Journey Home - 2016-07-11 - Seth Paine

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program tonight and next week are one of those rare times when I guess we kind of have a two-part series of the journey home it's pretty neat our guest tonight is Seth Payne he's a former Baptist a non-denominational convert to the church and next week we'll have his wife Michelle on the program and in fact next week my son John Mark is going to fill in for me to interview Michelle and it's a couple that's a friend of John Mark and of course now that Seth works for the coming home network he's the developer of Wed and we have a new media for the coming home network so we wouldn't want to have you on the show tell everybody your journey and then but it's good to have you thank you happen on the program and to the whole world I want to tell the world how what a good job you do for the coming home network and all they have to do is to go to the CH network.org site and see the work you do and but you also have a little bit of a website yourself and yeah Kathleen dial or no door Kim whatwhat's that new you can you a new Catholic Network so I a few years ago I was working on my master's in digital media and I I ended up every single project that I did I did a lot of production video production and editing in those kind of courses all revolved somewhere around my faith and a lot of the Miranda the sacraments and so I always started playing around with putting up a website a place to put a lot of these videos that I was working on and I really wanted to start expressing my faith and expecting the beauty of the faith through through these video projects so I wanted that type to it's using you know one of the great technologies and gifts that God has given us for a purpose that draws our attention back to him that's what it's for in the first place yeah a lot of people use it for other reasons yes so well let me get out of the way in and invite you to go way back to beginning let's say your journey great well my parents became Christians just a few years before I was born you know they both grew up going to church but they had an experience when my older sister was very young and they I don't remember the exact story but I remember that they were invited by some friends of theirs who whose their daughter played with my older sister to go to a couple of church events and and then they both had an experience where they accepted Christ into their life and so when I was born you know we were going to a Baptist Church that was a church that they were invited to so I grew up in a small Baptist Church in Massachusetts and that that's just what I knew growing up I one thing I was thinking about having been a pastor with families who changed that when of what a couple has born-again experience and awakening of faith but her own understanding of parenting changes too so you were the experimental child as they move yeah really not practicing too on fire for the Lord Jesus so that you are yeah yes so I up going to church going to prayer services I remember going to to Bible studies with them when I was young you know a lot of different things I think they were really getting into their faith and so I I got to experience that growing up and and I remember just a few of those experiences growing up I remember has 707 I was in the second grade and I remember after church one day I went up to the pastor and it was one of the days that that they received Communion and I I went up to the pastor I asked him why I couldn't go up and he asked me well do you do you believe in Jesus and I said I don't know and he said well let me tell you what you have to do he's like you have to you know just pray to Jesus say that you're sorry for your sins and you need to getting to come and live in your heart and then you can go up and you can go to communion and I said okay and I just kind of tucked that away for a little while and then I remember the day I was going to a private Christian school at the time and there's a couple towns over so we had a van they used to come and pick us up and it was my my older brother and sister and I were all enrolled in the same school Christian school system and so I remember going getting in the band and riding to school I remember it raining just sitting there looking at the rainy day and and I prayed I asked Jesus to come into my heart I said Jesus I'm sorry for all the bad things that I did you know whatever bad things that a seven year old can do I said I wanted you to come and live in my heart and that's that's when it started and from then on I just just the experience of continuing to grow in in my faith that it was a the witness of your friends themselves yeah on their journey and we awakened yeah their faith yeah and that uh did you so they were Baptists was there any Catholic flavor at all in those early hours of you nothing inaudible mention of it no I later learned of some of my mother's stories of my mother went to an Episcopal Church growing up and I saw I remember hearing a couple of stories that she experienced with Catholics growing up but I never really I didn't know any Catholics until you know later on when I was in high school I mean I probably know do some before they didn't know that they were Catholic you know you know I knew some kids at school in high school but even then didn't really think about the difference I didn't really know much about the Catholic Church at all growing up alright so you had the experience of asking Christ into your life and yeah take for awhile I one thing that I know that I've talked with other people and have shared into this experience of asking Christ in my life multiple times growing up and a number of times having this feeling like it didn't take the time before so I needed to do it again and I don't always get instruction on what it's supposed to feel like no different is now supposed to do and say and then accept the reality of it yeah and then and then you have those times of doubt where you're looking at your lifee like well am I really being a Christian and and then you think well I'm not so maybe it didn't work and he'd do it again and then you try and live your life more like a Christian than you did before but you know I grew up going