The Long Process

I don't know how this journey will end up as far as my family goes. I'm still the only Catholic in my family. This morning I went to Mass by myself again, and my wife went to her AG church.

This weekend I was sick with the flu and stayed in bed all of Saturday. Heidi helped nurse me back to health by checking on me, taking my temperature, making me soup, and bringing me orange juice, water and medicine.

The whole Catholic culture seems to talk more about self-sacrifice than prosperity so I think I just need to work on being a faithful husband and father. I was thinking today about how no lay person has ever been a Doctor of the Church. Does that mean that lay people have no insight to share with the Church. Perhaps we need more people to exemplify what radical holiness looks like in family life. I believe there have probably been many people who have done this. Perhaps there stories just go untold and they don't have the time to write down all there thoughts. 

Becoming Catholic has been a strange ride. It's hard to describe the many subtle shifts that it has affected in my life and outlook. The only downside is my friendships with my Protestant friends and family. I'm not as close to Catholics yet nor have prayer partners to pray with.  Perhaps my "witness" is down because my friendships are strained and they may judge Catholicism by it pulling me away from them. Perhaps they don't think of it at all.

I'm still working on a mural that is huge 110' long and 11' high and have been asked to do a painting of a great-grandmother with a baby in her lap looking at each other. It may take editing and such since the woman who wants it done does not have a photo of both together.  This may be tough but I will meet with her on Tuesday at 11am.

Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

I watched some to the Mass on the Feast of the Virgen de Guadalupe in Rome on my computer during my school conference period. The music of the Gloria was my favorite. I've been learning about the Aztec culture, Mexican history and even watched "For Greater Glory" the story of the Cristeros while I was sick in bed. I want to read my Grandma's Guadalupe Spanish Bible.

Catholic Charismatic Renewal Document

Update to ICCRS documentation of the movement.

http://iccrs.tv/Dettaglio.php?id_liv3=173

The Giver, Forgetting our Christian Memory

Father Barron insightfully discusses the themes inherent in the movie The Giver and the danger of losing our Christian memory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luI0fvEjZ5s

Most Famous Catholic Conversion Story

Dr. Scott Hahn's conversion story is the most read and listened to currently in the US. Amoung Protestants on their journey home, most are familiar with Dr. Hahn's testimony of his conversion from being a zealous Reformed Pastor to entering the Catholic Church. His book, Rome Sweet Home, is a staple for the Protestant on their journey home to the Catholic Church. In this video, Dr. Hahn shares the tale of his conversion. If you find yourself on the same journey, especially if you are involved in church ministry and perhaps you serve alongside a zealous wife, you may find this story encouraging at times and troubling as well. You see, Dr. Hahn had to face disharmony in his marriage when his wife refused to join him on his journey, at least at first. Listen to his story of how Dr. Hahn and his wife eventually both were receicved into the Catholic Church. http://youtu.be/FrQN8LHYg5g

Southern Baptist/Non Denominational Preacher Becomes Catholic

Southern Baptist/Non denomination preacher Michael Crumbie shares his conversion story on The Journey Home Program with Marcus Grodi. Growing up in Baptist/Non-denominational churches myself, the way he talks and teaches sound like so many of the preachers I grew up hearing. Perhaps someone from a similar background as ours will benefit from hearing his story. God bless.  http://youtu.be/qiMWR9Kx64I

My Catholic Conversion Story- Finding my Vanishing Point

I sat praying in a Catholic church at Holy Cross Monastery near Tombstone, AZ.   This was unusual for me as I wasn’t Catholic.  I had stopped in with my mother-in-law who was in mourning for her husband. This had been a place they liked to stop and pray.  As I knelt, I prayed in tongues and in English, “God, I don’t understand the Catholic faith, but I’d like to. This is so strange to me, the candles, the images, the whole culture, but I’d like to understand. If there is anything good here to learn, show me, teach me.”

As we drove back to Texas from this road trip, news of Pope Francis’ election was on the radio. I thought it interesting that he was from Argentina. I was 36, married 14 years, and serving at my AG church alongside my wife who felt a calling to preach. I would never have thought that in a little over one year’s time, I would be a Catholic myself.

