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01.  Starting with the Streams

I grew up Catholic. My family attended Mass weekly, and I attended CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) education classes. This was the extent of my relationship with God. I knew basics of the faith but did not have an active relationship where I understood God and knew God. 

In my early twenties, I started to attend Al-Anon and still do today. There was alcoholism in my family, and this 12-step program for the family and friends of alcoholics helped me to address problems in my life—things such as self-esteem, people-pleasing and perfectionism—that related to living with people with alcoholism. It was in Al-Anon that I decided to let God into my life as a Friend to help me. This involved a general surrender of my will, but also required me to identify my sinful areas, share them with another human being and God (similar to confession in the Catholic Church), and allow God to provide me the grace to overcome those issues. By the age of thirty, I had actively entered into this practice of the Holiness Stream, which as I look back I see married naturally with my own basic understanding and partaking of the incarnational stream from my Catholic faith. 

In my mid-thirties, an evangelical friend at work invited me to join her and her husband’s Bible study and so started a new experience of God for me. It was here that I experienced the Evangelical Stream that values the Word of God so highly. I was the only Catholic in the group of six to eight people. Over time the group instinctively began to integrate some of the Incarnational Stream that I brought to the study from my background as a Catholic, in a way I feel was just as helpful to the others as my exposure to the Evangelical Stream was to me. 

Around the same time I started in the Bible study, I began ministering at the hospital to others from my Catholic parish. This helped me to slowly grow in understanding of the Social Justice Stream. In reflection I can see that since I was open to God and actively following Christ through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit was directing me to different streams—streams that I had not yet experienced—and I was able then to integrate into my own faith. 

It was in this context that I met my wife, an editor at an evangelical book publisher. We dated for a year and were married. Dating and marrying an evangelical did not seem strange or out of context for me, because I was seeing Christ’s church from multiple streams, and each were all sanctifying me in slightly different ways. Instead of avoiding a person with my wife’s background, because she was not from my Incarnational Stream, I had come to understand that as long as she was committed to God our relationship could work. The more I experienced the different streams of the life of Christ, the less I saw them as full of differences that separate, until I began to realize that the streams form a mosaic that is not complete until all of Christ’s children are involved. 

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02.  The Journey to Wheaton

In 2006, I met with my Catholic parish deacon and asked him for input on what I could do next to grow in Christ. I wanted to experience more than the Bible study (the ongoing gift from the Evangelical Stream) provided. We spoke for a while about my life and I brought up a nudge I felt about attending Wheaton College as a master’s student. My deacon highlighted for me the fact that God seems to have put evangelicals in my life, saying that it made sense to him to pursue education at an evangelical institution and grow from further immersion in the Evangelical Stream. This sounded right to me, so I applied to the Wheaton College master’s degree program in Christian Formation and Ministry. It was interesting how my deacon—who lives deep in the Incarnational Stream—was wise enough to point me to another stream altogether without being frightened or defensive. In getting to know my deacon further, I know now that his faith, also, is shaped by all of the streams, the Evangelical Stream included. 

Going to Wheaton College was still a scary proposition to me, even after being admitted into the program. I knew that there were many people at Wheaton College who had in the past been less accepting of Catholics. I knew that Catholics were not allowed to be faculty members. But I still felt I could persist at Wheaton College as a Catholic for a few reasons. 

First, as I approached studies at Wheaton, I was also attending two churches simultaneously: my home Catholic parish and an evangelical church with my wife. Worshiping with evangelicals seemed to work out fine, and they knew I was Catholic. Second, I knew that in my life of faith, I identify with Christ fully first before I identify with any faith traditions or stream. This Christ-first identity came because Christ really found me in Al-Anon, my Holiness Stream, which I still attend today. The Holiness Stream strengthened both my Catholic and evangelical faith experiences—a positive experience of swimming in multiple streams that made me more confident of this journey into studies at Wheaton. Lastly, and most importantly, as I look back, I had gotten to a point in my life with God where I accepted anyone interested in Christ and I wanted to get to know them more without needing that person to be more like me, or I like them. 

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03.  Catholic Education, Evangelical Source

What I found in the Christian Formation and Ministry department was this same spirit of acceptance not only for myself as a Catholic, but also for all committed Christians. Because the department was open and interested in forming students into Christlikeness and sending them out as ministers of the Word, the department was also interested in a variety of methods from all the streams of the Christian faith, as long as they worked together to accomplish this goal of training up Christ-followers. This training from the multiple streams included many subject areas that would be considered “Catholic” by many—including studying the lives of the saints, practicing prayer at a Benedictine monastery, and learning from the academic work of many great Catholic educators. As a result of the openness of the college to this multi-stream approach, I experienced what I would consider to be very good education in Catholicism. 

