Looking back.

I had a friend ask me in an email tonight why I don't go to Manna Church anymore.

I know that a year and a half ago, when we left Manna, Peter and I would have answered that question very differently, and I know that I get asked that question often, so I thought that instead of responding in an email I would blog about it. It is often said that time heals wounds, and that, in this case, has certainly been true. I hope that in this blog you will find a "balanced" perspective and a testimony of why I stopped being a "nondenominational" Christian and came back, once again, to my Catholic faith.

I became a "Christian" in 1998, on Christmas Eve, at a Calvary Chapel in Santa Barbara. 18 years previous I had become a Catholic--- baptized as an infant into the faith. I had processed through the normal "rites of initiation" of Catholic life: baptism, first reconciliation, first communion, confirmation. I had received "instruction" on living a Catholic life... I knew who Jesus was and what He did, I prayed, I went to church. But as the years passed I walked away from the relationship God was calling me to and became indifferent to God-- and worse. The well-meaning franciscans at our Parish had a tendency to "live and let live" which didn't help matters much when I started to ask the really hard questions.

By the time that Christmas eve rolled around, I was desperate for a sign that there was "more to life than this." Many years filled with drugs and parties and dabbling in other religions had left me unsatisfied and unfulfilled, and I was practically begging for something more substantial that showed me that God was REAL and cared about me. That Christmas eve, I got that, and was brought to my knees by a very REAL encounter with the Risen Christ, Immanuel, who came to be WITH me and who loved me so much He had died FOR me.

Life changed after that. It wasn't long before all night prayer vigils and Friday night bible studies were my activity of choice over a night plastered at the bar and dancing in the cage. It took me four years or so of actively trying to walk with Christ to even put a dent in the hazardous, hedonistic, self-centered and humanistic lifestyle that I had formed as my own, and many of you probably remember either being puzzled or slightly amused watching me try to order my absolutely crazy life around Christ.

From the beginning it was clear to me that there were forces of absolute evil and absolute good at work. No sooner had I accepted Christ and begun my conversion than I was met with extreme opposition from all sides... from strange encounters with people who would literally voice Satanic thoughts like "you CANT be a Christian, it's too hard," or "you can't worship Jesus, you should worship ME," to opposition from my family and closest friends, who thought I was just "going through something."

I needed to make a clean break and wasn't able to make that break until I left for the army several years later. Santa Barbara, as big as it is, was a small town for me. I knew everyone and everyone knew me (or knew of me) and this made a "lifestyle change" virtually impossible for someone as vain as me-- after all, most non-Christians think this "Christian" stuff is not only weird but excessive, and are quick to point out that they know the "real you," not willing to acknowledge that the "new person in Christ"-- the new you-- is "authentic." So becoming AUTHENTIC in our Converted Selves becomes a huge challenge.

My time in the army taught me to really minister to other people and to put myself last. There was so much going on in there and so much suffering that needed to be addressed, and I encountered a mix of people from all walks of life who had a need to FEEL and experience God's love, and in some miraculous way God graced me to do just that. Whereas before, I had problems praying "out loud" or in front of other people, miraculously, people used to line up at my bunk so that I could pray with them and the "fear" totally vanished. I used to do bible studies with some of the girls who were having a hard time in the bathrooms after dark. I found ALL my solace in the pages of my well-worn bible. Suddenly, and for the first REAL time, God used me in a powerful way and I was floored. My relationship with him was sealed and strengthened so mightily that I was completely certain that THIS, then, was the reality of a Spirit-filled life...that God directed ALL our steps.
At the same time, my time in the army was the first time I experienced and saw powerful diabolical torment in action. I was unprepared for some of the stuff I saw but it only served to strengthen my faith and conviction that not only I needed "saving," but the whole world-- which was currently under the influence of the Evil One.

I got married, moved to the South, where Christianity isn't rare and strangely "hip" but rather the Norm with a captial N. During my years as a Christian, I had really hardened up my heart against Catholicism, having been taught by Bible Teacher after Bible Teacher that it was a "dead religion," which used the "traditions of man"-- not only unbiblical but utterly evil in so many ways.