As a child in California I had been raised Baptist at a Spanish speaking church.  About one year before my birth, my mother had begun attending there after a strong conversion experience she had watching a televangelist on TBN. Until then, she had been Catholic as was my Father. Some of my first church memories were of Sunday school stories and laying on the carpet studying the wood grain under pews during long sermons. In third grade we moved to San Marcos, TX and began attending a Full Gospel pentecostal church. I heard many sermons, attended many Sunday school classes and probably responded to about five altar calls to give my life to the Lord as my personal savior, have my sins forgiven and be saved from damnation. But I didn’t feel anything change inside.

As I was about to enter high school, I stopped attending church except for special occasions. After an awkward social period, I was introduced to parties, drinking and trying pot. It was when I experience getting high, that I really began to question my faith. If I had lived all my life never experiencing an altered state of consciousness, what else didn’t I know about. I assumed that Christianity was lacking and sought to discover what was being kept from me.

Along with a wild lifestyle, I entered college with a strong spiritual hunger. I would search the bookstores and libraries for information about religion and spirituality, mostly Eastern.  I dabbled into Buddhism, Hinduism, Transcendental Meditation, and eventually became strongly New Age. I thought I could find truth for myself through study, discipline and meditation.

When I met my later-to-be wife, she also was very New Age. We became best friends and loved to talk about spirituality. This didn’t work out as our relationship was ambiguous and rocky. We dropped out of college our sophomore year, hitchhiked to a hippie gathering, and later tried giving up our possessions to travel the US in a Volkswagen camper van. We were a little late to be hippies, but we were trying. This was in 1996.

Our relationship and life began to fall apart and in desperation, we gave up our travel after three months. She returned to her family in Virginia, and I went back to Texas. I was so tired and sick of my life. After all my spiritual seeking, I decided to try going back to church with an open mind. I was not going to attend as a bored teen, I was going to try to see past the people (sometimes unfriendly), the music (not very interesting), the building (a school gymnasium)and try to see what was at the bottom of Christianity. Where did it all begin and what did it really mean?

I was ripe. This was in August 1997, and during the preaching on the glory of God. I experienced a strong conversion full of tears and a life transforming vision that gave me the fear of the Lord. After kneeling at the altar (I don’t think there was an altar call) and receiving prayer, I got up from that experience hungry to read the Bible and know who this mysterious God was. If he was the God described in the Bible, I had to read about him and try to understand what was known about him.

When I phoned Heidi and told her I was Christian, she was mad. She thought I had sold-out on my beliefs and search for truth. She asked me what I thought about tarot cards, crystals and reincarnation. I just told her that Jesus was alive and loved her and that she should try reading the Bible.

During the next few months, I mailed her worship music on cassettes which she would listen to on her drive to work. She said later that she would find herself raising her hand praising God in her car. When she read about Jesus, she felt his love and described feeling that he was in the room with her. She later moved back to Texas to finish her college and ended up giving her life to Jesus and being baptized at the nondenominational church my mother and I were attending. My father was still attending Mass I think. We didn’t have a close relationship and because of the religious differences between my mother and father, we didn’t discuss religion much. I don’t know how much my father had been catechized about his faith nor how much he was devoted to live it. Like I said, I relationship had been distant.

Heid and I both loving God and wanting to serve him side by side married in May 1999. We both wanted to serve in full-time ministry but didn’t really know how to do that. She was about to finish her teaching degree and I hadn’t finished college yet. We wanted to be missionaries though. We had our first child, Mattie, in 2001. I worked various jobs and ministry rolls. I 2003 I quit my job and we went to work at a parachurch organization called the International House of Prayer. It wasn’t easy for us to raise support to work there as it was not a paid position. My wife and I just knew that God wanted us to serve him and we tried to find our place in ministry there at IHOP-KC. I served on a small worship team, and some dance ministry. My wife and I became house church pastors and worked in healing rooms and on prophecy teams. This was a very charismatic environment. For those who do not know about IHOP, they are like a Protestant monastery devoted to keep prayer and worship going 24/7, which they have been doing since 1999.

