I moved my family to Central Oregon with a goal to change careers and to be near my parents. However, I ended up just getting a job pretty quickly in the same line of work because I knew I didn't have any idea of what else to do and didn't have a fire in my belly to do so.
There had been a desire off and on to go to seminary and become a pastor because I loved preaching and teaching the Scriptures and helping people to follow Jesus the best I knew how. But we had 4 kids, my wife was homeschooling them and I was the sole breadwinner Also I was hesitant to become a pastor when I was having trouble handling life where I was. I didn't want to stand up there and say my version of the Christian faith actually worked. I believe in God and the Scriptures firmly. I knew that Jesus had the words of eternal life like Peter said in John 6. And although the prayer books helped I still was inconsistent in prayer, still was running to my idols and so on. So teaching people the truth about God as a layman was about all I could do. I also wasn't the husband or father that I wanted and needed to be, partially because I didn't know how to get there.
God had a divine appointment for my wife there to help her grow but I ended up kind of being placed on a shelf ministry-wise. We got involved in a church there that God directed us to and there met a pastor and good friend who really helped my wife and all of us. But there was a change in senior pastors and in the direction of the church after about a year there. Our pastor friend left the church there and for about the next 4 years we wandered around the churches trying to find a community that was a good fit for our whole family. Prior to moving to Bend, we were pretty much from a non-denominational/Baptist background. I had been raised in the Presbyterian Church as a child. So in Bend we started out in a Conservative Baptist church, then we went to a large Foursquare church for about 6 months which we liked but we hadn't had the necessary Pentecostal or Charismatic experiences to really remain there and serve. Then we went to a small Orthodox Presbyterian church where the people were very caring but there were hardly any kids there. For awhile my family stopped attending church and we just went to a Bible study taught by our pastor friend but I continued looking for a church and sometimes my wife would join me. We looked into an Evangelical Free church, a non-denominational church and an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America church. Finally we ended up at a Nazarene church and stayed there for 9 months until we moved to Colorado with another job change for me.
During that time we became acquainted with the music of John Michael Talbot, a Catholic musician and the founder of a community called the Brothers and Sisters of Charity in Arkansas. I also picked up a book on the Eastern Orthodox Churches by Eastern Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware, an Englishman. I was fascinated by their emphasis on prayer and the spiritual life. I had by this time also become a student of church history, looking for clues to help me walk with Jesus. But we were living in rural Oregon and most Orthodox churches are in major metro areas so my family was spared the experience of my trying to talk them into trying one out. The Eastern Orthodox Churches tend to be ethnic churches and so there has to be sufficient concentrations of those ethnic groups to have a church. My family just knew Howard or Dad liked to investigate all kinds of strange Christian churches and movements.
I was involved in an early 5:30 am weekly men's Bible study with the Orthodox Presbyterians for about 3 1/2 years until it disbanded. They welcomed me and I enjoyed the study and fellowship with them even if their church didn't work out for us as a family.
But then a friend and former boss from a former job called to encourage me to apply for a job with the small college he was at in a small town in southeast Colorado. As we prepared to move there, my wife checked out the pastors of a number of churches via phone interviews. We then visited the churches and decided to attend the United Methodist church in town and stayed there for the 13 years we lived there.
My next post will be entitled, Becoming a closet Catholic while being a practising Methodist. So stay tuned.
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