On Christmas Eve, 2019, Kathy and I were received into the Orthodox Church via baptism and chrismation (we even had our marriage blessed by the Orthodox Church!). Regularly, when catching up with old friends, I get asked, “So what made you want to become Orthodox?” It’s a fair question since Kathy and I had been in Baptist churches for all our lives before our conversion. In fact, my mother tells me I was in church from the age of two weeks old. I’ll have to take her word on that since I don’t remember. Plus, I have MDiv and ThM degrees from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve served in various support staff roles at a number of Baptist churches; supply preached; served as interim pastor; taught Bible and was chaplain at a Baptist high school for five years; taught Greek at SBTS; and taught Bible, philosophy and a variety of other classes at a Wesleyan university for 13 years.
;)
There’s a certain difficulty in explaining why I’m no longer Baptist because it suggests that I found the Baptist church lacking, and that will be potentially offensive to the millions of people—or at least my friends—who are still Baptist. I get that. I not only quit being a Baptist, I quit being Evangelical and Protestant as well. I even had one close friend assume that I was angry at the Baptists, and that was why I left. Nothing could be further from the truth. While it’s true that I found something in Orthodoxy that was lacking in my experience as a Baptist, I need to say that my Baptist faith was foundational for where I am today. I believe it is fair to say that I would not be Orthodox if my journey had not taken me down Baptist roads first. But in reality, there’s a foundation even deeper than that. There was a faith context for me before I was even Baptist. I first heard Bible stories sitting in my mother’s lap when I was a toddler. She was my first Bible teacher, and my first foundation for the faith I have today. I’m not running from being a Baptist anymore than I could run from what I learned on my mother’s knee. These things brought me to where I am today as an Orthodox Christian. When I was in my mother’s lap hearing Bible stories, when I was in Baptist churches and Baptist seminaries, God also knew that I would be Orthodox one day.
My journey to the Orthodox Church, beyond the foundations I mention above, are the culmination of a series of events, experiences, and reflections that go back at least 25 years or so. I really need a couple hours or more to begin to tell you why I (and ultimately, we—to include Kathy) became Orthodox. I’ve spent those hours with some people explaining what I could as best as I could, making explanation and answering questions. I’m going to attempt to do that in writing—not in one post to my extremely-neglected blog, but perhaps in a series of posts.
- A Rejection of Calvinist/Reformed thought. This took place in the mid-nineties after a specific series of events that I’ll have to explain in a later post. Throughout most of my “professional” life, many have assumed that my theological convictions were thoroughly Reformed. Though my closest friends knew better, with most I rarely ever corrected these assumptions because it often led to debate. I’ve engaged in that debate plenty of times; but ultimately, I find it tiring. Although this is my starting point, I should point out that I have many, many friends with Reformed convictions, and we get along just fine. My rejection of Calvinism led directly to the next important part of my journey listed below.
- Immersion in the Church Fathers. My rejection of Calvinism led me to a study of the earliest post-New Testament writings. I wanted to see if anything remotely came close to Calvinist ideas in the Church Fathers. I did find elements of this thought, but not until the 4th century AD and only in the Western Church.
- Conversations with an Orthodox Friend. I like to tell Theron Mathis, “This is all your fault.” Theron and I first met when we were both at the same Baptist church in the late 90s. Theron and his wife, Beth, converted around 20 years ago. Over the years we had many friendly but often intense discussions over coffee. I went from telling him, “Well, I could never believe that” to one day realizing I believed it, too.
- Visit to an Orthodox Church. The first time I stepped into the nave of an Orthodox Church in 2012, something clicked inside my head. I realized I was standing in a structure modeled after the Jerusalem Temple. It was a profoundly biblical experience for me. After having studied and taught the Bible for decades, I felt like I was in the Bible. I was still very Baptist at the time, but this was a turning point. The experience stuck with me and never let me go.
- Immersion in "Modern" Orthodox Media. Once I discovered there was a contemporary church in harmony with the Church Fathers I had been reading, I began reading modern Orthodox writing and listening to Orthodox podcasts. I believe I bought my first Orthodox book in 2012, but by 2014 I was reading and listening to nothing but Orthodox content. I was struck by the beauty of Orthodox thought. At first I thought they were just coming at the same ideas we had in the Baptist church—but with different words and approaches. I eventually realized this was not the case, though. The Eastern Church never had a period of scholasticism or a Reformation to color its thought. At a certain point, I realized that my way of understanding my faith, reading the Bible, and seeing the world was becoming more Orthodox than Baptist. By 2017, I knew I had a decision to make.
- The Full Worship Experience. I tell people visiting an Orthodox service for the first time that they will experience worship with all five senses, and it’s really true. It’s active and engaging. You actively participate in it from beginning to end. Over the years, I’d noticed that the worshipers in most Baptist (and other low-church Protestant) services took on a role that was increasingly passive. Worship had become entertainment, a kind of variety show (with varying degrees of talent according to where you were) to sit back and watch. Now, I know some will find that characterization insulting, but please note that I had a part in planning numerous worship services over the years. As my understanding of worship began to change, so did my desire for something greater.
- A Full Sense of History. I can go back even more than 25 years to describe my frustration that most Protestant churches I had been part of had no sense of history. I heard many complain over the years that we didn’t know the Bible well enough, but most churches don’t even know where they got the Bible or what happened between the final pages of the Bible and today. In my experiences in Baptist churches, if history was ever discussed at all, it never went back further than the Reformation. I said for many years before I was Orthodox that I rejected both Calvinist and Arminian labels because there was a millennium and a half of Church history before the Reformation. In contrast, the Orthodox Church is itself living history. Different saints are remembered every day. Miracle stories and significant events are recounted over and over. The church year is cyclical in its observances that reinforce both its history and teaching. Moreover, I found a great sense of continuity with Judaism in Orthodox worship. The Psalms are still prayed, and incense is still used in the services to represent the prayers of God’s people. Even the Divine Liturgy itself (used in all Orthodox Churches today) traces its roots to Jewish liturgies that came before it.
As mentioned above, I came to the point that I realized I had to make a choice. Around 2015, I figured I’d better get Kathy clued in on all this because I wouldn’t have even attempted to convert without her—if that was even what we were supposed to do. I should emphasize that we were very involved in Baptist life and in our church. We had moved to Kentucky in 1991 so that I could go to a Baptist seminary. We didn’t intend to stay as long as we did, but I always say Kentucky was very good to us. As involved as we were in our local Baptist church, which was truly a community church in every sense of the word, it would have frankly been difficult to leave and begin worshiping somewhere else in the next county. However, an opportunity for change came when we decided to move home to Louisiana in 2018 to help care for aging family.
While in Kentucky in recent years, we had been “sneaking” to Orthodox services whenever we could; but in planning the move, Kathy suggested that we use the transition to convert to the Orthodox Church. I was thrilled over this because by this point, I was ready, but I didn’t know if she was or not. In fact, after we had begun the process, I kept expecting a “Baptist intervention committee” to show up at my front door any day, but the move out of state really put our church activities under the radar.
Becoming Orthodox is not as simple as walking down an aisle at an invitation and having your membership letter transferred—in fact, there’s no such thing as this in the Orthodox Church. We became catechumens at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Shreveport in October 2018. During this process, we attended catechism classes and experienced Orthodox worship in the services; we got to know the church, and the church got to know us. Over a year later, we were finally received into the Orthodox Church.
Now all the above is just summary! In future posts, I’ll break everything down into more detail. Comments are welcome, but I really don’t have any desire to debate theological points, so don’t be too disappointed if you try to engage me in that manner, and I don’t bite.