We felt God call us back to Texas from Kansas City at the end of 2004 feeling that we were going to start a ministry back in Texas promoting city gatherings of prayer and worship, but back in Texas things didn’t work out. Instead I ended up finishing my Bachelors in Fine Arts in Painting and working with troubled teens at a shelter. For a year we even worked at Father Flanagan’s Girls and Boys Town in San Antonio houseparenting seven high school boys in CPS custody. We ended up becoming public school teachers in Mexia, TX, my wife teaching 3rd grade and I teaching high school art and photography.

We were very involved at our local Assemblies of God church. We taught Jr.High and High School sunday school and worked a lot with the youth on Wednesday nights. We became great friends with the pastor and his family and worked together on fundraisers and conference trips. My wife and I began to study to become credentialed in the Assemblies of God. I took two years of part-time classes at an AG college working to get a M.Div degree, but stopped after learning that my three year old daughter was deaf. It was during this time period that I was kneeling at the Catholic church in Arizona.

When I returned back to teaching, I asked one of my Catholic students for a book to read to learn about the Catholic faith. He had recently finished his Catechism classes and been confirmed. He gave me his Youth Catechism book to read. As I read it, I found it beautiful, at times troubling, and very well thought out. I found myself agreeing with many of the teachings already and when something like the communion of saints came up, I would find the Catholic explanations just as convincing if not more than my arguments against these doctrines I was resistant to.

I began a year-long study of many Catholic books and watched several Journey Home programs. I was excited and scared. Excited to feel that I had stumbled upon so much knowledge, beauty, and revelation of my Lord Jesus. Scared because I felt this would be very troubling to my marriage, ministry, and church relationships. In my upbringing I had been exposed to anti-Catholic sermons, lessons, books and videos that had told me that the Catholic church was the whore-of-Babylon in the book of Revelation and the Pope an anti-christ. Even if my immediate relationships didn’t hold anti-Catholic views, I knew that people in my town and congregation probably had heard and read some of the same anti-Catholic teaching I had.

I think I began to feel awkward around my Christian friends. I had never been one for small talk preferring to try to discuss what was really going on in a persons life. Now I began to feel scared and awkward because I didn’t want to have to share what I was going through. I didn’t want to become a person that was trying to convince others that the Catholic faith was real and right and that some of the things they had been taught were misleading misrepresentations. I didn’t want to be someone who was trying to “take” people out of my friend and pastor's church back to mass, nor did I want to be a person that would try to explain to my friend and pastor that I didn’t feel that I nor he had the profound responsibility to lead and pastor the church and define doctrines according to our own interpretation. My wife and friends became worried, but I just could not stop reading these books.  I wanted to know Jesus and to understand the Bible. I wanted to know what Jesus and the apostles really had created on the earth, not just my twenty-first century American protestant interpretation of it.

Some of the books that had the most profound influence on me during this time are The Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth published by St. Mary’s Press (because of its concise explanation of Catholic teaching that cleared up many stereotypes I had), A Biblical Defense of Catholicism by Dave Armstrong because it was imperative that my beliefs not go against Scripture, and Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett because it showed me in the words of the first Christians and church leaders what the church originally looked like and why.

During this year my wife and I had many heated and passionate discussions. It saddens me to think of the emotional trauma this season had on our relationship. My wife was adamant that she did not want to be Catholic nor did she want our kids to be. Although she would listen to me share what was burning on my heart about the Church on good days, she did not want to read any Catholic books. We weren’t perfect, but our faith had given us a strong vision together and now it seemed like this foundation was shaking. I never felt that the vision God placed on my heart in my Protestant church background was wrong or somehow empty now, I could see it finding it’s rightful place.

