Part 1: My Story

My history of church hopping

I was raised in a Protestant Christian family in Akron, Ohio, and we went to church every Sunday. During my childhood my family changed churches several times.

We went to...
the Lutheran Church,
the Church of the Nazarene,
the Evangelical United Brethren Church which became
the United Methodist Church where I was baptized,
the Presbyterian Church,
and the Chapel in University Park, a big non-denominational church in downtown Akron.

I wasn't aware of differences between these churches other than the atmosphere and worship style.

When I was a young boy I prayed the "sinner's prayer" to receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior -- not just once, but many times until I felt it actually "took hold" at the age of sixteen. Around that time I began the practice of daily Bible reading and prayer.

Later, when I was in college, I discovered the beauty of liturgy and became a member of the Episcopal Church. The liturgy seemed to enhance my personal spiritual life, and my time of daily Bible study and prayer seemed to have a greater sense of excitement and intimacy with God. I also sensed that God was calling me to Japan, and joined a small independent missionary board comprised of solid evangelical Episcopalians.

The move to Japan

In 1987 this missionary board sent me to Japan. For the next few years I had an active ministry mainly doing evangelistic puppet shows in various churches in Japan.

Then I met a Japanese Christian girl who served as interpreter for one of my puppet shows. We married and continued the puppet ministry as a team, performing in churches throughout Japan on Sundays about once a month. On the other Sundays, we attended worship services at an Anglican church in Tokyo. The Episcopal Church is part of the World-wide Anglican Communion.

After a few years my missionary board was unable to send me the money I needed. Later they ceased operations and disbanded. My wife and I continued to do puppet shows as an independent team for a few years, but eventually the demands of full time jobs and raising children forced us to end the puppet ministry.

We also decided to leave the Anglican Church and join an evangelical Protestant church, partly because of the strange unbiblical sermons we kept hearing at the Anglican Church. However, I still preferred the liturgical worship service.

Actually, we joined several different evangelical churches over the years; church-hopping was still a natural part of my Christian life, and I dragged my long-suffering wife along from church to church looking for the perfect church.

I played electric guitar or bass in several church bands, and the worship service was usually fun and musically gratifying, but I rarely felt that I had actually worshipped God after an hour or so of rock-style praise songs and a long sermon. I felt something was missing. I appreciated the emphasis on the Bible in the sermons, but the deep worship experience I had enjoyed as an Anglican was missing. Why couldn't I have both?

After eighteen years in the Japanese Evangelical Christian community, my spiritual life seemed to dry up.

Jolted by a Buddhist wake

In 2009 our neighbor's wife died, and we were close enough to the family that we were expected to attend the wake which was held the evening before the funeral.

Buddhist wakes are a challenge for Christians in Japan because everybody is expected to stand before the casket, offer a pinch of incense and pray to the deceased person's soul.

My wife and I tried to position ourselves where we could exclude ourselves from the ritual unnoticed, but suddenly everyone formed a line behind us, and we found ourselves at the very front!

All eyes would be on this foreigner to see if I did things properly. My mind was racing, trying to think of a way to maintain my Christian witness while not offending everyone in the room, especially our grieving neighbor.

It was my wife who came up with a solution. She whispered to me, "Let's make the sign of the cross and pray silently for a few moments, so everybody will understand without words why we can't offer the incense."

I was surprised because I had never seen my wife make the sign of the cross.

We followed my wife's strategy and went forward, crossed ourselves, and bowed our heads for moment of silent prayer for the bereaved family. Everybody seemed to be sympathetic and even grateful for our efforts. Our neighbor gave us a big smile.

Investigating the sign of the cross

Until that moment, I had considered the sign of the cross to be a useless and slightly pretentious practice that must have originated some time in the middle ages, but I did it anyway when I was an Episcopalian because everybody around me was doing it. Now I discovered what a useful tool the sign of the cross could be in a non-Christian culture like Japan where nobody around me was doing it!

So I wanted to learn more, and began to research its origins. This brought me into contact with the writings of the Early Church Fathers. I discovered that Christians were apparently making the sign of the cross on their foreheads from the second century and possibly earlier as a practice which was taught by the twelve Apostles themselves.

I continued to read the Early Church Fathers and came across a description of early Christian worship which apparently resembled the Catholic Mass. I was not interested in attending a Catholic Mass, but I did gain a new appreciation for the Episcopal Church liturgy which can be very similar. I found that I had a yearning for the good old days when I was an Episcopalian in America and in love with God and the Bible and Church.

So I decided to secretly visit an Anglican Church service on Sundays when I wasn't playing bass in our own church band. I thought that maybe I could just ignore any strange Anglican sermons this time around.

Anglican once again

In the summer of 2009, I left my Evangelical Charismatic Church and returned to the Anglican Church after an absence of eighteen years. I found a small Anglican parish in Tokyo with a very friendly English speaking priest and an average Sunday attendance of about twenty people.