My first class introduced me to research on the master’s level, and I chose to study the bereavement ministry at my Catholic parish. This exposed me to the personal faith of others committed to social justice within the parish, as well as bringing me into contact with important Catholic concepts in bereavement. 

In my next class I was introduced to philosophy that helped me critically think through what God and my faith meant to me. As I did, I came to understand that Christ’s two greatest commandments of love of God and love of neighbor are what drive me, what drive my relationship with God and others. To help with this self-awareness process, we were allowed to choose a person to study in order to understand their faith. I chose Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest, whom I hadn’t known much about previously. 

 Nouwen was ecumenical and worked extensively with Protestants. In fact Protestants love Nouwen, not only because of his acceptance of their spiritual tradition, but also because of his humility. He was completely vulnerable about his failings and his need for God’s grace, as shared in his books. Reading a Henri Nouwen book is like being part of a Henri Nouwen confession; he is honest with you about who he really is. I think these two areas are the reason Nouwen is the Catholic author who is the second most-read by Protestant leaders. 

In a Bible study class, we studied the many approaches to the Word, diving deep into the Evangelical Stream. Still, in this class I also learned a valuable method of encountering the Scriptures that comes through the Contemplative Stream: lectio divina. As I studied and experienced the Word of God, I stepped into the reality that lectio divina helps me to read Scripture slowly and let the Holy Spirit guide me. 

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04.  Reading across the Streams

I studied key historical leaders of the church in several of my classes. I read the writings of Incarnational and Contemplative Stream writers, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Teresa of Àvila, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius, St. Francis of Assisi, and my favorite, St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Augustine of Hippo’s conversion experience so fascinated me because of a similar experience I’d had when I was in Al-Anon. Because of this affinity for the saint, I did a comparative study of St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, and John Wesley to learn more about their sanctification and conversion experiences. 

In addition to historical leaders, I learned about the history of the church, including surveying the early church fathers. We learned about the Roman Empire and its persecution of Christians and the realm’s subsequent conversion to Christianity through Constantine. We explored the Council of Nicaea and subsequent councils; studied Pope Leo the Great, Pope Gregory the Great and their positive impacts; covered the schism with the Orthodox churches; the Crusades; the Great Schism that saw multiple popes and the papacies being located in both Avignon and Rome; the Reformation; and the Second Vatican Council. 

Surrounded by the study of historical Christian giants, I wrote a paper on the abbreviated history of the Catholic Church, to which I was assigned since it was my denomination. Because the history of Roman Catholicism is so (comparatively) lengthy, I focused on Vatican II and its impact on the Catholic Church today. 

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05.  The Streams in Practice

My practical education in the streams represented in the Catholic Church continued as our class stepped into experiential learning. We visited a Benedictine monastery where we got a firsthand experience of what it means to be in a group of people committed to the Contemplative Stream. We attended St. Sabina Catholic Church in downtown Chicago, which weaves the Charismatic Stream of the local African-American community with the Incarnational Stream flowing through a Catholic Mass. We also attended an ecumenical Taizé service at a Catholic parish, in which we experienced the Contemplative Stream practiced through prayer, both silent and corporately sung. 

The Christian Formation and Ministry program taught me by example how to be an inclusive teacher who values his students. The two approaches that had the greatest impact on me were modeled by Catholics: Thomas Groome of Boston College and Paulo Freire of Brazil. Groome introduced a theory of shared praxis where the teacher is a colearner with the student, while still maintaining the necessary background in the subject or spiritual area in order to ensure the direction of study is focused and orthodox to the tradition being taught. Paulo Freire helped to define a specific method for teaching the poor of Brazil to read, thus empowering them to utilize their talents. Both approaches helped me to experience that teaching in several streams is equally as possible as learning in them. 

Near the conclusion of my degree, I took a class that integrated all the core classes. Two methods used for this were a comprehensive project and examination. The project was done in a group of six. Here the group was to attend a preselected ministry and determine how to roll out that ministry in a local church. My professor selected Emmaus House in Chicago, a ministry to male prostitutes. Emmaus House was started by a Catholic deacon who also earned a degree at Wheaton College, and the ministry is largely supported by evangelicals. 