Before reading the The Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth and hearing Catholic teachings first hand and not through Protestants, many of my first judgements against Catholics were pacified. For instance, I always first thought of the verse where Jesus says not to call anyone on earth Father. I assumed from this verse that Catholics must not read their Bible or at least don’t base their faith practice on it. Dave Armstong’s book gave me enough of the Catholic point of view on this topic that my ignorance began to come down. He wrote about how in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Jesus called Abraham, Father Abraham, and how Paul writes in his letter that he is a father to the Christians in the church he planted. He says they do not have many fathers, but he claims to be their father. I had never considered any alternative explanations than the arguments I had heard.

I began to contact the local priest and tell him that I was studying the Catholic faith and liking what I was reading.

I remember once that year telling my wife during a heated discussion that I would would wait five years until I became Catholic, just to make sure it was the right decision. A month later I was emailing our local priest telling him that I longed for the Eucharist and would probably have to face the consequences of being misunderstood for it. I soon entered the RCIA program and began to study under a deacon.

An important factor in my journey also happened that year. Our Assemblies of God pastor felt lead while studying and preaching on the book of Acts, to have our congregation take communion every week. He felt the Spirit say it would help to end divisions in the church. The ironic thing is that he asked me to lead our AG congregation in taking communion every week.

As I researched, prayed and prepared every week to lead our congregation in this remembrance, I would often quote 1 Corinthians 11. As I would read to the congregation the soberness of St. Paul telling the church that if they took communion in an unworthy manner they could get sick or die, it sunk in that this was not just a memorial. People do not die from a memorial. What was I doing?

I spoke of my concerns to my pastor and told him that perhaps he should have someone else lead the congregation in taking communion, but he encouraged me to continue. Communion became the sweetest and most profound time of the service every Sunday for me. Coupled with my study of the Catechism and the early Fathers, this weekly experience of communion was driving me to consider and long for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

One day in my one-on-one RCIA meeting, I told the deacon about the conflict I was feeling in leading a congregation in taking communion every Sunday when I knew it was not believed by them to be the Real Presence. He recommended that I stop leading in this manner because I knew better now.

It still troubles me to this day at times. Was I on a journey of leading that AG congregation and my family on a discovery of the early Church view of the Eucharist, and I simply ran ahead too fast for them? I do feel that it would have been wrong to expect my wife and people in that congregation to convert with me and to have delayed my entrance until they so discovered that desire for themselves. That would be presuming that they would eventually join, and I had no guarantee. I still pray that my wife and folks from my AG congregation I used to serve at will come to study, reverence and understand the Catholic faith. I currently attend an early mass and then join my wife and children at the AG church service. Sometimes my wife will accompany me to Mass. At times I still sit in on her Sunday School class and interject encouragement to the class.

One of the most challenging parts of this journey was not having my wife alongside of me. I couldn’t judge her for not reading the books I chose to read or even in asking the same questions I had asked. She felt called to preach, and we had both been seeking to be credentialed by the Assemblies of God. My becoming Catholic felt to my wife like I was not supporting her dream to be a preacher in the AG. I tried to reassure her that I loved it when she taught from Scripture and that I did not feel that me becoming Catholic was a stumbling block to her calling. I know there are many opportunities in a Catholic parish to encourage people, pray for them and teach even though one is not a priest or deacon. She did feel that this challenged her path to being credentialed though.

When I would think about seeking to be an AG minister, I would think about having to ecumenically interact with other ministers in the city. How would I know that what I taught was the best interpretation of Scripture? Could I authoritatively say that I was the man to help lead them to heaven, speak at their weddings and comfort them at funerals that their loved ones were in a better place? The idea of having that responsibility on me and my changing moods and interpretations of Scripture scared me.

I finished my RCIA classes and joined the Catholic Church on Easter Vigil 2014. My wife and children attended with me. It was a powerful and profound experience to feel back at home in the original church Jesus founded.

I felt that my understanding of the Christian faith was no longer fragmented and abstract but a continuous historic faith. I was not struggling to find and piece together my doctrines for myself. As a pre-Catholic Christian, I had found my doctrines on topics like salvation, the rapture and tribulation had changed over time towards a Catholic understanding of these. If the Catholic Church was Scripturally correct on these doctrines, what else did they know and how long was I going to struggle to find these doctrinal positions on my own? Along with reading some great Catholic apologetics books, I trusted the Catholic Church on the areas of doctrine I still didn’t fully grasp.