Since I had never formally renounced my membership in the Episcopal Church, I was technically still a member and only had to transfer my membership from my former parish in Ohio.

My wife could not understand why I would want to go back, and resisted being dragged to yet another church, so she and our two children remained in the church where we had worshipped as a family. This meant that our family would be broken up on Sunday mornings as I went alone to the Anglican services.

But soon I experienced that personal spiritual revival I was hoping for, and I was once again excited about the Bible and going to Church just like the old days.

I loved the Eucharist (communion) and the teaching that when the bread and wine are consecrated by the priest, they mysteriously become the body and blood of Christ.

I also began to take an interest in "apostolic succession" which is the teaching that the bishops who were ordained by the laying of hands can trace their lineage all the way back to the original twelve Apostles.

On New Year's morning of 2010, the priest strongly urged me to consider going to seminary so that I could become an Anglican priest. I recalled that when I had taken an aptitude test in college many years ago, the results indicated that the job that I was most suited for was priest, which I thought was funny. Now it was all coming together. Life was good in the Anglican Church this time around.

Trouble in the Anglican Church

But when I looked beyond the walls of my tiny parish, I felt like the frog who had the sense to jump out of the water as it was getting hot, only to jump back in when it was boiling!

Much of the Anglican Church -- especially the Episcopal Church in America -- had departed from its own doctrines and had descended so low that when you looked past the beautiful facade, it hardly resembled anything Christian.

At the highest levels of Episcopal leadership there was public denial of basic Christian doctrines such as the deity of Christ, and his role in our salvation.

The same problems existed in the Anglican Church in Canada and even in England, the heart of the Anglican Communion. And I had heard that the same problems were spreading in the Anglican Church in Japan as well.

Because of this, I was embarrassed to invite people to my own church.

But my personal experience was still positive enough that I wanted to simply hole up in my own small Anglican parish and ignore the problems of the larger Anglican Church.

I thought I could go on living inside this bubble, safe from the boiling water outside.

But, the follies of the Episcopal Church continued to make headlines throughout the world, and I learned that practically all of the Episcopalian clergy and leaders whom I respected had left a long time ago.

Biblical doctrines can be redefined or scrapped entirely by a majority vote in the Anglican Church. Most of the faithful orthodox Episcopal/Anglican leaders had already been driven out, leaving a very unbalanced situation. Now the heretics were free to pursue their agenda and change the Anglican Church without hindrance. No Anglican parish in the world was immune under those circumstances.

Then our priest was assigned to a different parish, and my little parish got a new priest; someone whose authority I felt I could not submit to in light of my understanding of the Bible. So I started attending a different Anglican parish farther from home, but I knew this was a temporary solution as the cancer in the Anglican Church continued to spread from parish to parish.

I felt that sooner or later I would have to leave the Anglican Church -- once again -- but I was very reluctant to go backwards and return to the evangelical charismatic churches where I had felt such dryness. So this life-long church-hopper was running out of churches.

In light of the path I had taken thus far, I began to look at the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. I visited the services at the Russian Orthodox Church in Tokyo a few times but decided against it for reasons which I have written about in a separate article. This left the Catholic Church as possibly my last option.

A challenge to consider the Catholic Church

I had never wanted to be a Catholic. I didn't doubt that faithful Catholics could go to heaven the same as Protestants, but they seemed to be weighed down by extra baggage; all those spooky statues and too much emphasis on Mary.

The truth was, I didn't know much about the Catholic Church, and much of what I thought I knew later turned out to be wrong. My views of the Catholic Church had been formed in the 1980's by anti-Catholic pamphlets such as the Catholic Chronicles by Keith Green and those infamous Chick Tracts.

There are not even 100 people in this country who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they think the Catholic Church to be. Archbishop Fulton Sheen

So I began to investigate the Catholic Church, turning not to Protestant or anti-Catholic sources, but to the Catholic Church itself. I found lots of internet sources and informative books on Catholicism, many of them written by former Protestants who had converted to the Catholic Church. I discovered EWTN, a Catholic television/radio network, and started listening to podcasts of its shows, such as The Journey Home, Catholic Answers Live, and Open Line.

Stumbling upon an Anglican dead-end

During my research I also uncovered a bit of disturbing news. In 1896, Pope Leo XIII officially declared that Anglican orders were "absolutely null and utterly void."

In other words Anglican bishops and priests no longer had the authority which had been passed down from the apostles through the Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIII

This would affect among other things the ordination of subsequent priests and bishops, and also what would happen (or not happen) to the host when it is consecrated by the priest in the Eucharist.

My first reaction was "How dare he!" It seemed so cold and unfriendly and completely unnecessary to cut off Anglican clergy like that.

I first read about this in 2010. In May of that year the Episcopal Church in the United States consecrated its second openly gay bishop who was living in a same-sex relationship, and that summer an Anglican priest in Canada gave the consecrated host to a man who happened to walk into that church for the first time during communion -- and she also gave one to his dog who had walked in with him!