to so I didn't grew up in a Baptist Church until this is no no no no that book in your Bible was a book in your life as a young man yes it was yeah I had I had a number of my I had a number of Bibles growing up I kept losing them and then my mom finally gave me a Pew Bible thinking like well if you just can keep losing when we gonna spend three dollars on it and then that's the one I still have but I I grew up you know going to Sunday school as a kid you know in the Baptist Church until until middle school wouldn't moved and then we started going to a nondenominational church and all through junior high and high school just really continued to grow in my faith and trying to understand it better you know was involved in a few youth groups and then you know getting into high school was involved in the the leadership team of one of the one of the youth groups through you know through a lot of different youth retreats really kind of continued to go deeper and my faith wanted to help under people understand you know their faith or you know grow in their faith so I remember going to evangelism training days with my youth group and the last two years of high school I led a Bible study at my school in the morning so once a week we would meet there's a group of I think seven of us that met before school started and you know I had to get a teacher to sponsor it but you know growing up in Massachusetts it's very very liberal and so you know I knew there were people that weren't happy with that they didn't want Bible study happening on public school grounds but there was a one of the gym teachers was I knew from from church and so she she kept standing behind us and let us you know let us meet and kept encouraging us to meet so really you know contained to grow in my faith and trying to understand the Bible better and reading it it's a sad and fascinating study when you think about Massachusetts having become just as you accept the liberal mmm-hmm varn that given word came from the strong period he had Puritan background and conservative Jonathan Edwards renewal yeah all of that and and then the early Catholicism that it came a little bit later than that but yet it's really lost so much of it yeah well and I so my most recent job was at Harvard Medical School and I was actually even going to school there that's why I was getting my master's was that their extension school and to look at that history you know when I was working there they I think it was three or four years ago they celebrated their three hundred and seventy fifth anniversary and looking back at the history of that school where it came from that used it was it was a school for for missionaries exactly and exactly they don't put up missionaries anymore of course I don't want to apply to anyone living in Massachusetts that there aren't good faithful Christians non-catholic Christians and Catholic Christians there because we know the other schools that were started as a result of were Harvard had gone and Andover Newton was one of the important Conwell and the other grant schools are there and the many great faithful folk fight in that battle yeah but I mean that's that's part of the sadness of the rise of that liberalism yeah well and I think the one of the results of that is in Massachusetts it's a very interesting because there are pockets of evangelicals all around right and so I think being the immune of the environment that it is you know a lot of them you have no matter what church they go to you know a lot of them and you know there's a lot of costs sure what the word would be but you know people from different churches who know each other because you know you go to the same youth rallies and you go to the same you know youth retreats you know I used to go to the youth retreat up on Mount Monadnock know there's a oh my oh man that night Bible Conference they used to go to all the youth retreats and say you know there are one there many years of Yamhill so so you so you know a lot of the different evangelicals from the area because of those events kids they are really tight-knit groups so by the end of high school you were actually leading you were leader leadership role yes we thinking of pastoring about I was I was I started so so then I left for for college I went to Messiah College down in Pennsylvania and my first two semesters I was a Bible major and I was thinking of going into youth ministry and I think the main reason I I decided against that and changed my major with I realized all the history classes I would have had it there and I wasn't really interested in in doing all that studied picture our guest tonight is Seth pain so you were already noticing that you had a leaning more towards technology yeah that science yes so I saw yeah so I started the the bio major and I as I said two semesters then I realized that wasn't for me then then I went to physics because I thought I might want to teach physics and then I realized didn't want to do all the math and then and then I took a programming course and I I said wow this this is amazing I can I can do things just by writing code and and make whatever I want yeah well that's what was that what about long ago cuz I'm just thinking of code yeah so so that first class was probably 93 or 94 okay and so so that that first course was in Pascal or so and then then I dropped out of school came back up to Boston area and was working for a while then went back to finish you know my computer science degree there so I saw yes I started at Messiah back in in 92 and I very early on us my faith really got challenged at school my second semester there I took a course on as either Christian education or a religious education and the professor I had was this woman who was very angry at the church for a number of reasons and and so just put a lot of doubting questions in my mind and then tide of that I I think a lot of people have had this experience at a Christian school especially when you grow up in the church and you have this ideal of what it means to be a Christian and then you go to a Christian school and you see well they're all these people that aren't close to perfect and that is they're still calling themselves Christian yeah and so I had a period in college where I really doubted