Being an art teacher, I use an analogy based on art to help me understand what has happened to me. Being raised in a post-modern world, I was taught a pluralist relativistic view of life. My world was like a cubist/abstract painting with multiple points of view all stitched together. Just like a cubist/abstracted painting, my life might be interesting but it didn’t make much coherent sense. I guess modern man is asked to live at peace in an incoherent reality, but I just couldn’t stay there and have peace.

When I decided to follow Christ, I felt like I found my horizon and a vanishing point. I could now see more clearly up from down, wrong from right, good from evil. Life was not relative. Yet because of so many different denominations existing and each person being asked to interpret the Bible on their own for themselves (a form of Bible relativism), this vanishing point would still slightly shift.  I knew Christ as the vanishing point, but whose interpretation of him and his teaching.

In visual art, to have a painting or drawing be in proper perspective, one must have a horizon and stable vanishing point. Artists like Picasso created cubist art that showed reality from multiple perspectives at once, losing clarity and coherent meaning in the process. Becoming Catholic was like finding my steady vanishing point. It was a stable point in life rooted in the incarnation of Christ, passed down through apostolic succession, and currently in focus with the Magisterium and Papacy keeping doctrine stable. My Christian worldview was steady now.

As more denominations give up orthodox positions on contraception, gay marriage, poverty, and a literal hell for instance, I hope more non-Catholic Christians will realize the instability of a Sola Scriptura Christianity. When people cast off the authority of the Church who gave us the Bible, it is just a matter of time until the people cast off the authority of the Bible itself. For Christians who dislike relativism, I would ask them to see that Sola Scriptura and the multitude of denominations it has lead to is a form of Biblical relativism. It says, “Well, you read the Bible and found that it teaches this view, while I read the Bible and it teaches me this differing view.  We have to be ok with differing positions even though they can’t both be right.”

I currently continue to pray for opportunities to explain the Catholic faith with authoritative teaching from the Catechism, Councils, Early Church Father’s writing, and Sacred Scripture. It vexes me to see so much anti-Catholic misrepresentation online by my fundamentalist companions. I understand where they now are. Not too long ago I too used to think the Pope would be the second beast of Revelation and that the Catholic Church was the whore of Babylon. I pray that this ignorance will one day be illuminated by knowledge, love and truth.

I continue to teach art at a public high school in a small Texas town near Waco. I feel a new freedom to lean upon the authoritative interpretation of Scripture in the Catholic Church. I no longer have to strive to have a cutting edge revelation and interpretation of Scripture that “wows” others. I feel freedom to focus on loving people, especially my wife and kids and to seek to lay down my life for my friends. I pray that one day the church’s unity will be restored, in the mean time I continue to pray and work seeking that unity in my family though service, love, humility and forgiveness.

My Wife's Written Public Response to My Conversion

I am attaching a link and a copy of my wife's written and public response to my conversion. As we were both involved in public ministry in our small community, we felt that a public response was appropriate.

My Response to my Husband’s Conversion to Catholicism

I had to research the term religious conversion to make sure I had it correct.  Wikipedia quotes the following: “religious conversion' would describe the abandoning of adherence to one denomination and affiliating with another. This might be from one to another denomination within the same religion”.  For those of you who don’t know my husband, Enrique, has decided to become Catholic.  This decision has been a year in the making, and his confirmation was this Easter Saturday. 

I anticipate three reactions from those interested enough to read my blog; disbelief, curiosity, or concern.  You may be feeling a little bit of all three of them.  Still, there may be some who just don’t see the significance in even writing about it.  If you fall in the last category, you probably don’t know Enrique and me very well.  Our whole marriage has been based on serving Jesus together, prayer, and ministry to others.  In fact we have built our marriage around dreams of ministry and love for God.   This last three years have been extremely difficult for me.  Losing my father, and coping with the decisions that needed to be made for my hearing impaired daughter have definitely challenged my faith.  But this last year has been one of the most difficult things I could have imagined.  I never would have dreamed that my partner in Christ would change his thinking in such a dramatic way.   To add to the pain, the timing of his conversion has collided with the timing of my calling to ministry. 