Suddenly I realized the wisdom of Pope Leo's decree. It was as if the Holy Spirit had given him a glimpse of how far the Anglican clergy could abuse their authority once they no longer submitted to the authority of the Catholic Church and the pope.

Of course, the implications for my own personal experience of communion in the Anglican Church were devastating. I had been counting on the miracle of the real presence of Christ to be in the Eucharist, and looked forward to receiving it every Sunday. But now there was no guarantee that anything special would take place at all.

Eye-opening research

I spent more than a year of studying the claims of the Catholic Church, the writings of the early Church Fathers, and related passages in the Bible.

I also studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a fairly large book which spells out exactly what the Catholic Church believes (you can read it for free online as well).

My objections started to melt as I became convinced that the Catholic Church is the true and original church that Jesus established on earth with a long, unbroken history going all the way back to the twelve Apostles.

I also became convinced that Jesus had singled out Peter as the rock on which he would build his Church, and that Peter's successors, the bishops of Rome, would continue to fill Peter's office as the head bishop of the Church on earth.

Yes, I'm aware of the Protestant argument that the word for "rock" in Greek (petra) in Matthew 16:13-19 is slightly different from Peter's name in Greek (petros), but in Aramaic, the language actually used in that conversation, the two words are exactly the same: kepha.

I was also more convinced than ever that Jesus had intended for the bread and wine to miraculously become his real body and blood in the Eucharist as Jesus clearly taught in John chapter 6.

So to my amazement I discovered that here was a church that had everything I was looking for in all my church hopping: biblical faithfulness and deep worship.

Drawn to the Catholic Church

My focus had changed. I was no longer running from the Anglican Church -- or from any Protestant denomination; I was eagerly running to the Catholic Church, and I would continue this journey even if all the problems in the Anglican Church were fixed.

Now the question was how to go about it. How does an Evangelical Protestant become a Catholic?

During my period of study, I had visited several Catholic parishes in Tokyo on Sunday mornings and ended up in a small friendly Japanese Catholic parish with an English speaking priest just a few blocks from the Anglican parish I had been attending.

This allowed me to attend the 8:00 Sunday morning service at the Anglican parish and then walk over and attend the 10:30 Catholic mass where I could experience Catholicism first hand on a regular basis and make sure this was the right decision.

I continued in this manner for several months, taking communion at the Anglican service and watching everyone else take communion at the Catholic mass. I still preferred the Anglican hymns and Anglican Chant with those wonderful harmonies, but I was convinced that the real presence of Christ was in the Eucharist of the Catholic Church, and that this was the true and original church that Jesus Christ had established.

Joining the Catholic Church

By the time I decided to join the Church, I had become a familiar face at the Catholic parish, and had made lots of friends there. So it was no surprise to anyone when I finally told the head priest I wanted to become a member. I figured the process would be long and drawn out with several months of classes, but the priest said that he could let me join at the next international mass which was seven weeks away.

For preparation, he only asked me to read one document from the Second Vatican Council about the role of the Church in the modern world (Gaudium Et Spes). When I asked why the process was so simple and quick in my case, he replied that it was because of my training and background as an Anglican missionary, and that I had studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I had actually read that book three times.

A few weeks before I was to be confirmed, I went to my first confession. I knelt down in a small booth and confessed all the serious sins I could recall during my life since my baptism (I had prepared a list ahead of time). I wasn't embarrassed to confess my sins to the priest since I knew he had heard it all before. Then he said that I was forgiven of all my sins, and I knew he spoke with the authority that Jesus Christ had entrusted to the apostles, who in turn entrusted it to their successors down to the present day. All my sins were truly forgiven as Jesus had promised in John 20:23. It felt great.

I was confirmed and joined the Catholic Church on August 14, 2011, and finally took communion there. My baptism as a teenager in the United Methodist Church was considered valid so I did not need to be baptized again.

My wife and children attended Mass that Sunday to witness this big event in my life, but they have not chosen to follow me into the Catholic Church so far.

Finally home

When I was young I had prayed to receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and lived for nearly half a century as an evangelical Protestant. Looking back, I must say that being an evangelical Protestant was a great experience, no doubt about it.

But then I discovered the Catholic Church, the original church that Jesus Christ said He would build and preserve. Being an evangelical Protestant was great, but being a Catholic is even better! I am reminded of the words of joy and wonder after the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana in John chapter 2.

And I am learning so much now, and discovering eye-opening verses in the Bible that I had never noticed in forty years of Bible study. I'll talk more about those verses in part 2 of this article.

Go to Part 2: My Reasons for joining the Catholic Church

My testimony also appears in an article in Religion en Libertad in Spanish

Part 1: My Story
Part 2: My Reasons for joining the Catholic Church
Part 3: Other Issues which cannot be ignored
Part 4: Resources for Further Investigation

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

The New International Version (NIV) is the most popular version of the Bible among Evangelical Protestants. My personal favorites have always been the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the King James Version (KVJ) which I also quoted in this article.