The Journey Home - 2013-04-22 - Randy Ory - Former Church of Christ

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program we know especially those of us that live in America that the countryside is strewn with hundreds and thousands of different Christian traditions churches starting new well if not churches even denominations starting new every five days statistics say in America they're happening all over and they're changing and usually one of the motives for the change from into a new church often the breakaway is renewal returning going back to the way it was assuming that things for 2,000 years have gotten out of kilter and so we need to go back we need to go back there's always that and like I said every five days there's a new movement somewhere and it makes it hard then to to understand the beliefs of this little church or that little Church in the corner or which Church in town they all may say Church or Christ but what do they mean and the reason I'm giving this introduction because our guest tonight Randi ory he's a revert to the church but he spent some time in the Church of Christ and it's good to have him here because he can talk about his own journey both back to the church but also as a member of the Church of Christ one of those many little churches out there that actually doesn't have that long of a history in terms of Christianity so thank you for joining us on the program and Randy it's great to have you here thanks potentially future deacon right yes yes Lord willing that's right you're in your second year second year five yes well that's good that you've discerned that call now that you've come home and we'll talk about that maybe later in the program but the first thing for me to do is get out of the way and invite you if you would to take us back and get it started on hearing the early days of your journey okay I'll take you back kind of to the beginning my wife and I Lynne we hail from the great state of Louisiana and particularly from the city of New Orleans which I think immediately tells you oh we have our Catholic contacts in our upbringing Louisiana's like the only state in the countries you know it has parishes instead of County so that says a lot right there and being from New Orleans just you know the Catholic Church is present on every corner just about in fact growing up you know I was just accustomed to parishes having schools and just being so pervasive in our neighborhoods our city and society and so on so I didn't really do anything else and it's even though it's one of the few places in America that continues to keep its culture mm-hmm most of everybody else has become a Majin eyes but Louisiana tries to keep and what's also unique about that Catholic culture is that it was a french-canadian exactly a Catholic culture that came down from Acadia down to the south right that's where the word Cajun comes from it's it's a kind of a corruption of Acadian that's right exactly so we grew up in in New Orleans and my upbringing was very Catholic my parents both my parents were Catholic my father French Catholic my mother was Irish Catholic both from the New Orleans area and they both attended Catholic elementary schools and Catholic high schools themselves so by the time it was time for my sister not at ten schools it was permission the cards would be attending a Catholic elementary school Sandra the Apostle in New Orleans so we both attended there and then for high school I attended a Silesian High School Archbishop Shaw so in all-boys school in New Orleans a lot of the schools are both or usually either you know kind of all the way all-girls schools still in the idea that these are minor seminaries is actually exactly and particularly the Silesian tradition and even Jesuit schools and so on very similar so uh but growing up our house was was probably like most people's it was very Catholic we took it for granted quite honestly but it was very Catholic we had a picture of the Holy Family on the wall and maybe a holy car in the frigerator a crucifix on the wall rosier under the pillow in fact the crucifix interestingly is in my garage even now hanging over the doorway into our home so it's going on nearly 55 years that crisp exhale exists but uh everybody in our world was Catholic I mean my friends and so we all went to the same schools like as you said it's more of a culture than a city and so I didn't really know anyone who wasn't and quite honestly to the degree I even saw little churches around our neighborhood an area I didn't give much thought to you know the Baptist Church around the corner or the Presbyterian Church I just didn't know much about it everybody I knew was Catholic and our upbringing was very Catholic I mean weekly mass bringing the palm home on Palm Sunday and sticking it behind the crucifix we didn't give a whole lot of thought to our faith kind of in a in kind of a intellectual way so to speak but but we were very devout in our practice and never really gave much thought to any alternative quantity didn't really think about alternatives and that was true all through elementary school high school I have great memories of being an altar boy and you know kind of donning the the black and white toga they gave you a good opportunity to get out of the blank khaki uniforms that we wore in elementary school and doing the Stations of the Cross and everything else that an ultimate was called to do so our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount talks about doing your prayers so that others might be so that they might be seen by others and that's your reward as opposed to doing it in secret so your father sees it behind closed doors during those years where were you spiritually very devout probably didn't think in terms of kind of like a personal relationship with Jesus probably much like many of our friends and family we felt close the largest part of who we were it was so close as we never really gave thought about it was kind like the air we breathe you know that kind of thing so but a tree is definitely a relationship with the church and with Jesus and it just added way that's probably different that our Protestant friends tend to couch it did you kind of automatically then as a part of this culture believe that that was our Lord in the Eucharist absolutely yeah things like that have no no doubt and growing up for me and for my family and friends we there was no questioning that so I miss around age 18 or so I was given a King James Bible by a friend I was there actually a friend of the family and I'm not I think he himself had just come from kind of a Gospel 10th meaning kind of experience and maybe he thought I needed it I'm not sure exactly what the impetus was but he gave me a King James Bible and quite honestly Marcus I didn't know anything about translations or anything else to me it was just the Bible I kind of learned later was the King James Version but he gave me this Bible and so I began to read it and you know in high school we had been you know boys Catholic High School we did have good religious education but it was principally what I would now call moral theology it wasn't we didn't have a lot of biblical theology or biblical teaching we didn't do anything on the history of the church as I recall so for four years our religion classes