my faith because of the lives of the people around me that I saw and my quality that they a church they act like Christians and in public they act like Christians but then you see them in the dorm room and they're not really acting like Christians yeah well CS Lewis is a big section about that in hizmet Screwtape Letters when the when the young man becomes a Christian and so the demons of what he do now was just gonna look at other Christians and in many ways when you look back on your upbringing we you aren't prepared a lot for look we're accepting the fact that imperfect people mmm-hmm and how that fits into being a Christian yeah and how to understand it and not just in other people but in yourself when you're dealing with that stuff yeah and that's evangelical you would just said learn I'm sorry mmm-hmm and then moved on yes yeah but are you that forgiving with other people when they hate don't like move on right the same way well yeah and even even that question of asking God for forgiveness that's something I struggled a lot with growing up because you you have those experiences of you know at night you're in better you realize you did something wrong that day like um god I'm sorry but they need to say am I really sorry yeah did I really mean that especially if you ask forgiveness for the same thing the day before you know when I'm three or five yeah I'm a desk had you been baptized during that whole process I was baptized in I'm trying to member travela hell it was I think I was 13 so I accepted Christ when I was seven and I was baptized when I was thirteen and the reason why it took me that long was I didn't realize that it was important it was it was a youth event that we went to up in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee and and there are some friends of mine that's that they had been Christians for a while too but they were starting to talk about being baptized and they said well I really want to be baptized and so they were tithing to our youth pastor and saying well wouldn't it be great to be baptized in Lake Winnipesaukee and like oh that would be awesome I'd love to get baptized in in this lake I know I grew up going on family vacations and I've done did so many things I love committed Lake Winnipesaukee so I'd love to do that so we were on a retreat there for a weekend and then I got sick so I didn't get to but but that put it into my mind that I really want to be baptized so then it's about a month or so later we didn't have a baptismal at our church and so we found a Baptist Church this is when I was at the nondenominational so we found a Baptist Church than a couple towns over and he went over there on a Sunday afternoon and a little baptismal service that's interesting that you're what you're saying is that you're non-denominational Church baptism was important but it was but one of the one experience that I had growing up is until I entered college I never went to church in a an actual church the Baptist Church that I went to as a kid they had a sanctuary but it was under construction and so we met in the gym and then we moved in the nondenominational church that I was going to we met in an elementary school gym and they moved into the star building and moved into a church soon after I left for college okay so so yeah that's why we didn't actually have a baptismal so we had to it we had to go to another and then the church but it was part of their energy maybe not the same sacramental understandingly yeah but it was it was seen and the way I remember being told about it was it's it's a way to profess your faith publicly and as it's a way to witness to people about your faith and so I think that might be why I was encouraged and when I was a teenager because we were really getting into sharing our faith with others alright so you graduate from college then as a programmer yep yep so then so one of the other things well while I was in college and I was really doubting my faith I started looking into different religions and I spent a while looking into into Taoism and other and other you know ideas like that and and actually I you know looking at how God uses everything in your life that was the first time that I really had the idea which I you know looking back and I later realized is a very Catholic idea that every religion has some amount of truth in it and and so I was reading about Taoism and I was looking at this idea of the way and of of how God is so much bigger than any name that we can give him and I and that I just liked him like wow that I feel like that's the way we should be talking about Jesus or that's the way we should be talking about God I felt like that God had been put in such a small box by all the things that I learned about him growing up that I said you know that had the you know one of the main ideas in Taoism is that is that as soon as you name something you limit it and that you know the reality is so much bigger than the names that we give it and I said wow that really sounds like God to me that God is so much bigger than the names that we give to him I'm bigger than your childhood yeah yeah she metal maybe Jim yeah and so and so yeah I spent a few years really kind of a way for my faith but I every once in a while I still felt like God was just reminding me and you know I had the experience later on looking back at that period just every few months I felt like God was saying it's okay you know I'm still here I'm gonna wait for you and no matter where you go no matter what you have to do I'll still be here for you yeah knowing your wife's journey you know again I remind the audience that says wife Michelle will be our guest next week when my son John Mark interviews here it's interesting again to to juxtapose you to your at Messiah College and then you move on and then she's at Gordon College on the other side of the state or you have the other side of New England and she's gonna eventually go over to Italy your move off on your journeys yeah yeah and but different things that are yeah the Lord is using to you don't know her obviously right point well in the funny thing when when we finally met looking back at all the people that we had in common and you know looking at that there were actually a few times when we could