|
Obedience and Sacrifice
For the members of the Carpenter's Company in San Dimas, California -- a church affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a fast-growing Pentecostal charismatic denomination founded in the 1920s -- following the Lord led them beyond orthodox preaching into the heart of Eastern Orthodoxy. Their journey began with the 6 A.M. daily prayer meetings that the church had initiated under the leadership of Fr. Joseph (then Pastor Dennis) Corrigan in 1989. Corrigan had detected a lack of direction and a creeping worldliness in the church that he hoped the prayer sessions could combat. At first, the meetings consisted only of a recitation of the Lord's Prayer, but soon the church's mostly young-adult membership began to crave daily communion and other elements of liturgical woship not usually associated with Pentecostalism.
A few years later, Corrigan picked up a copy of the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict and brought it back to the leadership team of the church. The group devoured Benedict's writings -- which effectively addressed problems they were dealing with in a way that contemporary authors had failed to -- and soon moved on to writings of the early Eastern church fathers and more recent spiritual authors like Theophan the Recluse. By the end of 1995, Corrigan and his band of about a hundred church members were ready to convert. In December 1996, the Carpenter's Company became St. Peter the Apostle Antiochian Orthodox Church, and Corrigan -- a fiftysomething former staffer for the evangelical Campus Crusade for Christ -- became an Orthodox priest.
"It was a corporate obedience." Corrigan said, explaining the process that led his church to Orthodoxy. "We had decided to get serious about the gospel early, and toward the end of it, we found in the Orthodox Church the fulfillment of it."
Corrigan's church is not alone. Periodically in recent years, stories have surfaced in the national news about Pentecostal, evangelical, and occasionally, Episcopalian churches converting to Eastern Orthodoxy ... When asked to explain, they often cite a desire to belong to churches that satisfy their hunger for tradition, self-sacrifice, and a more historical Christianity.
Douglas Law, a thirtysomething African American father of four, had spent time in outposts of the Vineyard Fellowship -- an association of evangelical churches that emphasize informal and charismatic worship -- before joining Corrigan's Foursquare-turned-Orthodox congregation. Like other Orthodox converts at St. Peter's, Law said he had grown tired of churches that fixated on "getting saved and getting others saved" instead of cultivating spiritual depth and churches that focused on making Christianity appealing instead of stressing spritual discipline. He knew there must be more to Christianity than that.
"There are a lot of people out there who want to hear about a life where the real demands of Christianity are part of your heart-beat and your breath," Law said. "I think every Christian knows it deep down -- that it's a life of self-sacrifice. But we never had a place to fall down and die."
Now, Law said, he belongs to a church where he and his family practice obedience and sacrifice. His children's heroes are the Orthodox saints. His weekly routine includes participation in the Divine Liturgy and in the 6 A.M. prayer vigils that are now held in a converted Orthodox sanctuary. And his daughter recently confessed her sins to an Orthodox priest for the first time.
"I don't get emothional," said Law, whose eyes glistened with tears as he recalled the sight of his seven-year-old daughter standing with the priest before an icon, gripping a list of her sins that she had compiled with the help of her mother.
Seeing his little girl receive the sacramental grace of reconciliation, Law said, made all of the early mornings and late nights and demands of an Orthodox lifestyle worthwhile.
"That grace," he murmured, "that's it."
Excerpted from pgs. 71-73 of "The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy" by Colleen Carroll. (Loyola Press, Chicago: 2002). Available through most major bookstore or Amazon.com.
|
|
|