were principally you know trying to keep all the boys straight and and and kind of teach them how to live which is good right but unlike and in that there would have been scripture to some degree not explicitly not scripture classes person you might have a quote from agustin backing up this button also but they never quote from Scripture and so it's all in there as well as hearing scripture every day and mail and ass sure it was there but but did you have your own Bible that you opened up very often not not really in high school kallana slow yeah it was probably tucked away in a drawer so we people didn't think we're a dabbling and Protestantism baby but no it wouldn't have been that explicit yeah I know today in Catholic high schools obviously there's whole curriculums around the Gospels and Old Testament so on but not quite that explicit but woven and as you said so I get this Bible and I begin to to read it and principally I'm reading the Gospel of John not even at his urging just begin reading the Gospel of John and the Psalms I remember those are the two books I was kind of pulled to the most so I got me a good yellow highlighter you know kind of thing you would have used back in no ebooks or anything yet and just begin marking it up and was particularly pulled to the red letter portion of the King James Version the Gospel of John those long monologues and teachings of Jesus and I didn't give a lot of critical thought to what the text meant or said it just it was just interesting to me as someone like you said it would heard scripture in Mass but never really given a long reading or a long attention to the text I probably treated the text as individual verses you know I didn't really know much about kind of how the text was put together and theme and so on so probably just thinking that's interesting verse in John 16:33 or that's an interesting Psalm a kind of thing and what that then led to was just getting a bunch of loose leaf paper staple in the corner and just start writing them out so sort of writing out favorite verses maybe not for the purpose of memorizing them but I just was so interested in it that the highlighting kind of gave way to writing them out is this kind of pre-computer to some degree in Saudi and so I began to learn verses and I felt really pulled two verses and quite honestly in doing that especially in John's Gospel I did begin to feel a greater closeness to Jesus by doing that yeah the word was speaking to me in a way that I'd never really experienced orally in exactly that same way so that was really a good experience so a couple of years later a couple earlier my wife and I were married when I were married and a couple years later we started to go to daily Mass or at least I did more often we're doing mass anyway as a couple and his family but I began to go to daily Mass and in going to daily Mass I started get more and more interested for some reason other religions just known what they believed not him becoming another religion because kind of what they believed and I began to see these Baptist churches and Presbyterian Church on the corner I really never seen before I pay much attention to what do they believe so one summer in 1980 I visited a Baptist Church just on my own just went to one of their services on a Sunday and I was quite surprised at an immersion a baptism by immersion I'd never really seen before why don't you sure I knew that people baptized by immersion then so I was quite quite amazed I thought I found it very interesting the congregational singing was very robust but I never gave it much mind just still went to Mass every week continue to read my Bible and so on then one Tuesday I remember was a Tuesday only because the next night I went to their midweek Bible class I saw this Church of Christ on the corner not far from where we lived and I had never really paid attention to it before the name was even kind of unique it struck me as well that's interesting you know it never had seen it seems like it's pretty pretty you know clear as to who they claimed they follow so I gave that church a call that Tuesday and I just the person answer I thought was the pastor so I chatted with him for a good while and a very patient answering question I'm quite sure I said right away I was Catholic was i speaking to the priest or was i speaking to the minister and speaking to what he described as the minister and so I just had some questions what do you believe how do you worship and that kind of thing very innocent and that kind of thing well he was very patient answering the questions and probably quite surprised and glad that I called so I remember he was a Tuesday only because he said look we're having midweek Bible study and devotion on Wednesday night tomorrow night why don't you come sure enough so myself and an uncle uncle just a couple years old and he decided to go he just kind of went same thing kind of novelty of it so went to this Church of Christ I had never set foot other than the Baptist Church I visited in any other Protestant Church before except for that Baptist visit so we go in and they're studying that night the book of Exodus so we go into what they call the fellowship hall and there are 40 people with their Bibles open to the same place studying the book of Exodus I had never seen anything like that before Maja's had an experience that even in the classroom in high school and so I sat I've probably been asked a couple questions or made some comments as little I knew but I still probably did and I was just really struck by this many people being focused on Sacred Scripture of the Bible and you know intently interested and devoted to it so we were about to leave and he said oh forget the devotional I said well how long is that last I don't want to say too long and he says oh it's just like five or 10 minutes we have a prayer and then we do some singing come on into the church say great so we go in and I'm not sure exactly they call it a projects called it their meeting room they don't call it a sanctuary or anything so we go in and I'm struck by what I don't see first I'm not really looking for anything in particular but I'm just struck by the absence of things I don't see an altar see a very simple table I don't see a stained glass don't see clearly don't see Stations of the Cross I don't see a crucifix I don't even see a cross and then I'm thinking where do you where do you dip your finger for the blessing you know the holy water font I'm thinking oh there must be out for reef machine or something you know I'm not sure where they are but all those things are absent and quite honestly I wasn't critical of the environment but it just seemed very stark very almost like a almost like a Civic Auditorium upon reflection actually even I felt it then so I stayed and we you know we sang a few songs well what happened was I saw someone from work who I wasn't expecting to see there she clearly wasn't expecting to see me so we kind of made contact and she saw thanks for coming I kind of think so over the next few weeks should begin to ask me at work just how my experience was how I enjoyed it would you know what I like about it and so on she started inviting me back so I'll let it go for a few weeks didn't visit so she kept inviting me so I said well let me go to maybe