Finding the end of the road

For the past year Michelle and I have been on a journey to find a new home church, we have made some great friends along the way, and made some disturbing discoveries. It’s been comical at times, and painful most of the time. We’ve grown in ways we didn’t expect, I’ve been able to deepen my understanding of my faith and I finally figured out what I was looking for. The problem was and still is that I can’t find it anywhere, my belief hasn’t changed, but my needs have. What started out as an emotional journey in the pentecostal faith has ended in the most surprising of places, if you would have asked me a year ago where I would end up. Anglican or Catholic would have not been my answer, in fact neither would have entered my mind.

But we have found that the early church fathers had something we simply don’t have today, they understood their faith at a much deeper level, they worshiped with more reverence and less nonsense than what we see today. Sadly even in some parts of the Anglican faith modernism has wormed it’s way in, the Episcopal church is self destructing in America. The Anglican church from Africa is doing missions here in the states, but it’s just starting and our experience was that as opposed to being historic, it was more emerging with a combination of the historic. It did however leave a huge mark on us, and we are Anglican more than anything else at this time.

The odd part comes in about three weeks ago, our youngest was out in California and we had time on our hands, so we tried a Catholic Mass. After all it could be called the mother church, Luther broke from it, Anglicans and Episcopalians broke from it and because of my background I never even thought of attending a mass (damn evil Catholics). Imagine my surprise when I found a service that was well planned, reverent and Christ centered. Certainly not the message I had heard from others, and to be honest I kind of liked it. It was a breath of fresh air, it was like the adult version of a liturgical service.

This doesn’t mean that I’m turning RCC just yet, but there is really no where else to go. I’ve already run into Luther and Calvin, I didn’t like either experience. I gave Lutheranism a couple of chances, but for all their bluster about respecting the service, we didn’t see it and nothing and I mean nothing turns me off more than a determinist on a mission. I have never in my life seen more twisting of scripture than you will find when someone is attempting to force Sovereignty down your throat. I’m certainly not an open theist so that’s out, Arminius was a good guy and I think he got the closest but all the churches who align with him twisted his message.

So in reality that only leaves two, and honestly, I’m tired of looking. I’m tired of churches who don’t know their own doctrine and think it’s fundamentalist to want to protect it, I’m tired of constantly being on guard. I just want to worship God, with reverence, with dedication and with other believers who feel the same. No more jeans and shorts, no more sloppy music or half baked hymns, no more trying to be modern. Christianity is old, Christ isn’t, but his church is and I want to worship at one that acts grown up.

I’m not sure where this leads if anywhere, Michael Spencer wrote about how he loved the RCC service, but had issues with their theology (like the perpetual virginity of Mary), which is interesting because he was a Calvinist and Calvin and Luther both believed the same theology about Mary. I’m reading Thomas Howard on his conversion to RCC and I’m starting to do my homework, maybe meet with the local Father and have some serious talks, doesn’t mean I’m committed but right now at this point in my life, I need something more mature and with some real history.

This is certainly a road less traveled for evangelicals, but I’m not alone, there is a movement called the Ancient-Future movement where people are tired of the Evangelical circus and are looking for the Ancient Ways, this could be my resting place for the forseeable future.

More to come as I reach what I hope is the end of the road.

-Paul-