have bumped into each other you know when I was at Messiah she went down to look at Messiah when you know I went out to Wheaton to look at that for colleges before she was in college but that you know that's where her parents worked and so and then you know you know her going to school in New England you know she knew some people in college that I knew in high school and you know so there's these interesting connections that we didn't realize until the years later alright so how how far did you get from your faith in these explorations I think I would say that I feel like I got pretty far away I think for a while I went to church because I felt I had to I didn't really feel any connection to it I didn't really know if I could call myself a Christian or not and you know whenever I was home I would go to church with my pencils or did your parents know you were out there exploring yeah yeah yeah and then even even after I you know I came back from the first time when I had dropped out of school and I moved back up and you know I went to school with with my I mean I went to church with my family but I was I was looking into a couple different you know more new agey things you know there are some friends from work that were they went to new agey things and I know there was periods where my mom was kind of worried about some of the things I was looking into and then yeah so then I went back to school I I almost finished that I came back up here I'm sorry I came back to Massachusetts around 2004 for a job and then I started going to to grace Chapel and I really felt at that point like I was starting to find my faith again I I started going just because I you know that's just what I always did I went to church and I met a couple guys there they said well we have a we have a Bible study we want you to come and join us you know there are a lot of great like guys and women that they meet together every week and I said sure and so I I started meeting with them and one of the men that was leading there two guys that led let it one of the guys had grown up Catholic and left when he was 13 and then he had dabbled with the few different things a few different churches and but there is some things that he still held on to from his Catholic upbringing he had ended up the other extreme of anti-catholic which is often the case of a church no no there are things that he definitely didn't like about the Catholic Church but there are there are things that he really did like you know he brought in a lot of Saint Francis and Thomas Merton and and a couple other people like that that he provided focusing on their commitment to Christ my right but you mentioned grace Chapel and it might be gonna I mean I remember grace chap when I was in Massachusetts all years ago who can't remember what sticky grace Chapel originally was associated with the Baptist Church but I never remember if it was yeah independent I I mean when I was there it's totally independent right I don't I think there might have been some route to it I don't remember so again a non denominational an independent Church yeah no that was a very very powerful witness yeah well and yeah in grace chapel is a very large Church for New England you know New England is a lot of small oranges but you know grace Chapel having think at the time 4,000 people that attended regularly was a very large church and they had a lot of a lot of ministries as I said I I went to a small group that was one of their big things there I think that I remember at the time but I think at one point recently they had over 80 percent of all parishioners were in some sort of a small group ministry they also had a very large summer missions trip program you know there were you know kids went on a lot of missions trips but also adults they had you know eight or ten summer adult missions trips every year and I've had gone on a few of those when you look back then would you say that you had rediscovered your faith and absolutely absolutely you know it's starting to really look into Scripture and looking into my faith and being in a group of about eight adults that we could really encourage each other's faith and and especially seeing a group of people that had such strong witnesses that really love the Lord and had an authentic faith that wasn't wasn't fake that really wanted to keep growing in their faith made a huge impact on me and so that was a really real big encouragement to me and you know looking at you know looking now at my time in the Catholic Church you know that the priests that I was confirmed under said something that was very encouraging to me he said because he knew a lot of my story too he said I don't want you to lose one thing that you gained as an evangelical I want you to keep it and I want you to bring it in to the church because we need it and and two of those big things are really seeing you know small group ministries and missions short missions trip ministries it flourished and I would love to be in a parish that had both of those well after the break I want to talk about the short mission trips I know you you went on but also affirming just what the priest said even about your your excursion way out there and to now is it them all that I mean in a way that God was probably using that to prepare you or at least appreciate what you had set aside or maybe not taken as seriously and preparing you for reaching out to other people yeah they're going through the same struggles yeah handed their faith maybe by very committed parents and very committed churches but but had caught with you yeah and it needed to be you know yeah same thing happened to my son yeah the way God leads us over this pause right there come back in a bit and here the rest rest of South story come back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and our guest tonight is Seth Payne and I heard interrupted you right in the journey were talking about really the we're really kidding of a that you would experience through the ministry a Corey's Chapel yeah and that involved both the small group which is such a powerful and means of outreach and but also mission trips were both a big part of your journey yeah yeah so in as I said I was about 2000 when I started going to grace Chapel and the