As many of you know, if you have listened much to my teaching, I believed God called me to full time ministry two years ago.  I experienced his confirmation of this calling, and I embraced it with my whole being.   Enrique’s conversion has challenged everything I thought I knew.  It would be a lie and a poor witness to paint a picture to you that I have welcomed this change.  I have cried, grieved, fought, cussed, and a few times even given up hope. Enrique and I have talked in circles weekend after weekend on why he has decided to do this.  I have questioned him on every detail from praying to Mary, communion, confession, Papal infallibility, to Purgatory.  I have come to realize we believe differently in regards to these issues, and it is a sin to continue to fight over them. These things are not deal breakers though.  They are different, and it would be naïve to say they are not significant differences.  Yet, God desires peace and love in my family more then he desires me to feel in complete agreement with my husband.  Selfishly, I have LOVED having my closest friend and partner seeing spiritual things the same as I do.  But even this precious blessing, does not compare with walking right before God.   

Enrique has studied these topics in depth, and he is much more qualified to answer your questions of “why” then I am.  One book lead to another, along with prayer, discussions with our pastor, discussions with the local Catholic priest, and he has made up his mind this is what God has called him to do.  He knows the Catholic faith better than many who were born Catholic, and he sees so much beauty and depth in it.   This is a sincere and prayed about decision he made.    That is all I can say in response to why he has become Catholic.  But I do have a lot to say in regard to what God has shown me through this process. 

He has shown me that I am not as strong as I thought I was, but he (God) is stronger than I could have ever known.   He has shown me that even though there are days I still feel led to ministry; my joy and peace come from God alone.  Ministry will never fulfill my heart.  I was wrong about that.  The only thing that will ever truly give me peace is the one thing no one can take away from me, and that is Christ. I was made for him first. 

I believe God allows us to go through difficult times.  I’m not saying the difficulties are from him, but I do believe he allows them.  He knows that when we come through the other side and still love him that is a person that he can use.  Look what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:5 for the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. 

I have researched and looked up marriages that have one spouse who is Catholic and one who is Protestant.  I have yet to find any examples where the couple continued to minister in different churches and thrive.  In fact, on the internet most couples find themselves merely coping.  Many times the wife follows her husband, and I can see the beauty in this type of submission.  But I honestly cannot bring myself to research the documents Enrique has researched.  I feel something holding me back.  I have however, in the last two weeks drawn very close to the Lord, and continued to read the scriptures daily.  I have been amazed how his grace has sustained me.   I feel a peace about staying in my church with my church family, and I am blessed my husband also will continue to accompany me.   With great thanksgiving, I have rejoiced at hearing God's voice.   He is teaching me a lot at this time, and I’m excited that if I do get the opportunity to minster that I will not be the same person. 

I do not know what Enrique and I’s future holds in regard to ministry, but I do know what it holds in regards to eternity.   I am learning to honor my husband. My husband loves the Lord, loves me, and loves his family.   I believe with my whole heart we will be worshipping the Lord together forever.    We are still reading the scriptures and praying together, and we are still deeply committed to one another.

I ask for your continued prayers as we embark on a whole new journey of differing beliefs in regard to doctrine.  I ask for your sensitivity in regards to asking me questions of why.  Enrique is the one who would be much better at answering those questions. 

Finally for those of you, who have been led closer to the Lord through something Enrique and I may have done, please know those things were and are  real.  God is deeply committed to you, so much that he would send his only son.  He is not a God of confusion, and even in the midst of the unknown, he is present and alive. 

_With Love in Christ, 

Heidi 

Conversion Letter to Address Community Concerns

Here is a public letter I addressed to our community after being so public in ministry and then converting to the Catholic faith:

On Saturday April 19, 2014, I entered full-communion with the Catholic Church. This was after my wife and I had been involved in ministry at Mexia First Assembly for about five years serving with the youth there, after I was half-way done with my M.Div at Southwestern Assemblies of God University, and after my wife and I had put on interdenominational youth prayer meetings for the town of Mexia.

