elect. I could attend church all I wanted, worship God, and beseech Jesus. But because I was not “elect,” I could not be saved. God foreknew it and was sorry, but I just wasn’t chosen. Still, my hope that I was wrong—along with friendships, wonderful music, and thought-provoking sermons—kept me returning each Sunday.
By 1993, I had been a church-hopper for over a decade. I’d been Episcopalian, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Lutheran, and Presbyterian. I’d visited an assortment of churches: Assemblies of God, Church of God, Methodist, Congregational, Disciples of Christ, and Quaker. And I’d studied the Ministry of Writing at a Quaker seminary.
But something big happened in 1994—I met a girl.
Following a tremendous January snowstorm, I volunteered to use my Jeep to deliver stranded nurses to the local hospital. Heather’s bright blue eyes peering from beneath her parka hood caught my attention even before she climbed in. It was love at first sight for one of us. The other took some convincing. We were engaged on Christmas Eve of 1994 and married the following September.
After moving to the rural community where I grew up, we began to seek a church home that would fit us both. We struggled to find something that had the substance we were seeking, but without a focus on the pastor and great musicians. Yet we couldn’t quite explain what that might look like.
Sundays would come, and we had no desire to return to a church or visit a new one. However, we had heard of a Brethren church on an old road south of our small town. So, on a sunny Sunday morning, we pulled in among the ancient trees and silent tombstones to visit that little country church. Inside, we found anything but peace. We had walked into the middle of another historical fact of Protestantism: a protest.
Members of the congregation were furious with each other. After a perfunctory prayer, the brethren, one by one, took to the pulpit to express their anger. It seems the church leaders had fired the pastor for some perceived transgression. The congregation split into factions: followers of the fired pastor and those eager to get on with the search for a new one. Disagreement moved to personal insults. It was painful and uncomfortable to witness, like walking into the middle of a private family fight. As we slunk from the building, someone assured us this was usually a loving and peaceful congregation. We were urged to come back another day. We chose not to.
We drove away depressed. I was numb. We traveled in silence as I gazed at the passing fields and pastures. Finally, Heather spoke up: “There is one church we haven’t visited.” I was beyond caring but asked anyway, “What church is that?”
“Saint Elizabeth’s in Cambridge City,” she said. I was done and at the end of my rope. I couldn’t imagine that a Sunday checking out the pagan rites of the Romanists could be any worse than what we’d just experienced. “Sure,” I dejectedly agreed. “Let’s go.”
Visiting Babylon
We visited St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church for the first time on Palm Sunday of 1999. Having learned a hard lesson from the Brethren, I insisted we sit in the back, where we could make a quick escape if necessary.
It surprised me that the church was packed. I’d heard many pastors insist the Catholic Church was lifeless, hemorrhaging membership, and full of superstitious octogenarians. At St. Elizabeth’s, I saw a church full of extended families with grandparents, parents, teens, and noisy preschoolers. And the service was full of Scripture, with readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, an Epistle, and a Gospel. I was surprised. As a Bible-believing Christian, I thought Catholics weren’t interested in the Scriptures. Even more surprising was the number of biblical passages permeating the rest of the liturgy.
Something else struck me about the service: it wasn’t entertaining. No musical performances rose to crescendos before the soft melodic pleadings of an altar call. There was music, but it was not the central part of the service. There was preaching, but it was short and to the point. As we slipped out following Mass, I felt I had encountered something sacred, something ancient, something deeply loving.
“So, what’d you think,” Heather asked.
“Did you hear all those babies crying?” I demanded. “It was bedlam in there. I could hardly hear the service.”
I get grouchy when I’m conflicted, and my answer to Heather reflected that. I left St. Elizabeth’s that Sunday irritated and confused by what I felt—a sense of the sacred and peace. Those feelings hadn’t come from praise and worship music or polished oration. I knew I was going back; I knew I wanted to. I just didn’t understand why.
A Hike to Emmaus
It was during the Eucharistic Prayer at our second Mass that the emotion kicked in. Like the disciples who unknowingly walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:32), I felt something I couldn’t explain that nearly brought tears to my eyes. While resignation and fear had brought me to that Mass, this Emmaus-like experience compelled me to return. Only later did I understand this was an encounter with the resurrected Jesus.
These two Sundays, Heather and I managed to bashfully dodge Fr. John Luerman by slipping out the side door. On the third Sunday, he was ready for us. After Mass, he made a beeline to our pew, leaving his astonished flock to see themselves out. He introduced himself and, learning we were not Catholic (I think it was apparent), demanded we wait while he trotted back to his office for a book. That was our introduction to the first rule of St. Elizabeth’s: you just can’t say “no” to Fr. Luerman. We waited.
Fr. Luerman was an old-school Catholic, ordained in the mid-1950s, with decades of pastoring under his belt. St. Elizabeth was his sixth parish, and while he was just two years from retiring, his energy and enthusiasm rivaled any 20-something Evangelical.
He returned with Fr. Oscar Lukefahr’s book, We Believe.… A Survey of the Catholic Faith. This little book provided an excellent overview, not only of Catholic beliefs but, more importantly to me, why Catholics hold these views.