summer of 2001 I went on my first summer missions trip and it was I in the spring but I went on there's a retreat you go on to say you know you want to go on a missions trip and you pick a missions trip to go on but all all the adults that are and and you think are going on a summer missions trip they all go up to to one of the camps up in New Hampshire for a weekend to prepare and to talk about what you're going to do on your trip and to really go over what it means to be on a missions trip go over a lot of the you know cross-cultural issues cross cultural sensitivities so as I was preparing for my first missions trip and I went to I wanted to go to Thailand and but that end up being full they were only taking eight people and so my second choice was to go to Nigeria and so I went to Nigeria with a the group that was hosting it was a small microfinance organization called peer servants and they were going to work with a partner of theirs in Nigeria and and I saw what they were doing and they were going to help with their office you know they had their this microfinance organization in Nigeria was working with you know hundreds of entrepreneurs in the area and so they had an office of a staff I think is five or six and so they needed some technical support in their office and I said well you know I I can do this you know I you know I'd seen so many missions trips and I had been on a few earlier where you just go on here you go and you you know build a house or you know you work on a well or you do some you know some sort of project that anyone but I said well this this is something that I can really help with use my skills to to help someone out and so it went there set up a few printers did some did some work on their on their enter to office network and was really encouraged that I could use my skills as a missionary and and I came back from that experience and I said this this is something I would love to do and so I I started volunteering with that organization and I started working on their website you know help them bring up an Internet at the time this is before you know all the Google tools that everyone uses and I started going on short trips with them and so I just feel so blessed that I've been able to do so many trips with them and you know going all around the world I've been an open able to go to Africa and Asia and you know that's one limitation that's one organization they're all helping entrepreneurs and wow that's so so the model was that they worked with indigenous organizations in different countries and so we would partner with other organizations give them the funds give them the tools that they need to run these microfinance organisms and and then they would go out and give loans out to people very now looking back to it feels you know like a very Catholic thing to do if we weren't out you know doing preaching or you know if I was wandering Larsen evangelical missions people go into the country to relay in the gospel but often they're not thinking that well they're proclaiming it to people that I already have a foundation in the guys because it's a kind of a culture or anything so yours wasn't quite soul right well and it was also working with you know the the organizations in the other countries they were doing the evangelism however they saw fit and they usually you use their programs their micro you know their their loans to bring people in and invite and bite them to know Christ and to see that you know Christ doesn't just live in in church but but he's out in the street helping people and then in in 2004 I had an opportunity to go down and live and prove for a year with this organization tied to that the talking about missions especially the missions to Latin America and I've heard a few people talk about this instead you know evangelical groups are flocking to Latin America to evangelize not realizing that there's there's already a faith that's there you know they're they're going to evangelize all the Catholics in Latin America and so and so that the church that you know the pastors I was working with he was that that that's what he was doing he was in this you know up in the mountains but he was evangelizing all the people that were the group learning about anything about Jesus through the Catholic Church and I know that a lot of them didn't really understand their faith I knew there are a lot of people that said they were Catholic but didn't really you know didn't really have any catechesis it's sometimes as it gets mixed up with yeah with native religions and yes doc so how did all the different festivals that they have but one of the things that I discovered when I was there was that was one of my steps into into the Catholic Church actually stepping back a little bit right before I went down I was down living in Peru I had an experience with a couple of friends I said there's a friend of mine that had led the Bible study had grew up Catholic and left well as I said he was bringing st. Francis he was bringing some other Catholic writers into our Bible study and I realized that he was starting to get a little bit curious and he kept learning more and more about his Catholic faith again I had another friend that I had for breakfast with all the time and and she said that she had growing up Catholic and I said you know I'm starting to hear all these things about the Catholic Church and I don't know anything about it and she's like oh yeah it feels very comfortable he's like I don't go a lot but every once awhile I'll go to a mass and just feels comfortable I said I don't I don't know what that's like and so I said well let's let's go to Mass some time she's like okay so I opened up opened up the Yellow Pages stuck the finger in pick the Catholic Church and let's go there next week so it's okay so we went to Mass and being a good evangelical I got there 15 minutes early and and there is no one there and so I was sitting there and my crunches considering pray and as we were both sitting there praying and this woman comes up and she goes would you two like to present the gifts and I looked her and said what I don't know what you're talking about and and she said well you know in the middle of the mass I'll come up and get you and then you can come back and