Swimming the Bosporus, Chapter 1: From the Megachurch to Orthodoxy

 

I was received into the Orthodox Church yesterday.

It’s been a long time coming. I first attended a Greek Orthodox service about two-and-a-half years ago, another at a Russian Orthodox parish a couple of months after that, and a third two months later. I’ve been attending that Antiochian Orthodox church ever since. Today, I’m officially a member.

Since I began exploring Orthodoxy, my evangelical friends and family have been supportive but always asked why. Often in capital letters followed by several question and exclamation marks. Those of other traditions (or no tradition) have wondered as well.

“Don’t know where to begin,” I would reply. “I’d need to write a book.”

This isn’t a book, but the first in a series of posts explaining my “conversion,” if you can call it that. (I view it more as a gradual process of drawing closer to God.) My audience is made up of those family members, friends, and anyone else who might wonder why a child born into Lutheranism, a teenage convert to evangelicalism, former small group leader, megachurch employee, and Sunday school teacher would leave that world and head to some weird old church from the other side of the world. I hope this will provide some answers or at least raise new questions.

I expect to have a new installment of “Swimming the Bosporus” each Sunday morning. The title is a play on converts to Catholicism “swimming the Tiber” and Anglican inquirers “walking the Canterbury Trail.” The seat of the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarchate is in the ancient city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) which overlooks the Bosporus Strait that divides Europe from Asia. So very clever of me.


“Heaven have mercy on us all — Presbyterians and Pagans alike — for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick


But first, a warning. This is just my personal, finite view of infinite, capital-T Truth. Nothing I write should be taken as authoritative. I am neither a priest nor a theologian, just a dumb little pilgrim groping in the dark. I’ve been Orthodox less than 24 hours, for St. Pete’s sake. If you want the official stance of the Orthodox Church, talk to a pro.

I’ve long held a proper Finnish Lutheran reserve when talking about religion, never wanting to come off as preachy, judgmental, or rudely challenging anyone’s beliefs. I’m hesitant to write about faith at all.

Please don’t take any of my views on other denominations, faiths, or non-beliefs as a critique, dig, or insult. I am deeply thankful for all the Protestants, Catholics, Evangelicals, pastors, priests, monks, Bible study leaders, and countless Christian authors who have taught me so much. I’m indebted to rabbis, philosophers, teachers from the far East, scientists, psychologists, secular teachers, and everyone else who have pointed to the Truth in their own way. I wouldn’t be here without you.

Lastly, I take Truth seriously, but I can’t take myself seriously. (If you’ve met me, you can understand why.)


“The Orthodox Church is evangelical, but not Protestant. It is orthodox, but not Jewish. It is catholic, but not Roman. It isn’t non-denominational – it is pre-denominational. It has believed, taught, preserved, defended, and died for the Faith of the Apostles since the Day of Pentecost 2,000 years ago.”


Setting the Table

I was baptized as an infant. Don’t remember much.

It was in a Lutheran church, so I was probably sprinkled, and my father scheduled it for the morning of Super Bowl I. The Packers beat the Chiefs 35-10, so dad was in a great mood and I was spiritually destined to be a Green Bay fan for life. He probably dropped some cheese in the Holy Water.

We attended regularly in the suburbs of Chicago and mom taught Sunday School for a while. At age six, the family moved to Phoenix and attended another Lutheran church. It was in the very wealthy enclave of Paradise Valley, AZ, and my middle-class family was disregarded like Dickensian street urchins. Not a great fit.

My brother, five years my senior, got through confirmation but we stopped attending before my sister or I hit the right age.

Mom and Dad got divorced when I was about 14, Dad immediately remarried, Mom started drinking, my buddies and I started sneaking out booze and getting loaded in the desert. In short, high school sucked.

My dad, however, joined my stepmom at a peculiar little church near their house across town. It was non-denominational and evangelical but held several odd views. Their most passionate belief was that they were right and everyone else was very wrong. Other evangelicals might slip under the pearly gates, but they would never reach any level of spiritual maturity. The Catholic Church was the “Whore of Babylon”; the Eastern Orthodox were unworthy of mention.