During this process, I prayed that the least amount of people would be confused, angered, or saddened.  I want people to grow closer to Jesus and obey God's word. Confusion doesn't usually help that. After sitting down with Pastor Hallmark, we decided together that it would be beneficial to stakeholders that I explain some of the most prominent questions parents, students, and community members may have for the sake of peace of those concerned.

First, I want to say that the hardest thing about becoming Catholic was feeling like I was letting down those that I love most and who love me most. I was concerned about my wife's heart, my kids, church youth, my pastor, my mother, all my ministry friends and those at Mexia First Assembly I have had the privilege to get to know and love.

Most of the time when someone leaves a church to attend another, it is due to some grievance or dissatisfaction with their previous church. I want it to be clear that me becoming Catholic is not because of any falling out that Bryan and I had. He has done a wonderful job of teaching, preaching and serving. I have never had a pastor that opened up and trusted Heidi and I with so much opportunity to grow, serve and minister. We have been truly blessed. I am not Catholic because MFA or its pastors did anything wrong. Honestly, out of all the Protestant churches in Mexia. I vouch for MFA. It is an amazing faith family, and I encourage you to attend.

My main reason in seeking to become Catholic was an investigation into the Eucharist that many call Communion or the Lord's Supper. During a year of leading the congregation of MFA in the Lord's Supper every Sunday, I did much study on Scripture and Tradition of the Eucharist. Going back to read the early church fathers greatly challenged my Protestant foundation.  I began to feel that the Catholic expression of faith was the closest to the early church. Of course, the early church didn't have all the bells and whistles of modern Catholicism, but the main important tenets of the Catholic church were present. These tenets were not church corruptions from pagan Rome.

So I reiterate, Pastor Hallmark and MFA have done nothing wrong. If anything, they created an enriching culture where I could explored Scripture,worship, the Lord's Supper, faith, history, and hands-on ministry, in a climate that I feel the Holy Spirit worked much on me in and lead me to this decision. If you need a place to know the love of Jesus, have the Scripture explained and applied to your life, a place to feel accepted and encouraged, go to MFA. I would still be fully a part of MFA had I not felt the Holy Spirit call me to connect to the ancient Catholic Church.

It has truly been a blessing to be a part of Mexia First Assembly. Even though I still attend with my wife and kids after attending mass, I know my roles in ministry there must lessen. There were many times that I felt that I simply could not share what was happening in my heart because it had to do with Catholic theology and history, and I did not want to be encouraging Catholic theology while under the roof of First Assembly.

This decision, though it has at times challenged our levels of mercy and patience, has not broken the love and friendship I feel with and for Pastor Bryan Hallmark. Although we see differently on important points of theology, I respect him deeply. He remains a great friend in ministry and to my family and I.  Bryan and his family, Cindy, Nate, Josh and Gracie have been like family to us in this journey these past years. We have served together, laughed together, cried together and had some good times of eating together too.

At MFA I have seen many loving, devout, hospitable, and good people who love the Lord. I have enjoyed learning about the Lord together and seeking to grow our prayer lives as well. It is a great faith community.

My wife Heidi continues to pursue credentials through the Assemblies of God, and I support her. It was a little over a year that she felt called to full-time ministry. She continues to teach and lead and Mexia First Assembly. She does not feel called to become Catholic. I don't understand how God will use our two distinct personalities and talents, but I'll let him direct that. In the meantime, Heidi and I will work on loving and honoring each other. We'll be having our 15 year anniversary next month.

She is taking Bible, theology and ministry courses online and at SAGU and Global University to prepare her for ministry. She is a gifted speaker, teacher, and woman of God. I don't know of someone more compassionate and ready to run to someone that is hurting and share the love of God with them.

I am not going to force my wife and children to attend the Catholic Church if they do not feel led to. I do hope to raise my kids to understand the historical and Biblical reasons Catholics believe what they believe so that when people spread misinformation about Catholics, they will be able to stand against it. I want them to know Scripture, to have prayer lives and a relationship with Jesus. I will let them discern where they want to attend church. Growing up is not easy, and I want to love and support them.