then you carry out the bread and the wine it handed the priest and I said okay I'm not Catholic I think oh that's okay don't worry about it so I looking back not really you know one of those little hands of God things you first time in in a mass and I I'm presenting the gifts so then you know I I'm just really kind of curious about this Catholic thing you know as I said I didn't know anything about it growing up you know I really loved the mass the first time into it it's beautiful so I started looking into it when I went down to to Peru I brought a copy of the Catechism with me and and I brought a copy of fundamentals of the faith by Peter Kreeft and I said I'm gonna really start studying this and so so useful you selected two very powerful Catholic books I mean we're really on the journey yet or you were just right yeah what you were getting into yeah well I there wasn't any connection in my mind with Peru in these books yet okay I just it was I said well I'm going here I'm no one there speaks English I'll probably have spent a lot of time reading so those two and I brought you know a few other books and I were my regulars but I thought that those would be good you know good books to bring and and so I started reading through the Catechism and I started right at the beginning like I think the way that people say you're not supposed to read the Catechism but I just I'm like it's a buckin just reading and the first section how it aligns with the Crete and how it breaks it down every single three pages is about one or two words and you know I was like I believe was it mean to believe I believe in one God was it mean to be one guy and and I got through I was going through that book I said this this is all good stuff there's nothing in here that I can't say I believe and and going through you know Peter cress book really helping to explain it even more I said wow this yeah I at first it had been that I I really liked the mass I really like the the feeling of it the you know the the kneeling the the prayers the Psalms the a lot of different parts of the the liturgy and then you know beating through these two books really he's realizing like wow that not only did I agree with it all but it there's a there parts of it that explained my faith to me better than I had heard it explained before so so then as I said well I I want to start going to keep going to mass so the pastor that is working with his service was on Sunday evening so I started going to Mass in the morning when I was in Peru and most masses most churches around only had mass at 7:00 and them in the morning and that was it and so I started going and and then I started realizing that I knew what was going on even though it when I started I didn't really speak Spanish that well I had remembered when I gone in Massachusetts and I like I know what they're saying because it's the same thing and that that you know then hit that started hitting me to the universal side of the church that the mass is the same all over the world did your pastor know that you were in the morning well yes yes and I actually I I had a two weeks in the summer so I was there for 10 months from January to the end of October there was a period in June that I went came back to Boston for for two weeks for my sister's wedding and when I came back I made a I mean an order from the Christian bush distributors up in North Shore which I bought so many books in there I got a big two pillows yeah yeah I ordered a copy of the Catechism in Spanish brought it back down and I gave it to my pastor and it I said I'd you know what I don't know about about this Catholic Church but you know there's some really great things in here you really need to read this so yes I was going to that church service and the evening going to Mass in the morning and really continuing to you know I get that you know looking back at falling more in love with it just the beauty and and I think even then really starting to understand and and I said fall in love with the Eucharist see you see that you know that this really is could really be Jesus and then it's not just you know this is symbol because in your non-denominational experiences even your Baptist experience that's what it was yeah did you have just remember it says something Jesus did 2,000 years years before were you seeing that this new Catholic faith lived out by in the peruvians that you were paying time with were no well I didn't I mean the only the only proven as I spent any time with were with the this evangelical church that I went to so I didn't really I didn't know and he actually know that that's not sure there's one there's one Peruvian that I knew and I told him about my experience going to mess and he was a street vendor he sold musical instruments that he and and I think was he and his family made a little Peruvian instruments and so I I met with him all the time and and so I remember him saying you know talked about his faith and like he's he's Catholic okay I mean for their there are Catholics that have faith and one other actually so two people there's him and there is a there's one of the waitresses there is a restaurant that I went to for breakfast like three or four morning's a week and my regular waitress she was at Catholic her parents I don't remember what they were but they weren't Catholic they had they had they had her parents have been born Catholic and joined some I think some Pentecostal group and then she rediscovered her Catholic faith and so we talked about it a few a little bit but so I knew the earth even then that there are some Catholics in the debate so that I came back after that experience that came back to Massachusetts and I said ok I'm really going to start looking into this more so I went to let the parish of Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton and what's going to they're in the morning and go into Grace Chapel in the evening and at for a little while I thought this is great I have the best of both worlds I can I can have the beauty of the liturgy in the morning and I can have you know the emotional experience of the worship band at night and I can I can have the short homily in the morning you can have the long sermon in the evening and so I did that for about a year and a half