their ten o'clock worship on a Sunday and we were still going to Maslin and I so I decided to go to that ten o'clock worship Lynn didn't go with me the first time and then I went to Mass that evening so I went to there ten o'clock worship and I was really struck by kind of a acapella singing which I can talk about later by why they sing acapella and sort of the the length and to the comprehensive nature of the sermon because you know the sermons kind of three-quarters of the server's right principally so it was an enjoyable experience at this point I have no issues with my Catholic faith there's no you know there's no kind of problem there's no issues I'm not mad at anyone there's no no concerns of any sort but I'm just getting increasingly interested so she kept inviting me back and so I'd go occasionally and not go so then invited Linda Golan's like sure I'll go so we started going Sunday morning to the Church of Christ occasionally and still Mass and evening well finally this co-worker says hey we'd like to join me to join us in a Bible study my husband and I sure you know I've been reading the Bible I got my sheets all marked up in my highlighter ready and everything else so Lynn is also okay with it so we're gonna alternate homes and have this home Bible study just the four of us so we're good with this so I'm thinking it's going to be a very informal kind of maybe open up to the book of Romans and read Romans and discuss it or pick a verse or something like that we really didn't talk about the format well as it turned out Marcus it was a very structured kind of patterned formal study I really wasn't expecting that it wasn't really a big deal but it was not what I expect so we met and I think the study was called the open Bible study and what it was was a few pamphlets kind of different colors and they were like 40 or 50 questions under different categories so the categories are things like Authority proper worship you know Jesus you know another kind of you know that kind of thing Bible and so we started the very first question I almost remembered if not verbatim in essence was what you did was I'm sorry you read two or three passages that were on the pamphlet and then you were faced with a yes-or-no question the whole format was set up in yes or no so the very first question was based on reading these texts would you not say would you not agree that all authority is located in the Bible so it's kind of an assumptive sort of question written that way with a yes or no answer well if I remember that texts were clearly 2nd Timothy 3:16 and 17 of gross and they may be a passage from Matthew 15 that was kind of anti tradition mmm might been one other passage usually 2 or 3 and so quite honestly we read the passage and I think on that very first one we just said yes we just kind of circled yes that seems reasonable just based on what I've read so we kept going through you know the study all of them yes or no kind of questions that casually be like a little hiccup you know if you didn't really want to say yes mostly we're geared for the yes answer generally if you didn't wanna say yes you were kind of guided back to the passages to reread them did you really miss something if you really begin to challenge you know what you thought about it based on maybe some other form of authority you always back kind of brought back to 2nd Timothy 3:16 and 17 or the Matthew 15 passage that's what we started with the authority subject first so we worked on that for a couple of weeks everything was going relatively smooth a few little hiccups we got toward the end and you started moving into kind of faith repentance kind of your response and baptism now the faith and repentance section cause us no problem that seemed reasonable we knew we knew about confession and repentance and faith is obviously ubiquitous across all face it was no problem with that we got to baptism I think we read acts 2:38 and we read passages from acts like acts in acts 8 to fill up in the eunuch that story in the passage really was geared to kind of get you to say in the sea that the subject of baptism was an adult the form of baptism was immersion and the purpose of baptism was for the remission of sins now I'm not sure all that was packed in the question but it was kind of leading you to those three-part kind of answer so the end the question was set up something like after having read these passages would you not agree that baptisms for adults by immersion for the remission of sins well the subject of infant baptism obviously came up for me this is really the probably the strongest pushback I gave because I fell implicitly though it wasn't really being said that my infant baptism was being questioned so we talked a bit about that and you know they were well well you know infant baptism really a person can't really have faith they can't really confess there's no sins to confess and so on and I really wasn't probably equipped to talk a lot about original soon or the whole purpose of incorporating into the body and so on at the time so I just kind of acquiesced but didn't really want a circle yes or no so we kind of left it there so several weeks passed without any conversation we kind of were sitting on the fence so to speak we knew that this was kind of the crescendo that the study was leading to but we just didn't feel really comfortable so I think we continued to go to the church we continued to go to Mass and then they kind of made contact again after a couple weeks so we studied baptism some more and the more we kind of studied the more I kind of said well you know maybe maybe there is something to this you know faith involved in the step and also being an adult and maybe the mode really does matter this immersion I didn't know anything about different modes in the early church and so on at that time so without really consulting our parish priest or without really much prayer quite honestly or really any real deep reflection except for having gone through the study we kind of acquiesced and we were baptized in the Church of Christ well quite not first of all you weren't aware that that actual study was specifically designed the challenged Catholic absolutely not now what's not it was that was really what was ba those exclusives out of context and yeah they're you work Wow yeah and I've quite honestly didn't really know about context or anything so to me these verses at first that they just look like nice little standalone verses on the subject I didn't think about well you're kind of ripping them right out of context right that came much later we had no reason to even suspect that that's what they would sure be trying to do exactly just putting the verses there he's what they say but he's it's really interesting probably evil most funny and after we were baptized we kind of still went to Mass occasionally and I kind of viewed our baptism as sort of uh I hate to say the word but almost like an upgrade to an infant baptism it was and we really didn't see ourselves as fully and only members of this church we were members now but we didn't really see I mean we still went to Mass occasionally but I would say pretty quickly and as my recollection maybe a couple months later just going there being involved in the Bible study there and so on and just kind of getting