Regardless, it was there I accepted Christ, stopped getting loaded in the desert, and studied the Bible with zeal. The textbook “born again” experience.

Right out of high school, I joined the Navy and began attending mainstream evangelical churches, usually leaning Baptist. I was deeply involved with evangelical groups on base and went to every Christian rock show that hit Hawaii. (Yes, even Stryper.) In my new thinking, infant baptism was irrelevant; I had to choose baptism as an adult. So I got dunked in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oahu by a great guy in a Hawaiian shirt named Pastor Brad. You can’t get more evangelical than that.

Upon returning to Arizona, it was mostly megachurches. In college, I helped lead the young adult group, worked in the church office on communications part-time, led small-group Bible studies, hosted a weekly segment on Christian radio, and even started an alternative Christian ‘zine.

I met my wife in that young adult group, had two beautiful daughters, and we later taught Sunday school and AWANA (think Baptist Cub Scouts). In my heart, I remained fiercely non-denominational, jokingly referring to myself as a Megachurchian.

Then, life got more complicated.

Chapter 2.


The next installment of “Swimming the Bosporus” will appear next Sunday morning.

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  1. Jon Gabriel, Ed. Contributor
    Jon Gabriel, Ed.
    @jon

    Kevin Creighton (View Comment):

    I first met Jon in a church youth group a long, long time ago (We totally should have done that Christian rave idea we had).

    I haven’t ended up at the same destination as he has, but I have taken the same journey.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-christians.html

    The same church group I met the missus! Great, great times, sir.

    • #31
  2. Jon Gabriel, Ed. Contributor
    Jon Gabriel, Ed.
    @jon

    danok1 (View Comment):

    Fredösphere (View Comment):
    I find it interesting that the Antiochian Orthodox seems uniquely competent at receiving English-speaking converts. (I’ve visited my local [unamed] ethnic Orthodox and thought it way too locked into its subculture to be a force in the wider community–and its members were shocking in their lack of promptness in attending worship. No temptation on my part to go back.)

    I think this has to do with the number and strength of the ethnic community. I joined the GOC at a parish in Westchester County, NY. There is a thriving Greek community there of mostly 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. The Divine Liturgy and all other services are conducted in Greek, and there is a very strong effort to keep the community “Hellenized,” for lack of a better word.

    We moved to North Carolina and found a GOC parish. The Greek community here is nowhere near as numerous as in New York, and it comprises 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc., generations. As such, there has been a lot of intermarriage with non-Orthodox, and many of the spouses have joined the Orthodox church. We also have some Arab and Russian Orthodox in the parish. The Divine Liturgy and other services are mainly in English. (We say the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer in Greek, English, Arabic, and Russian.) We also have some members who were “seekers,” as @arvo puts it.

    As far as the promptness of arrival is concerned, well, my experience has only been in the Greek Orthodox parishes, and I’ve found the same thing, but only among the older, Greek-speaking members. The attitude seems to be, “As long as I’m there before Communion, it’s okay.” I don’t get it, but I try to get there on time.

    The first churches I visited were Greek and Russian, and I was concerned about dedication to ethnicity. Both were VERY welcoming, though, and I enjoyed the experience. Here in the sun belt, most people are transplants, so it’s likely a different experience than in a tight immigrant neighborhood in, say, Chicago.

    • #32
  3. Arvo Inactive
    Arvo
    @Arvo

    SkipSul (View Comment):
    Where do you draw the line between the first century and “Church Father theology”? Only with the Apostles? The first generation afterwards? At what point would you say that the early Christian church somehow apostasized or fell away? This is one of the key predicates to much of modern Protestantism – that somehow the early church failed, only to be rediscovered in modern times. It’s something of a modernist habit of rejecting everything not mentioned by any of the apostolic writings contained in the Bible, while also rejecting the very environment in which the Bible was compiled. The Bible as we have it today emerged directly out of the 4th century world you describe as “a hot mess”.

    Oh, there’s so much here!

    The first century ends around 99 or 100 or 101 AD, depending on how you wanna count.  Remember people wanting to call 2000 the new millennium?