For the peace of mind of those with a strong theological stance at MFA, it makes sense for me to step down from teaching roles. My heart is busting with ideas of Scripture and church history, but it's not my place to teach from a leadership position those things that are contrary to what the Assemblies of God and most protestant churches teach. Those with questions can ask me personally.

Just to clarify some key Catholic objections though. Catholics do not worship Mary, saints or statues. We never have taught that one can work their way into heaven. That is a heresy. Catholics teach that salvation is only by the grace of God and by the work of Jesus' death and resurrection only. This grace comes to us through the Sacraments. They believe that faith alone is not enough. It must be faith expressing itself in love.  True faith and good works are impossible to separate.

My reasons for becoming Catholic include sincerely asking God to help me understand the Catholic Church, seeing a faithfulness to the life of the early church, finding that I love Catholic theology, seeing that without a true apostolic interpreter of Scripture, churches continue to divide and continue to move moral boundaries, and seeing the Catholic faith being taught in the New Testament.

I never imagined I would be Catholic. Although it has been a troubling journey at times, I am glad to be Catholic and to feel such a strong connection to the early church.

If you have questions about my reasons for becoming Catholic, or want to discuss theology and church history, please respectfully message me on Facebook or email me.

In Christ,

Enrique Saul Crosby

Bible Relativism

As a Bible teacher, I would attack relativism by stating that one cannot simply say "what is truth for you may not be truth for me". I taught that the Bible is our authority for truth about God. But when it came down to what the Bible taught us, I would myself teach relativism by saying that each person must decide for themselves what the Bible means to them. And if we came to different conclusions on topics, we just had to agree to disagree because who is to say what is the right interpretations. That is the Protestant position, a sort of Bible relativism that has broken into thousands of denominations each claiming to interpret the Bible in a way that is true for them. I don't have to do that anymore, I found my vanishing point.

Vanishing Points

Abstract art is a product of the modern world. In such a world, pluralism is valued and encouraged. Sometimes growing up in such a world, having a single point of perspective is difficult to find. One ends up living a life that appears like a cubist painting or an abstract surreal found object collage. Our lives may be interesting and full but somewhat confusing and lacking coherent meaning. In visual art, for an artwork to appear realistic, it must have a vanishing point. So too our lives without a vanishing point are out of perspective. We are like a cubist painting trying to see life from all angles at once and it just doesn't make sense. But if we want to have a single perspective, which perspective is the right to choose?

For me, becoming a follower of Christ was like finding the horizon in my artwork. I could now tell up from down, yet with thousands of denominations and interpretations of Sacred Scripture, it was difficult to pinpoint exactly where my vanishing point should sit. Becoming Catholic nailed the vanishing point into place so that reality and God were not some elusive reality that I had to struggle to piece together on my own as I sought to interpret Scripture on my own. God was real; he became man, resurrected, ascended, and left behind an authoritative group of apostles with Peter at the head to pass on and interpret the word of God both written and oral. These apostles with Peter at the head passed their authority successively down to the present bishops who make up the Magisterium with the bishop of Rome at the head, our Pope.

I never even considered that I would one day be Catholic. After all the anti-Catholic teaching I had received about the "whore of Babylon" and the "second Beast"...well I just thought I knew the Bible too well to ever be Catholic. I was wrong. It took a willingness to follow Jesus wherever he lead even if it was uncomfortable. It took a study of Scripture and the early Church fathers. And it took hearing the Catholic point of view from authoritative Catholic texts and teaching instead of from anti-Catholic teachers who misquoted and misrepresented Catholic positions and teachings.

I now believe that the Catholic faith is the fullness of Christianity, and that the New Testament teaches and affirms the Catholic worldview. I don't struggle to piece together my cubist worldview into a reality, even a Christian reality, that makes sense to me. I rest upon the authoritative teaching of Christ and the apostles that has been passed down to the present day in the Catholic Church.

I plan to share my journey and discuss misunderstandings in this blog, so follow along if you are interested.