Crossed The Tiber

An Evangelical Converts to Catholicism

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Location: Pennsylvania, United States

I was born into the Catholic faith. At 14, I was "born again" and found Jesus personally but lost His Church. After thirty years as an evangelical protestant, I have come full circle to find that He has been there all the time, in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I wish others to find the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith as I have found.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

A Bit of Nostalgia


I am in the process of selling some old recording equipment. Because recording technology changes so quickly, you can accumulate a lot of stuff in a few years that quickly becomes obsolete. When going through some old recordings on digital Hi8 format, I found a song that I wrote in 2000. As I listened to it again for the first time in 10 years it brought back a lot of memories.
We had just left a charismatic church and made the bold move of joining a denominational church, the United Methodists (a conservative one). At the time, this was a major deal and my wife and I felt we were leaving the mother-ship for uncharted waters. Having had a conversion experience in 1973 in a charismatic non-denominational bible study, I thought that non-denominational churches were the way to go and our pastor spoke disparagingly about any churches that were not like us. Well, as we got older my wife and I both felt that the "wild, no holes barred, free-form, anything-can-happen" Sunday service was not our thing anymore. Actually I had felt this for many years but inertia has a way of keeping you from moving.
I wrote about this in my conversion story.(Chapter 5)
At any rate, as I wrote this song, I was trying to articulate that I believed that God was present with us in the midst of the congregation, even in silence and regardless of whether we felt like jumping up and down or just standing still. I knew and believed in my heart that there had to be something more than loud hyper-energized "praise and worship" as a way to reach God and be reached by Him. I didn't believe that an emotional experience was the goal of worship nor the sign that God had touched you. I guess this song was my thoughts on what I thought worship was supposed to be. Little did I know I was about 4 years away from experiencing worship the way the New Testament believers worshiped in the sacrifice of the Mass. I think God was already preparing me to make the jump and the Methodist church was a "stop-over" on the journey to Rome. Here's the song I found tonight. I "digitally" re-mastered it with my newer software.


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