Many (most!) of my pastors and friends from Calvary Chapel, Reality, Vineyard, and The IV Church were ex-Catholics and believed these things explicitly. Those who didn't thought of Catholicism as "denominationalism"-- in other words, Catholics were Christians, but they were just another denomination, or branch, and had quite a few things they needed to lose to make them simply what they were called to be: Christians.

I attended a couple masses during my years as a protestant, mostly to please my family. And while I was drawn to the liturgy, it was a guilty pleasure. I refrained from Communion WITHOUT BEING TOLD BY ANYONE THAT I SHOULD because I felt that I needed to remove myself from the Eucharist--- that somehow, it was "different" than the relational God I was trying to serve, and that I couldn't participate in good conscience.
I applauded the scriptural "truths" I heard in the mass (now that I was well versed in the Bible) but cringed at things like: "With Mary, the Mother of God," or mentions of the Saints, which I perceived to be extremely unbiblical.

Wayne and I started out our marriage by attending the last church he has been to regularly, Northwood Temple, a Pentacostal Church. I didn't like it much, mostly because it seemed so hokey and just--- southern--- to me. I was used to sanctuaries filled with young hipsters high on Jesus worshipping God with all their might and plotting to save the World, and instead we had lots of young, beaver cleaver families, old ladies with silver hair and "Church suits," and sermons on the glory of soldiering. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't my thing. I had prayed for days on end about where we should go to Church and was convinced that God was calling us to Manna, a church all the way across town, but my husband was of a different opinion.

Finally, a year later, I was able to convince him to check out a Sunday Manna service and was relieved, the moment we walked through the doors, to find myself "home." THIS was my kind of church. Thankfully, God was working that day and he helped Peter to feel it too--ten minutes into it, he whispered to me: "THIS is where we are going to go from now on." I beamed. God was "back in my life" in a big way, and I no longer had to feel so alone in my faith. Manna delivered at just the right time. I was able to make some INCREDIBLE friends, hear some really great practical bible teaching, and really HEAR from God, who stretched us both continuously from day one.
God used our spiritual gifts to serve in little ways at Manna: we led cell groups and got formal training for deliverance ministry, which we definitely knew God was calling us to. More importantly, we began to REALLY study theology, and really strengthen our knowledge of apologetics. We wanted (still want!! ) to become Missionaries, and we pursued this goal relentlessly.

It wasn't long before we felt frustrated. As we studied theology, we became frustrated with some of the theological stances taken by our pastors. Manna's senior Pastor, an incredible man with a DEEP heart for God, believes in some things which we find abhorrent as far as doctrine goes. (Calvinism being the big one for us)Though most of the pastors have somewhat differing viewpoints as far as doctrinal principles go, they also mostly recieved their formal training from the Manna Machine, internally, and thus were raised up as leaders and now served alongside the people they had "learned to Pastor" from, which made things, in our opinion, more than a little dishonest.

We were also often frustrated by the lack of common sense and "seriousness" when it came to living out the Word of God. Peter attended a hard-to-get-into course for men to teach them to minister, but frequently found himself surrounded by people discussing sports scores and not getting ready to change the world. We disagreed with some of the financial decisions, and in the long run, we disagreed heavily with the entire process of selection of leaders for the church, the idea of church planting JUST to create mini-Mannas, and the whole concept of building a church focused on GROWTH.
Years before, we had denied an opportunity for missions training at Northwood because they had told us they were going to "make pentacostals" and expected us to do the same. We weren't interested-- we wanted to bring Christ to people. We had hoped to be able to do that at Manna, but in the end, found ourselves faced with the same problem. The last straw came when we saw the financial report for the Global Impact Celebration. We realized that the majority of the insanely huge funds allocated to China were not going to, for example, bring much-needed Bibles in China, but to build a seminary where Chinese "leaders" would learn how to pastor, Manna-Style.