After studying Emmaus House my team of six then met at my local Catholic parish and interviewed my deacon about how we could roll out the ministry to the parish. We concluded our experiences and research by drafting a proposal that our parish could use to implement this ministry in the future. Because of this class I witnessed firsthand the power of evangelicals and Catholics working together as one, ministering to the children of God. 

My creative project (similar to a thesis) integrated many of the subject areas described above. It explored the life events of eleven exemplary Roman Catholics in order to understand what helped them to grow in their faith. This integrated areas of interest to me, including conversion, sanctification, my Catholic heritage, and how our upbringings affect us as adults. The interviews I conducted and stories I heard helped me to identify with the spiritual formation at work in these individuals and how their Catholic faith and formational activities had facilitated formational growth. 

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06.  Outside or Inside?

Despite the misgivings I had as I began my studies at Wheaton, the faculty in my program were always supportive of me. I never heard a negative remark about Catholics in the program. At one point I felt that a faculty member had some reservations about me. But, as I embraced the concepts—both Evangelical and Catholic—that were presented in class, I could tell that we were growing in mutual appreciation. I ultimately felt that faculty member’s support of me. 

When another professor chose a Catholic ministry for the comprehensive class project (the Emmaus House), I felt a real confirmation of the faculty’s support for me. I was only one Catholic student, and yet I was cared for and accepted. I had a fidelity to Christ through streams that differed from that of a traditional evangelical student, but the perspectives that I brought and the differing emphases that came from my perspectives as a Catholic and a believer formed by my involvement in Al-Anon were consistently recognized and appreciated as authentic to the class and the culture of the students, faculty, and department. The department validated me by integrating the Incarnational Stream into the traditional streams the department emphasized. I believe this happened because all along I had entered into the Evangelical Stream, validating the students, professors, and department while I was a student there. I found no opposition between different streams, and neither, ultimately, did my department. 

This was one of the happiest times in my life, because it felt like we really were working as one community of children in Christ. 

My creative project paper got a recommendation to be summarized on a posterboard that was displayed at a yearly graduate school research event and is now posted in the program’s main conference room. It didn’t matter that the project involved research on Catholics; what mattered to the faculty was that it was research on important areas of spiritual formation. 

My classmates accepted me also. I never had a student speak derogatorily about me because I was Catholic. I did have students ask me about my faith—they were genuinely curious and interested in hearing about it. One student shared in class that he was a member of a church that had strong doubts about Catholics, but the Christian Formation and Ministry program had introduced them to several Catholic concepts that had strengthened their evangelical faith and allowed them to become more accepting of Catholics. 

Over the course of the program, I learned to grow in my acceptance of my evangelical classmates and teachers. I tried to approach topics involving evangelicals and Protestants from their perspective so that I could understand the topics and the individuals’ perceptions better. I tried to think as an evangelical. I took an active interest in the history, faith, and current thinking of the Protestant church. I tried not to judge. I tried to understand facts. I understood that most matters of Christian faith were shared between Catholics and Protestants. Where elements of the faith differed between Catholics and Protestants, I tried to understand those differences so that we could remain open in conversation and not be separated by conflict. 

My experience in the Christian Formation and Ministry program felt like how the church should be. We functioned as one. We valued the truths of Christ. We loved each other. And where there were differences, we looked at these as opportunities for spiritual and intellectual growth, as opposed to points to divide and separate ourselves. 

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07.  What Does Catholic Mean?

My time in the Christian Formation and Ministry department also prompted me contemplate other traditionally Catholic areas not taught within the program. The topics that my studies didn’t cover became areas of meditation and contemplation for me, and I came to appreciate the mysteries of the Mass more deeply and how important the incarnational sacrament of the Eucharist is, how much I now appreciate the Theotokos or Mother of God, and my understanding of purgatory and what it means to me. 

When I completed my time at Wheaton College, I felt that I was more Catholic, not less. But what does this mean? The literal definition of the word Catholic is “universal,” and the Catholic Church means “the universal church.” I spent the majority of the program hanging out with evangelicals and getting to know a variety of streams in addition to my own. The streams and the people I was exposed to complemented what I knew, honored what I knew, and helped me grow. I was missing a part of me that I did not know I was missing previously. I believe this is because Christ shares himself in all of the streams. When I focused on only one or two streams, there was much that had not been revealed to me about Christ and his church. But by becoming intimately involved with other streams, more of Christ and his body were revealed to me. As a result, I now feel more whole, complete, universal: more Catholic.