and then and then something hit me that said you know this isn't you're not just playing around with this you shouldn't be just playing around of this you know the mass is more important than that the mass is more than just something for you to experience you know being going to a Catholic Church is more than just going to a different Church I started to see that my experience growing up was you know I had one church that I was born into and then you know my family went to another church and then went up to college night it's been some time in a Christian mission Alliance Church and I spent some time in Methodist Church and they went back to nondenominational church and I started to get a sense that going to a Catholic Church was not the same thing that I couldn't just say okay I'm going to a Catholic Church now for a while and I'm gonna start going to another Church I started a sense that it was a much bigger commitment and then I stand then I started noticing in the bulletin every week a little paragraph for RCA I said well what's that and and then I I kept looking at I was curious about it but I wasn't sure what it was I wasn't sure if I was ready for it but I but I realized that I had to make a choice and so I decided okay I'm gonna stop going to grace Chapel I'm just gonna be going to Mass and just see what happens so so I did that I stopped going to grace chapel in the evening and I was and at that point I wasn't in a small group anymore grace chapel so I started going to Mass in the morning and and I felt really comfortable there and there's a few months later maybe about six months later I I was in Mass and looked down at the bullet and I said I saw that per se and I said I think this is something I need to look into I think this is something I need to decide if this is really for me or not so so that week I called up the the number on the ad and I talked to the woman and she's okay well let's let's get together on Saturday and talk about it so we got together she said well here's the first experience I mean here's the first thing you do you just you start going to Mass and you start reading and like well I've done all that and she's like okay well are you are you do you think you're really ready for this do you think this is something you really might end up doing is becoming Catholic and I think I think I am she said okay well tomorrow night you know you can you know go to the evening mass and then you can come to the I see a meeting afterwards and and I left that meeting with her that day and for the whole day there were two experiences they had one was a piece they had all day long I knew that God was timing that this was where I needed to be and I also had this feeling like I was saying what took you so long there was a lot of barriers yeah I know a lot of things some you're conscious of something you aren't yeah that takes a while to identify those yeah and for me I realized that the biggest hurdle that I got over was this issue of authority that I realized that I had been my own authority and reading scripture and trying to figure out what it meant and and realizing that that I didn't have to do that anymore so all that a lot of the questions like Mary and in the Saints I I ended up giving up to God and saying you know what I haven't figured this all out yet but if I if I can say that I believe that what the that the Catholic Church has the authority to to interpret Scripture and tell me what what Scripture means and and the you know to teach what true faith is and what a relationship with the Christ really is then I don't need to worry about these other things for now I was like I want to I want to learn about them but I don't need to figure them all out in order to become Catholic I just need to become Catholic and then God will work all those other things out you lose that because I'm thinking about some Baptist or nondenominational person watching and it sounds like what we're saying is you've got the Bible's Authority or you got the Catholic Turkish stories in there because I'd say well why the Catholic Church yeah but the interesting thing is that well it's we recognize the authority of the Catholic Church because of the fulfillment of what it says it's right I'm sure you have the same there's a hand in glove relationship between yeah the Word of God and the authority answered well and the realization that reading Scripture you know thinking of one of the things I had thought about thinking about you know this statement of the authority of the church to teach what the scripture says for a while I was thinking well that means that I can't read the scripture and hear God speaking to me that that's that that's what it meant but then I realized well that's that's not all is it saying I can read scripture at any time and God can speak to me through it that doesn't that doesn't change what the scripture means and that doesn't you know especially you know certain certain key passages that what I'm supposed to believe that's not for me to decide it's for me to listen to God and I can absolutely listen to God through scripture anytime I want but when you're in church and you hear someone say oh okay well let's look at this pass rule what does it mean you know how you know you can go to a number of different churches and hear completely different interpretations of that scripture you know but but to be able to go someplace and say okay well this is what the scripture means and and that's every Catholic Church in the world is going to be saying that same thing yeah if you take a verse like whenever two or more gathered in my name there am I in the midst of um I think it's Matthew 18 so you have that passage okay what does that mean so I mean any two people just get together and pray that mean whatever they decide is true does that make a church so it God can speak to two people gathered but with the beauty of Christ's Church we can make we can figure out whether what they decided is true or not because there's a tradition there's yeah there's the wonderful boundaries of the Creed itself and then teaching of the church to help us understand we're on the right track yeah well as I said as I was reading through the Catechism that that whole first section is all about the Creed