more connected to people we just probably slowly began to stop going to Mass the reason I make a point about that is and again to repeat an earlier point we really weren't angry and I know I wasn't with the church in any way with the Catholic Church so we weren't really fleeing the church it was more a matter of curiosity kind of unbridled and then kind of once once we got into that study and the people were nice and there probably was some pull to the whole you know a group of people kind of studying the Bible together so that pulled us maybe in a way that we weren't experiencing but there was nothing really negative in telling us to look and in that particular search that you were encountering Church of Christ denigrating the Catholic Church not at that point you know no that would come later and but be much more insidious and much you know much more slow but but we didn't at that point know in fact it would have been quite reluctant to bring up that kind of thing during the study for sure yeah so that begins kind of the 11 year Odyssey in Churches of Christ which when I think about this I kind of break it into three periods it's it's not quite this clean as I'm gonna describe it but there are about four years where I'm just drinking from the fire hose so to speak you know absorbing it also cannon and I'll kind of go through that then kind of a three year period of really being quite a hardened kind of Church of Christ member and that's where maybe a little bit of the anti-catholicism may have crept in a bit and in the last four years we're kind of the kind of the search the research the prayer the reflection and kind of realization of you know where I was all right so it kind of take you through that yeah the first four years or so like I said just kind of just getting my feet wet so to speak of soaking it all in I went to every class we offered I went to these gospel meetings at Churches of Christ hold any kind of even any kind of fellowship that was outside the city I went with people to them I even started getting sharper and sharper scripture and so I began to kind of get involved in meetings and debates with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that they would set up and so they kind of bring me along as maybe the guy who was getting a little better at scripture and could kind of combat particularly Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses for some reason more than anybody else and so in that first four year period I was really you know involved in their Bible classes I wasn't really giving much thought to the faith I had left I wouldn't say by this time you really had left it oh yes yes eight months after we're about to we did stop going to Mass alright I would say in that four year period there wasn't really a strong sense of being and in any way anti-catholic all my friends were still Catholic my family was still Catholic and they were really weren't putting pressure on me when I left no were they putting pressure me to come back they just kind of saw it as well what's interesting you've grown your faith in a different way they weren't there was no kind of real strong pull and you sort of way probably at the end of that four-year period around that time three or four years in I began we're getting really sharper and sharper in Scripture from their point of view and so I began kind of doing some backfill preaching when the preacher was on vacation or that kind of thing they didn't really get that to a lot of people there's more than one but there weren't a lot of guys who they would call to the pulpit to preach so I remember toward the end of that period I did a sermon on Romans 8 the love of God the second half of Romans 8 yeah and you know intuitively Marcus I probably felt like you know there were so many sermons on the sectarian evils of denominationalism and you know even things like just overly concerned with like the qualification of elders and so on because that's a big part of their their church organizations and I felt like the people were lacking just a really substantial sermon on just the love of God now I'm not saying that was real explicit but I didn't maybe me doubts I was drawn to it I was drawn to Romans 8 it's my very first sermon kind was on Romans 8 and remember preparing a 45-minute sermon was pretty pretty tough even for me so that was kind of it I'd say the characteristic of the four years my wife Lynne by the way was our like you know three year old Bible class Sunday school teacher so we were very comp aware we were we were not feeling too pulled back to the Catholic Church we probably even forgotten about it quite honestly no one was trying to pull us back and the next four year next three years or so was a little different I think you know having absorbed the first four and then kind of continuing I got a little more firmly I guess assured that we were in kind of the Lord's Church the the true Church of Christ established in 33 and I'll talk about it they meant about apostasy and restoration yeah and then restored more recently and actually the the active restoration from some points of view is already done and from the other points of view it's kind of always going on but but nearly done but I probably felt more certain that it was in a church that was from the Apostolic age right off the pages of the New Testament and we were the only true church add to that I begin to really absorb where the idea or kind of come to terms with this notion of apostasy that in some way all the denominations of Protestantism were apostate but the Roman Catholic Church in particular was kind of a poster child so to speak for apostasy now they did that a little differently each congregation and so on but I probably got a little closer to that sort of Andy Catholicism in that in that period and I remember even I never really tried to to confront my family about being Catholic or anything for some reason I just thought that was off limits or something I saw I really didn't but I do remember one little analogy I came up with a jocular moments like was yesterday I got two glasses and put like a soft drink in one maybe quarter filled and I said this is the pure gospel of Christ and then I began to pour water into that glass from the other glass and the more I poured the more diluted it became of course and I said this is Roman Catholicism being poured in you know from the beginning over the centuries and so I kept feeling it more and more until you know became hardly was recognizable as a pseudo drink anymore right I remember that was kind of like yeah yeah reception but you know that was probably as stark or as close I got to kind of really trying to bring my family my extended family into into the way there's a sense in which you almost have to have a certain sense of anti-catholicism to believe in the restoration movement I mean you sure you really it's a given yes it's technically given to Protestantism - mm-hmm you're protesting against something but especially the restoration move is almost more clear-cut that you're restoring something that was before right in a bit about yeah bit about that that's really important in fact why don't we why don't we pause there okay cuz it's time for a break because that's a good point I don't want to miss or have to cut into this idea of