Meanwhile, we were also frustrated because we heard all these incredible, inspiring sermons encouraging us to GO out into the world and bring Jesus to people. We didn't need the encouragement, that was all we wanted to do and were willing to give everything up to do so. Many of these adventures were dangerous, and the Pastor often called the congregation out on their unwillingness to live dangerously for Christ. He would tell us about these adventures, and then say: "But no one will go."
And we'd be sitting there with our hands held high-- "here we are, Lord, send us!!!" But at every turn we were told that unless we could financially make it happen, we could do nothing. This was hard for us to swallow since we are A) poor and B) attending a Church that has every luxury in the world FOR ITS WORSHIPPERS.

This disillusionment was great, but we persisted because we know the good points that Manna has-- people really LOVE God there, and we are so blessed to have met all the people we did who we consider family... people who literally live every moment for Christ. Meanwhile, a Church we briefly were called to went through a big change and began to theologically break away from what we considered the "Christian norm," into what I can only describe as Relational Christianity. It was a strange transition and we were so frustrated-- we felt that though the BIBLE was clear about doctrine, we had yet to find a church that taught pure doctrine. Every time we came close, we found that the Church had some freaky-deaky thing going on, like KJV-onlyism, or some other legalistic wierdness. We just couldn't deal with it.

At around that time, we helped a woman who was leaving the Catholic Church, where she felt abandoned, and who was beginning to attend a Church I had begun at. While I watched what she went through and felt thankful, part of me was perplexed. It had been years since I had given the Catholic thing any thought, and I was genuinely floored when I felt that I was compelled to begin to understand things like the very biblical need for Liturgy, or for ACTUAL biblical authority, or for understanding that APOSTLESHIP, biblically, was waaaaay more than just a "spiritual gifting."
The Senior Pastor at Manna calls himself an apostle, and teaches, around the world, on the subject of Church building and Apostleship. I love him dearly and think he is a genuine, good-hearted, loving man. I could not, however, condone his bible teaching on things like authority. It felt like trying to wrap our heads around nondenominational theology, no matter where we turned to get it, made us want to throw up our hands and say "Does ANYONE do this "Christian" thing RIGHT???"

At the same time, we heard about Medjugorje,a small village in former Bosnia Herzegovina where Mary, the Mother of God, is appearing and giving messages... and we began reading and watching everything we could get our hands on about it, at first thinking- woah. Demonic! I knew that C Peter Wagner was Micheal Fletcher's mentor, and how he felt about the Queen of Heaven and was TOTALLY inclined to agree. I was a part of a prayer group that ACTIVELY prayed against Marian apparitions. But when it came to Medjugorje, the discernment tests we use couldn't be used-- every one of her messages were scriptural!! They said, for 25 years, continually: to repent, to turn to Jesus Christ who is savior of the World, and to pray for the world. We were perplexed. The messages which seemed "iffy" were only iffy because we didn't believe in the Catholic Church, but at Medjugorje , Mary was speaking to Catholics and saying things like "Go to confession," or "receive the Eucharist." These were obviously Catholic-specific, but in and of themselves didn't seem "un"biblical, just "extra-"biblical. Nothing in her messages contradicted the Gospel. I wrote to the Pastor at Manna and asked him for his thoughts. He responded with one sentence: "I believe Medjugorje is demonic."
If it is demonic, I said, God sure is using "what was meant for evil for good..." there is SO much spiritual fruit there.

It was the beginning of lent. Not having observed lent for more than 11 years, I thought I could, biblically, make a case for doing so. So I did it. For 40 days I fasted from reading ANYTHING except the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, hoping to gain some clarity and figure out why I felt so DRAWN to my Catholic roots lately and whether or not I could settle, once and for all, the "are Catholics actually Christians?" question in my head.

I was amazed. Literally EVERYTHING I had come to believe just from reading the Bible as "true doctrine," was in there-- and was written and thought out in such a way as to amaze both myself and Peter with it's clarity. All of a sudden this veil seemed to lift and I found that not only was I TOTALLY immersed in "good" theology when I was reading the Catechism, all of those things which, as a protestant, has made NO sense to us were resolved with very wise answers.

For example, take the "Evolution vs Creationism" thing. In the Christian world, it's a MUST that Creationism is real. Evolution, then, would be heretical, since God made the world. As intelligent people, though, Peter and I could not wrap our heads around the idea of Creationism being "perfectly accurate science." There were loopholes. And we didn't feel that our faith was, in any way, threatened by the idea that Evolution MIGHT be real.