I couldn’t deny that something ancient, loving, and powerful—the Holy Spirit—was opening my heart to the Catholic Church. Yet I would need God’s help to find the humility to explore and possibly reconsider my beliefs regarding the Catholic Church.
Then I remembered something hiding in the corner of a dusty bookcase. Years earlier, while I attended Christ Presbyterian, my Catholic convert sister had sent me a copy of Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s book, Rome Sweet Home. I wasn’t interested, but I’m a book lover and could never throw one away. So I found it, blew off the dust, and dug in. Their story encouraged me to keep inquiring.
Shortly before Christmas, Fr. Luerman invited Heather and me to attend RCIA. He said it stood for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and was the process through which people came into the Catholic Church. I wasn’t sure I wanted in; I still worried the Church had many unbiblical practices, such as worshipping Mary and praying to saints. However, after his assurance that we could attend without committing to join the Church, we decided to go. We both agreed that entering the Church would be a personal decision. Neither would try to influence the other to become Catholic.
RCIA helped me understand two things that opened the door to me becoming Catholic. One was emotional—my Emmaus-like experience during the Eucharistic Prayer. The other was logical, related to sola Scriptura, the Protestant belief that the Bible is the lone infallible source of authority for Christian belief and practice. As it turned out, the real question was the role of Scripture versus Tradition in guiding Church beliefs and practices.
In my Evangelical years, many I worshipped with believed the Catholic Church embraced the traditions of men, as opposed to God’s will, as identified in the Bible. Our handy test to root out Catholic traditions of men was simple: Ask, “Where’s that in the Bible?” If the practice wasn’t in the Bible, it wasn’t scriptural. If it wasn’t scriptural, it must be a tradition of men. And if it was a tradition of men, it definitely was not Christian.
In RCIA, I was reminded that the Protestant Old Testament canon contains 39 books, while the Catholic canon has 46. It dawned on me that one’s position on what constitutes the canon of Holy Scripture was a tradition, albeit one that we Protestants would argue was divinely inspired. I learned that the canon of the Bible was widely established during a time when “catholic” simply meant “universal,” long before Protestantism.
This left me with a huge stumbling block. Just as the seven sacraments do not appear in a Biblical bullet list, the New and Old Testament canons did not appear within the Scriptures. Therefore, I was forced to rely on tradition — the inspired teaching of Spirit-guided church leaders — to accept the canon of the Bible. I could not be Bible-believing and reject Tradition. It became apparent that, as an Evangelical, I had fully embraced the tradition of the Bible — including the entire New Testament — while rejecting the source of that tradition.
A small, quietly ignored crack in my assumptions about the Catholic Church became a growing breach. If the ancient Catholics had gotten it right—or even mostly right—about the canon of the Bible, I felt compelled as a Bible-believing Christian to examine other Catholic teachings based on Tradition.
I began to understand that the authority underlying the Catholic Church was not one of tyranny but of knowledge — handed down from Jesus to His apostles and from them to the generations. I was guilty of hubris, presuming a nearly limitless ability to interpret the Holy Scriptures while ignoring the millennia of apostolic knowledge.
This removed the chip from my shoulder. Finally, I could sit and learn at the feet of those with a foundation in two thousand years of apostolic teaching.
My new openness to Church tradition brought a powerful new book into my life: the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This 900-page volume was unlike anything I had found among Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. It systematically outlines the history and tradition of the Church’s doctrine, providing good foundations for hard-to-accept beliefs such as Mary, purgatory, and how salvation works. And to my surprise, I found these teachings also had strong Biblical underpinnings.
As my knowledge grew, I found the fear that God does not know me easing. I learned that “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end” (CCC 1037). And unlike what Calvinism told me, I learned I was truly free to accept or reject God’s saving grace. “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace…” (CCC 600).
Finally, as a Bible-believing Christian, I learned to accept that God has known me since conception (Psalm 139). I had to accept His word on this, whether I felt it or saw proof through some personal, supernatural experience. I learned to stop comparing my faith experiences to that of others. As St. Paul noted, there are all sorts of gifts from the Holy Spirit, “…inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.” (1 Corinthians 12:4–11).
A Never-Ending Conversion
While our journey took different paths, Heather and I both came into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2000. She came via the Sacrament of Baptism; having already been baptized, I entered through the Sacrament of Confirmation.
As an adult, I had attended seven different churches in 19 years. Anyone who knew me had every reason to be skeptical that I’d stay long in the Catholic Church. Even I doubted myself. Was this a true conversion, or just another stop in the desert? More than two decades later, I’ve found it to be a never-ending conversion. It appears those seeds from Rome fell on good soil and continue to bring forth grain (Matthew 13).
As with all of God’s people, time has given me physical, spiritual, and emotional peaks and valleys. And in those years, the Church herself has been both battered and had occasion to rejoice. But the truth — built on the rock of Peter and supported by 2000 years of tradition — has not changed. It is here today and will continue to be here for every generation. It’s a place where God covers us with his pinions, and under his wings, we find refuge. (Psalm 91:4).