and and just seeing like wow this is this is so beautiful and it's so deep and that and that's one of the things that really hit me as I was starting to look into the Catholic Church especially going through RCIA that my experience before that was that I know I was a Christian and I reached kind of reached a pinnacle and there okay well I can you know be in a small grouping car missions trips but again I've really reached kind of the pinnacle of all I need to learn and and and so realizing you know coming into the Catholic Church that I'm never gonna reach the bottom of my faith I'm never gonna stop getting deeper into my faith but that's going to be a lifelong pursuit from now on what about the relationship between your vocation you know your your technological calling and gives given their with your newfound Catholic faith we're recognizing a connection there I wasn't I wasn't recognized it I didn't recognize that right away I think that I had and I was still even after I became Catholic I was still volunteering with the microfinance organization and so there I felt I died I still had my tie between my skills my technical skills and serving serving others look coming into the Catholic Church those two ideas of small group ministry and small missions trips were two things that I brought with me that I said you know I I would love to be able to encourage this and actually at my parish at that I was confirmed and I attended there four years after that and I was in the the group at my parish that was planning and actually implemented the Rise Program which was went through the Boston archdiocese to encourage small groups and so I said well this is a really great opportunity I think that I even try I even went back to my friend at Grace Chapel who was the pastor of small ministry small group ministries said you know I want you to come over and help us out there was there was a little bit of a I don't really think that worked out because I think there's a hard time communicating between between him and my priest and the others involved I would love to be able to see more you know communication between you know between evangelical churches and Catholic churches to say you know you know to share the strength and the skills of things like small small group ministries yeah the way the Holy Spirit is yeah as it says in Vatican 2 lest we forget whatever the Holy Spirit has in graced in the hearts of our separate Rather's virus Bertram you'll so yeah we see how I mean many ways I've always seen small groups the power that it is a fulfillment of Ephesians 4 where it talks about the different groups of leadership that the Lord established in the church apostles and teachers and prophets and it says that they're there for the equipping of the Saints for the work of the ministry so that there be unity in the church and not all this well that's Ephesians 4 and so the the leaders of the church don't have the time or the ability or the the Billie's were in the right word but to actually know the capacity yeah the capacity to reach those people but they trained people who trained people who then so you're you're delegating you're distributing this work which is really what the church Catholic Church has been calling for for so long been John Paul's writings on Christopher Daniel ahe empowering the lady for the work of Christ and that's really I mean the small groups it fit perfectly into that yeah and and the ability for someone to open their home and say you know what we're just gonna meet together you know look over a book look over Scripture talk about our faith catechism share extinct the Catechism and share our experiences support each other pray for each other you know no matter how big your parish is you know it's it's it's always too big to know everyone and to encourage everyone in their faith but within your parish to be able to get together with eight or ten other people to pray with every week and encourage each other every week in your faith into to be through the scripture which are beads of the Catechism talked a little bit about also the power of the small mission trips mm-hmm in the church well the experience that I had as an evangelical is very different now than it is now but the I've been on two short trips with my with my parish in Newton where we had a sister parish down in Honduras and really seeing that it's a way to now sing in a Catholic context of being able to connect the universal Church even larger scale to be able to have group of parishioners from the United States to go visit a group of parishioners in Honduras like my experience and really seeing you know here's a different part of the church here's a different expression or to be able to go to Africa and experience worshiping and experience the liturgy and after a way to connect and say these are our brothers and sisters and their life is so different from mine but they're still my brother and my sister and with the vibrancy of the church in Africa they're gonna start sending missionaries over here early absolutely him make so we're seeing that with some of the priests that are coming here Seth my friend thank you so much for sharing your journey here I'll eat up you've done in the journey home and also your gifts with the coming home Network and again I want to remind the audience if you want to go to new Catholic and you Catholic or you can find out some of the stuff that Seth does or you can do Twitter is at new Catholic media so thanks again say thank you and thank you for joining us on this episode the journey home well Seth's journey but also his encouragement to consider the possibilities of small groups at your local parish there's lots of examples out there lots of material out there just it just takes a little to kind of perfectly consider the the power of that idea for renewal at the local level Seth's done it and it's been powerfully implemented all around the country around the world but it may not be happening in your local level so you might want to consider that god bless you look forward to being with you again next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 13,727

Rating: 4.9036145 out of 5

Keywords: JHT, JHT01532

Id: FtA8rZcDWAw

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2016