the restorations the idea and some of the presumptions that you were even now becoming more directly aware of as you're it's there's anti-catholicism element let's come back to that okay good see bit welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Randy Orie I'm Marcus Grodi your host Rani's a revert but he's talking about is Church of Christ stage and really are at that place where you really are realizing that at the core of it is a direct movement against the the Catholic background so it might be a good time to talk more in detail about this whole restoration as I do I can't the restoration movement began in the early 19th century and kind of coming out of the Great Awakening period there were particular figures involved Alexander Campbell Thomas Campbell Barton stone in fact the movements often called the Stone Campbell movement and what it was kind of simply was kind of a move by principally Presbyterian ministers to call people kind of out of sectarianism out of what they saw sectarianism out of the denominations kind of no Creed's no catechisms and kind of back to the Bible so it's sort of an attempt to kind of a back to the Bible movement now restoration ISM in general is kind of larger than Churches of Christ or they're part of it but the principal kind of preserver a lot of movement Center time in Mormonism comes out of that same period and if little later Jose witnesses and so on but all the restoration movements have in common this theme of there was once a time when the church was pristine golden and at some point and they all very on this point apostasy set in either very quickly or over a little bit of time and it all kind of went went to kind of hell in a handbasket so to speak it unraveled and as to how it unraveled and when in varies a little bit even within Churches of Christ it varies a little bit but the key the other key point is that the Bible in the Bible alone which is part of the larger of Sola scriptura principle is the only way that we can kind of make Bible Christians New Testament Christians which really is the language that church the Christ likes to use we're trying to restore New Testament Christianity we're trying to restore the Bible Church the New Testament church and that kind of is I mean I guess part and parcel with the church Christ really believes that's kind of their main I guess their main principle is restoration of a time when the Bible only was the sole authority so I think probably as I entered this third phase very rapidly you know with in my 11 years in church the Christ was I want to really test that again at this point I'm not really drawn nono Catholics for talking to me I'm not really drawn back to the Catholic Church at this point but I'm beginning to feel a little uneasy about this principle really these two principles one Sola scriptura and more importantly Sola scriptura as something that was believed and practiced in the early church so I said well one way to kind of maybe tackle this is to kind of do a little bit of research now wasn't really familiar with the Church Fathers quite honestly but they were occasionally quoted by Church of Christ ministers when it was convenient to do so if they felt they could quote Tertullian or Ignatius or Auguste and maybe to make a point they would quote them so I knew enough about him from that context so I was working on my undergraduate degree at night at that time and so sometimes I'd skip out of my marketing classes and Finance classes I'd go to the library and sure enough the library at this public university had a pretty good religion section so I just began reading the Church Fathers I started there and I ended up in those places but I started reading the father's Ignatius Tertullian all the Polycarp and the more I read the more I didn't see the church I was in I wasn't really I didn't start with an assumption or an answer I kinda just wanted to say but the more I read the more like this doesn't really sound like a Bible only church our church were Sola scriptura reigns is sort of overarching principle and in fact more than just the absence of Sola scriptura was the absence of the rites and practices of the group I was in I was expecting to find you know like this real emphasis on the five acts of worship and the in the five acts of salvation being part of the kind of the catechetical message or the message of teaching and I wasn't seeing that either and the more I researched the kind of the more I got a little nervous if you will you know my head was doing great with kind of reading it but my stomach was really kind of hurting a bit because I was not really looking to go back to the Catholic Church I'm what are you thinking about that but where I was was beginning to be challenged the more I read the father's so I kept I kept reading the father's now at one point I went to go visit my eldership and preacher I didn't tell them the full journey I was on during this you know this phase but they probably knew from the questions that something was up and I principally said can you tell me anywhere in the early church where our church this church I'm in is and he said well I mean like on history's radar so to speak me very concretely not just tell me that it was there well you know once the church kind of fell and it went apostate the true Church kind of went into hiding or it was so small and being persecuted that it doesn't kind of show up on the historical record but you can believe that God would protect his people that kind of thing so that explanation was kind of getting a bit flimsy and weak and I knew I was using it myself occasionally I had used it earlier and he was beginning to kind of fall short so I kept working through the father's the other thing I started going on I was still we were still in New Orleans then and a friend of mine who was Catholic who knew I wasn't Catholic and it really didn't know the journey I was on started inviting me to noon mass so we started walking up to this Jesuit Church and I click Concepcion in New Orleans it started on a new mass well even then with my reservations about where I was and kind of the journey I was on and things I was beginning to find the father's I still wasn't ready to go to Mass completely so if I went by myself I would stay through the homily because I felt like I was least I was here in the Bible read and a homily on the Bible given so that was okay but then I'd leave after that I was with him I just wouldn't go to communion I would just sit so that began to also kind of draw me back because just kind of see in the stained glass and sort of you know the whole just the whole environment of the church begin to kind of call my heart back in a way that was very subtle and very and very slow but it was being a compliment this intellectual journey that I was on at the same time I kind of you know I kept reading the fathers and getting more trouble but I was not finding I said well let me let me test them this with the Orthodox Church because I knew enough to know that the Orthodox Church was was ancient believed similar to the Catholic sirs I didn't know a whole lot about it but I said least have to step into a Catholic Church or go to a Catholic priest annex question so let me just go to an Orthodox priest to kind of test some of these ideas so I remember