    I’m not a big fan of calling things apostate or heretical.  We’re all trying to figure these things out and they are hard.  By Acts 15 you’ve already got a council dealing with the question of circumcision, a lot Paul’s later epistles are dealing with doctrinal disputes, Paul and Peter got into it at Galatia (When the guy said to Paul, “Peter won’t eat with us,” did Paul reply “Hold my beer?”)  G K Chesterton in his book on Orthodoxy paints a beautiful and moving image of the church as a boat on a stormy ocean of history, tacking and jibing and rolling as it defends the Truth against the spirits of the ages that it has to deal with.  So the scholars and theologians of various ages are always reacting against something, and often overreacting.  (I want to say that Alistair McGrath, in his Dangerous Idea, says every reaction is an overreaction, but I can’t find the quote.)  So reading those scholars and theologians, we need to be careful to tease out the proper reaction and watch for the overreaction.  And as much as I owe Martin Luther, he overreacted a bit here and there.

    I’m reading a lot of Church Fathers, especially trying to understand their christology.

    Oh, and it’s really hard to talk to someone and get them to imagine that there was no canon, before there was a canon.  People tend to assume that by the time Paul was shipwrecked you could go down to your local church gift shop and pick up a full 66 book Bible.

    • #33
  4. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Arvo (View Comment):
    Oh, and it’s really hard to talk to someone and get them to imagine that there was no canon, before there was a canon. People tend to assume that by the time Paul was shipwrecked you could go down to your local church gift shop and pick up a full 66 book Bible.

    Very true.  And what I would give to find some surviving copies of the letters the Corinthians wrote back to Paul, if nothing else just hear the other side of that whole conversation, or some of the other letters that must have been exchanged during those years.

    • #34
  5. Arvo Inactive
    Arvo
    @Arvo

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Arvo (View Comment):
    Oh, and it’s really hard to talk to someone and get them to imagine that there was no canon, before there was a canon. People tend to assume that by the time Paul was shipwrecked you could go down to your local church gift shop and pick up a full 66 book Bible.

    Very true. And what I would give to find some surviving copies of the letters the Corinthians wrote back to Paul, if nothing else just hear the other side of that whole conversation, or some of the other letters that must have been exchanged during those years.

    Right!  Paul was so hard on that church!  I bet the writing of the “super apostles with spectacular ministries” that Paul was pounding on would have been a hoot!

    • #35
  6. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Love your story! I’m in the process of making a change myself, and like you it is a long time coming too. It’s interesting how growing up, the seeds are planted (if you are lucky), then we go through different stages and in our later years, seem to come full circle. Your ancestral roots become more meaningful.  I’m glad you made it to the Bosporus! 

    • #36
  7. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Jon, I’m looking forward to the series.  Thanks.

    • #37
  8. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    Jon Gabriel, Ed. (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Have you seen @skipsul‘s posts on Orthodoxy? He’s another fine writer.

    Yes, they’re fantastic!

    I know Gary has already checked out our interview with @skipsul where we talk about his conversion.

     

     

     

    • #38
  9. No Caesar Thatcher
    No Caesar
    @NoCaesar

    You and David Gahan (Depeche Mode’s singer).

    • #39
  10. No Caesar Thatcher
    No Caesar
    @NoCaesar

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Jon Gabriel, Ed.: The Catholic Church was the “Whore of Babylon”; the Eastern Orthodox were unworthy of mention.

    This silly graphic has been circulating for years, and I think sums up how some view the Orthodox: the “weird bearded papists”. But the Coptic “sand papists” line always cracks me up.

    I am far from an expert on this, but I have gotten the impression the denominations of Christianity developed as more of a circle around the “Roman Lake”, the Mediterranean.  Granted the two capital cities of the Roman Empire – Rome and Constantinope — are the chief points of origin, but it seems that many of the major denominations of Christianity originated from the major Imperial bishoprics: Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, and Armenia (granted the latter is a region not a city, and not on the Med).   Some of them also originated heretical sects like Arianism.  In the West the Protestant Reformation kicked off by Luther was all an offshoot from Roman Catholicism.  However, the other major branches have also had their subdivisions, such as the Orthodox church’s split into Oriental & Eastern branches.  It seems that many of the doctrinal differences in these splits tended to have geographic origins.

    • #40
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