The Catholic response, however, is so much healthier: it says that if Evolution exists, then God made it. Which totally doesn't deny that he Created ALL things, that the Biblical accounts are true, etc. It didn't have to be either/ or. It was "both." Same for predestination: It wasn't that either God predestines everything (Calvinism) including who goes to hell, or that he predestines nothing. IT was BOTH.


It was like we were slapping our foreheads going "DUH, where has this been all our lives??"

Having been raised around intellectuals and having spent literally 12 years making myself STUPID so that God could use me better, or trying to "unlearn" everything I'd ever learned except the Bible (archeology, philosophy, history, science, etc) it was so refreshing to be able to accept that we COULD use our brains and there was no shame in that-- that in fact, we were glorifying God by studying and learning, and uncovering, not making ourselves "wordly."

All of the things which I had attributed to Catholicism as "unbiblical" (the priesthood, the communion of Saints, the pope, Mary , purgatory, etc) I realized were utterly biblical, it's just that I had been conditioned by YEARS of anti-Catholic teaching to BELIEVE that the Catholic Church taught something which, in fact, it did not. The Catholic Church has a biblical reason for EVERYTHING it teaches, because, of course, it made the Bible!

Most of all, we understood that if the Bible was true, then John 6 was definitely true, and that we needed and wanted the Eucharist. Because of BIBLICAL apostolic authority, we could receive that Eucharist no place other than our local Catholic Church. When I figured out that I NEEDED the Eucharist, I would have RUN to my nearest Catholic Church to get it. I left Manna that day, and my husband "officially" became a Catholic a year later.

Over time, I grew totally disgusted with all of the pushing and shoving I had been given to keep me from Catholicism. I felt that I had been cheated out of 12 years of true doctrine by totally well-meaning, but TOTALLY wrong "experts" in fields they didn't really understand. I felt that everyone around me, as a protestant, was constantly floundering and reaching for something "unattainable," which kept us absolutely STARVING for more and as a result, instead of unifying us, isolated us and kept us constantly at each other's throats over doctrinal purity. Whenever there is a doctrinal disagreement, the Church continues to split, and more churches are made. And that's how Satan works: Divide and Conquer.

Now that I am a Catholic again, I enjoy doctrinal perfection, PLUS perfect unity in the faith with the worldwide Church AND with my separated protestant brothers and sisters. I had the gospel before, but I didn't have the Church, and that left me with only HALF the goodness and Grace God had for me. Now that I have BOTH, I am filled to flowing over, and in the past year and a half since returning to the Church there has not been a single day that I don't (and my husband doesn't) wake up and say: "I am SO glad I am a Catholic!!!! Thank you, Jesus!"

Catholics who actually observe the Catholic Faith are never floundering. They are super-grounded, and growing in love at every turn, which is amazing. These are the fruits of the Spirit I want to surround myself with forever, and the fruits which, I hope, in time, will race me to that moment when I will hear "well done, my Good and Faithful servant."

There is a LOT of dialogue that needs to go on, in my opinion, between Protestants and Catholics, and it is so difficult because in so many ways,we speak different languages. God has given Wayne and I the ability to speak BOTH languages, and as a result we hope to bring vital energy to the Catholic Faithful we encounter from our enthusiasm at simply BEING Catholic, to reparation and unity with our protestant brothers and sisters who are estranged from the Church because of faulty or misleading information about the Church.

A year ago, I was angry at having been deceived. Today, I am thankful, and can see God's hand in everything I've experienced and how He uses it all the time. I ask that God continue to allow me to be a Catholic and receive the Sacraments for the rest of my life until the day of my death, but that he always use me as an instrument of reconciliation to help protestants understand what, exactly, the Catholic Church is all about.

Every single time I receive the Eucharist, I am brought to tears thinking about the perfection of the system God has created and how much He loves us all. I wish that I could share that love with every single person on earth, and I know that if they ALL tasted the sweetness of true Communion with Him, they would never be the same again.