using my lunch hour for a good while this is probably the middle of that last four year period and began to meet with an Orthodox priest I didn't tell them I was interested in Orthodox I just had questions so in the time buffoon I had things written out by hand on loose-leaf all my questions and he answered every one of them patiently you know what things like you know the mode of baptism the purpose of baptism and the hierarchy of the church and sacraments and everything he was answering was complimenting or consistent with what I was reading in the fall another song he didn't know it was really in a journey to question the kind of Protestant faith I was in but the more he answered and the more I continued to study I began to see that this church I was in really wasn't as ancient as I had thought and more than just the church itself that even Sola scriptura in this whole Bible only church notion was not ancient now I didn't really know that it was recent yeah but I knew it wasn't ancient so I continued my study them now let me update you my wife at this time she's not really on the same journey but she's certainly supportive of it you know because we're still going to the Church of Christ and so on at this point I'm still we're still going to church in fact I'm doing more sermons and more back up preaching than ever but I'm still more conflicted than ever at this point so there was one particular moment in that last four-year period when I went to a buddy's wedding in a hundred in Alexandria Louisiana I went to my friend's wedding he's getting married in a Catholic Church and I remember we being in the sacristy you know so who were grooms and we're all in the back and something about just everything in the sacristy really beginning to draw me in a different level it wasn't so much trying to figure out the father's and figure out where I was anymore just seeing the crucifix and the thurible and the lectionary and maybe a little bit of leftover scent of incense that kind of thing I think my sensory faculties were kind of being drawn back so I have to attribute that to the spirit because I mean I really wasn't looking for that but but I think I was being drawn back in a different level and in a different way than just opening books and kind of reading books so both those things kind of began to dovetail at the end of that four year period or so around 1990 about what turned out to be about four years where I came back into the Catholic Church I was going on my annual retreat and Ignatian Jesuit retreat back in Louisiana and you were going to the Ignatian Ignatian retreat interestingly Marcus I started that retreat in 1980 the same year I went into the Church of Christ my grandfather's began to ask me a couple years before that I couldn't even fathom going on a silent retreat but interestingly I decided to go the same year I became member of the Church of Christ and I still going I've been going 33 straight years so all eleven years I was in Churches of Christ I was going on this retreat well the last year you could go to those and not feel conflicted about being Church of Christ and this is a Catholic retreat there was probably some level of being conflicted I would say probably more in the early years not the years when I began to question the Church of Christ there was some level of being conflicted in some tension but I looked at it as a time to relax a time to pray I typically didn't go to Mass the mass was offered every day you can avoid the Catholic elements to some degree take advantage of being away and mm-hmm but upon reflection it was probably going to it was going that was also drawing me back all those elements that I was kind of resisting we're also calling to me as well all right so in 1990 my last retreat of those 11 years I bring a buddy from Churches of Christ and he decides to go on the retreat with me which is pretty unusual really good guy we're still good friends with this couple who are still in church you know they're lifelong members so he goes on the retreat with me and you know as you might imagine driving back we're going to talk about their tree would you think about it and so on and so at this point we're talking about the retreat and he's you know calming on what he liked and what he found troubling and you know that kind of thing it was all pretty positive so I began to tell him you know I've really been having some trouble with some of the things that Churches of Christ believe and so I kind of numerate some of the things that I've been having some difficulty with over the last few years and he's trying to answer them almost like as of objections to be answered that kind of thing and I said you know I'm giving some thought actually to the Catholic Church and he says oh no no no this is just probably some emotionalism come from coming well he doesn't realize I'm on my eleventh retreat at this point so it's not some momentary spontaneous emotional kind of reaction so we talk more and more well at that retreat I met with one of the Jesuit priests on staff who actually was a friend of our families who had never really met with before and they got I began to kind of pour out my journey to him in a much longer kind of session you normally have on retreat I told him all about the journey through the fathers and all my questions about Sola scriptura and the whole Bible Church the whole foundational element and and other things I know just other anecdotes and stories at the very end he says to me Randy stop the research pray you know he never really pressured me and he didn't anyway Press that you're in the wrong place for anything he said pray stop the research the smells and bells are kind of calling you back it was subtle it was positive but it wasn't kind of high-pressure in any way and I think that meeting in that December of 90 and kind of all that it happened before that kind of that emotional kind of tug of the spirit sort of the sensory stuff that I was beginning to realize was part of the experience as well because I my point I began to realize you know Jesus himself is God incarnate and so there's nothing wrong with the experience of God in water and oil and all the sacramental you know the materiality of that I had never thought about that in those sub previous seven years in fact that was kind of devoid of that entirely but I began to see that there was real value in that and so the whole sacraments came back alive in that last four year period and so on Good Friday 1991 after I met with a couple of times with the parish priest I came back into the parish I had left in eighty came back on Good Friday 91 I didn't think I'd make it up to the altar for Eucharist with my legs barely carrying me up and came back to the church that day my wife Lynne was not on the exact same journey though she was with me during the journey and so after some level of prayer consultation thinking through it and all that implications on our family and everything else she came back in about five months later that's in here well looking back then now that you're back in the church and how do you look back on those years as a Church of Christ member preacher you're preaching Church of Christ doctrine mm-hmm different than Catholic doctrine okay what did you did you look at yourself I'm going here's Catholic beliefs then you went this way to Church of Christ and then now you're back to Catholic doctrine did you struggle with the differences I would say the the difference is I really struggled with were the ones where I think the Church of Christ really gets it wrong and other restoration groups really get it wrong and that is I think the degree twist they focus and and and believe that Sola scriptura is how the early church was I have regrets about kind of adopting that view I know it's just part of my overall journey but I think that particularly was troubling once I learned that wasn't the case and I think the whole idea of apostasy and then restoration I think is part of a message that I may have been preaching that's so much from the pulpit necessarily but even to other people that I know now was just not the case I mean I kind of think you know the church is always in need of renewal the church is always in need maybe of some level of her form but it's never in need of restoration because there's never a point at which it went away and so as long as the church has got you and me Randi it always needs renewal right right myself on that exactly so I think that one might be the regret an out when it's been 20 years since I've been back or so so I've even reinterpreted the the time I was in Church of Christ a little bit but it's generally been there's some positive things for sure we met some great people still friends with many people I think their general focus on the Bible is is to be lauded but I think some of their suppositions like around apostasy and around kind of Sola scriptura and the whole notion of saying there's a church that we need to actually blueprint it's kind of that's really actually a religious phenomenon called blueprint an ism or pattern ISM where they try to basically say let's find the church in the Bible and restore it exactly in the 21st century and you know I both know you you know the church is dynamic and growing it's going under the leadership of the Spirit the Magisterium and so on and so we're not trying to restore the first century church we're trying to be a 21st century church you like cutting down an oak tree and trying to shape it into a seat again mm-hmm yeah that's that's unnecessary and difficult not needed yeah exactly another thing that I I would say was a major difference besides the authority of the Holy Father and the Magisterium and all that compared to where was the authority and the Church of Christ I mean there's one discussion but I think another major issue is the is the power and importance of the graces of the sacraments mm-hmm that are a part of the Catholic Church how's the work there is a part of the work absolutely that's one thing I do want to bring up I don't wanna bring up in a in a real critical web and I think it's important to bring up Church the Christ do have a notion of the Trinity though they don't really use the word Trinity that's not in the Bible but they have kind of a notion of Father Son and Holy Spirit but this is where I think they really go wrong relative to the Spirit there's really not a strong sense of the Holy Spirit in Churches of Christ in fact in most mainline churches of Christ the Holy Spirit becomes equal to the Bible and so any pastor that says led by the Spirit is essentially led by the Bible so any anything where the Holy Spirit's going to work the operational spirit is going to be roughly equivalent to reading your Bible now courts reading your Bible is important right and studying and praying the Sacred Scripture is important but they essentially make it a one for one so that you almost lose kind of the the personhood of the Spirit that they wouldn't really say that and it becomes equivalent to just Bible study as being led by the spirit and outside a bubble study there is no action of the Spirit at all yeah and I'm not sure this Randy but when you look at these groups that started in the late 1800s and then we're trying to restore what was going on in acts mm-hmm and first Corinthians twelve thirteen and fourteen you have the issue of what is the Holy Spirit doing today and how is to be seen and so when you see in the beginning of the nineteen hundreds of Zuza Street and the rise of Pentecostalism you also see some of these other groups moving in the complete other direction right to downplay the outpouring of the Holy Spirit actly to avoid that and I'm wondering is that an impact on Church of Christ I think I think you're right that those movements are almost conflicting movements that put the whole late 19th century in tension so you have more the emotional kind of charismatic phenomenon that happens in the early 20th century but then earlier than that you have the whole birth of biblical fundamentalism which is much more rational much more intellectual and I think even though Churches of Christ and the restoration movements a little bit ahead of that fundamentalist movement it's still the same thing it's very rational and you look at Alexander Campbell and his brother they come out of that Scottish common sense realism tradition of rationality syllogism so what really happens and I'd say look they I think that became troubled with I didn't really realize at the time was that the Bible had been kind of turned into like a manual of propositional statements and everything was doctrine and so they really terrorism they're also kind of a rule a key or a rule or something for within Church of Christ and how to interpret Scripture isn't there set yeah they would deny this any kind tradition of hermeneutic for sure they would deny that but they think the Bible is self interpreting and what's interesting is there's been and this is not again to be critical but there's been as much fragmentation in Churches of Christ as any other group in fact per capita you might even say there's been more because they're not really that large in general but there's been divisions over you know one cup multiple cup support of orphan homes the instrument even split Churches of Christ from Christian Church and disciples of Christ in 1906 and you have a cappella singing Mitch writer yep which is a which is a staple of Churches of Christ but but with what caused the split in 1906 between the other restoration groups so there's been fragmentation and the point is there's been fragmentation all the while claiming that the Bible is self interpreting it kind of means what it says and it says what it means and so that kind of began to show sort of a failed project as well relative to Sola scriptura for me we have an email Bobby from Canada writes I often hear of those who have left the Catholic faith and then returned because they hunger for the Eucharist was this an aspect of Randy's own journey yeah really good question very a very appropriate question I talked about the electoral journey I talked about that kind of sensory journey with the sacraments and sort of the whole sensory experience of what I was missing but I was also missing the Eucharist and I didn't really realize that till probably toward the end of those eleven years but you know they did the Lord's Supper every Sunday you know weekly in fact that's kind of Niq amongst Churches of Christ actually but I knew that they didn't believe in the real presence and I knew that even from the beginning at some point I just became comfortable with that but toward the end I was being drawn back to the Eucharist and I think as I got closer and closer to Good Friday I became more and more certain that that was part of what was drawing me back as well another email Susan from Milwaukee who says Randy found any opportunities to use his gifts and talents for preaching in the Catholic Church interesting not preaching maybe yet the diaconal journey is still going on and still kind of discerning that but I do a lot of adult formation presentations around the Archdiocese of Atlanta and so if I caught preaching teaching there leading through presentation on Scripture subjects in fact immediately upon coming back in 91 I started going to Loyola University in New Orleans in their Graduate School of religion I want to finish in at Spring Hill College a couple of years later but I started doing parish presentations and the very first presentation I built was one called an exploration of fundamentalism where I looked at the historical kind of antecedents how to come to be and that's sort of the whole biblical paradigm compared to the Catholic view of Scripture yeah so it's not that's a project that was the first one I actually built or maybe talk a little bit about your your discerning of the call to diakonos I mean you're you've come in and you're an active layman and you're teaching here maybe not preaching officially but you're able to have opportunity to use your gifts where did he act in it I'll bet video well I think I began receiving what you might call the call which is for me at least not been anything like Paul's you know conversion that that's stark and dramatic but I think I began receiving the call probably in the late to night 90s early 2000s I just felt called to greater service with my wife and I were always kind of active and you know increasingly active in our parish but I just felt like a call to greater service ordained service I feel like there were some gifts relative to teaching but also even getting outside the parish and doing the works of social justice helping the poor and doing things that quite honestly I hadn't been as involved in before regrettably and so I kind of feel it I didn't investigate it and then I kind of put it away but as I kind of actually begin reading the prophets and they're they're kind of reluctant to answer the call it felt a little better and sometimes you know you're not ready when the spirits calling and so I did discern for a good while before I actually decided to kind of accept this byron see last year and so it I would say to anyone any particular person a man who may be looking at the Dyken or priesthood to know that you know you'll know when the Lord is calling you you may or may not be ready but generally the Lord doesn't give up and so if you continue to feel that pull in that draw on that call it'll be pretty it'll be pretty obvious and you'll work through some periods of you no doubt in question but you'll continue to work through with this hell yeah and great Catholic spiritual writers like one that's familiar to many Catholic viewers of EWTN God rest his soul as father Thomas Dube who heard some tremendous books and in some programs here talks about one of the key elements of being receptive to hear and receive the call is growth in humility mm-hmm you know as you're growing and submitting yourself to Christ over time and and developing the attitude of you know Lord I'll do whatever you want me to do mm-hmm then that's the receptivity that opens up the the doors for him to be able to need you well you may be why are you going this otherwise you can't hear it do all you hear it as your own voice you gotta be danger of that because the calling can be what you want to do absolutely not what he wants you to do so it's as growth then so the best way to start being open to hear the call is being more malleable so more concisely and I think I think being in my 33 years of Ignatian retreats has helped with the Ignatian form of discernment caster that's been critical and helpful obviously yeah and what I like about how our archdiocese does it many probably do is that they really don't save the sermon ever ends you know we call the first year for spyin see discernment but quite honestly you're just turning in year two and three and so on so it really doesn't and I think that's a very healthy way to look at it and encourage to continue that you know and even the long path that it takes to become a deacon is important in itself and certainly there's the intellectual development but there's developing of community absolute all for you and your wife does your wife we saw her views may not know that become a deacon your wife's involved with it absolutely she very much is yeah every diocese has different requirements as to how much they have to attend but the wives are very important our particular class has sixteen men and it's like you say community is important getting into these sixteen men and their wives has been a real blessing if we did nothing else but that and would be good maybe a minute left real quickly let's say that somebody's watching right now who was like you fallen away Catholic involved with some other church why should they come home mm-hmm well I think they should listen to the spirit calling them back which I know the spirit is doing that they should probably looking like I did maybe one way with this kind of this intellectual part kind of do the research do the study but don't leave it there realize that the faith has been around for a long time it's been from the beginning the church has done very good things in the area of social justice it's kind of the advocate for the poor and for life issues and so on in a way that no other Church I think is as concretely involved in and I think continue to study and to pray both I think both are important dialogue with other Catholics is important and I think all of that will help kind of lead you back and there's like you've said that so many of our guests have said that dipping into the early church fathers is really an eye opener there's really a continuity of the church not the break in the fall away but the continuity is there all the way through in need of renewal as they sought themselves I mean that's a half the time the early church writers were writing was before it issues every new but but to especially the honor the authority of the bishop and the priest and the Deacon were there in those earliest church right and Ignatius particularly yes Randy thank you so much thank you Marcus appreciate it and our prayers are with you as you continue to second and to prepare for the decadent thank you thank you very much thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I'm I'm hoping at Randy's journey especially I'm thinking of you Catholic viewers whose children have maybe drifted away keep praying Rani's a model that the Lord is still working in all of our hearts to bring us all to a deeper relationship with him in his church and usually it requires our own surrender to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts so god bless you see you again next week

Channel: EWTN

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Id: _i_KULcgB1M

Length: 56min 53sec (3413 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2013