Stories of Faith

My mother and my wife Elizabeth have been the two most influential people in my faith journey. When I was very young, I remember my mother would take my brother and I to church and instilled in me at the earliest age the need to have God in my life and a strong faith in God. We moved around the U.S. and lived in several different states and attended various churches of many different denominations as well as non-denominational churches. Regardless of which church we attended, my mother always set a good example of being involved in the church.

In high school my faith started to wane….I think it was a combination of being a rebellious teenager as well as the distractions in life that I let creep in and led me to pause my faith journey. However, the seeds were planted by a loving mother and there was always a tug at my heart no matter how far away I strayed from God.

In college Elizabeth and I started dating (we actually met in high school). She came from a strong Christian background and had a very strong faith. During our dating years she would ever so gently try to nudge me towards God. As time went on and after we graduated from college and were engaged to be married, God intervened and I started attending church regularly with Elizabeth. God started working on me and I quickly remembered how important it was to have God in my life. Elizabeth and I were both baptized together, when I was in my late twenties. Sometimes we take detours, however God is always there and ready with open arms.

As time went on, Elizabeth and I had 2 boys.  We have attended several different churches in central Illinois over the years, partly due to the logistics which come with moving. It is very important for me that I have God in my life, and I wanted that for my two boys, the same as what my mother wanted for her two boys. I am so blessed and grateful to God for the path he led me down. I would not change a single thing.

My faith journey has made several stops at various churches. It’s been a path that appears to be random, but I know it has evolved as God planned it.

I was introduced to the world in 1951 as a Roman Catholic baby. I remained faithful to the Church and its doctrine well into my 30s. I can still recite some prayers in Latin and miss some of the rituals and practices that put form to order in my life.

A major detour took place in the late 1980s, when as an adult I vehemently opposed the church’s conservative shift that called for strict obedience. Our family continued to attend, but my heart began searching for a closer personal connection with God.

It took a life crisis or two, via loss of several family members and my own recovery from alcoholism, to reveal where the path might take me. I was no longer operating on auto pilot. I was willing at last to follow God’s leading.

Fast forward to the late 1990s. I met my wife, Diane, and joined the Lutheran church where she played for 29 years. At this time, I was also invited to join a non-denominational Bible study that I continue to attend today.

A few years later, God intervened again, leaving us to “shop” for a new church. We visited several and eventually joined a large Methodist church. But He wasn’t done. First Baptist needed an organist in 2015 and Diane accepted the call that she continues today.

After some time, I again changed church addresses, which now considers me a member of the American Baptist faith.

Who would’ve thought? Certainly not this Catholic/Lutheran/Methodist Baptist. But God did. He puts us where He can use us to carry out His plan. Today I’m much relieved to know that He has been in charge of this faith journey all along.

Mrs. Beatrice (Bea) Olson was baptized at the age of 14 by a student minister.  She recalls him traveling down to Lexington just on Sundays but he was an important part of their lives. He held classes to teach youth about accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior.   Her sister, who was two years older than her also accepted Christ and they were baptized together.   Ms. Bea said that Minister Alan Goss was a good minister who had a significant impact on her faith journey.

Mrs. Bea shared that because she is saved, she has hope and faith that this life here on earth is not the end.  Having God in her life has given her meaning of why she is alive because Jesus always watches over her; everything she does and everything she says.  She tries to be a good example to others by being kind and good.

God has been very important in her life.  She trusts God and prays to Him every day and He answers, otherwise she would be on her own. He provided solace during some of the most difficult times in her life.   If it had not been for her faith in God, and the great comfort she found in the bible, she would not have made it through the death of her husband in 2002.

Mrs. Bea said since she has been sick and unable to attend church services regularly in person like she used to do, she has been reading the bible daily; a chapter from the Old Testament and a chapter from the New Testament.  Mrs. Bea has read the bible in its entirety at least twice.

Mrs. Bea is 101 years old and has been on this journey a long time.  She has been a member of First Baptist Church (FBC) of Bloomington since 1945.  She served as treasurer, worked in the kitchen, helped with the LOGOs program and was an active member of American Baptist Women (ABW) ministry.  Mrs. Bea is an inspiration to many and we are blessed to have her in our lives and as a member of our FBC family.

The Scenic Route

My faith journey has felt like taking the scenic route.  Some of the roads have been pretty out of-the-way, others have not been the ones I intended to take but have gotten me to where I needed to be, and others have turned a corner into an unexpectedly breathtaking view.

Church was one of my first human experiences (I was born on a Tuesday, and my parents took me to the church they were serving in northern British Columbia the following Sunday), and has remained one of the most consistent things in my life ever since.  As a pastor’s kid, I spent my early childhood living next door to a church, which felt like an extension of our home – as the parsonage was in some ways an extension of the church.  I became a follower of Jesus in Sunday school (we had moved to North Dakota by then) when I was quite young, so my memory of it is very vague.  At age 11, I was baptized by my dad in a country church in Nebraska.

When I was 13, my parents became missionaries, moving from the middle of cornfields to a city in Nigeria, where they served as house parents at a hostel for students boarding at an international mission school.  This was a pretty sharp curve in the road, but I soon made friends. My classmates were of other religions – Muslim, Hindu, Sikh – as well as a variety of Christian traditions, and from all over the world.  The exposure to so many people whose backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs were very different from mine made me look at my own faith in a new way; instead of challenging my faith, it gave me a better understanding and deeper appreciation for the Gospel, as well as a broader perspective as school chapel services included people from Lutheran, Baptist, Reformed, Mennonite, and many other traditions.  My faith became something I thought about rather than just took for granted.

Moving back to the United States at age 17 was unexpectedly bumpy, as no one had warned us that culture shock also happens when you’re returning to a parent culture after several years.  But church again was a source of consistency.  While attending the University of Sioux Falls, where I met Brian, I joined Trinity Baptist Church.  Trinity was home to several retired missionaries to Nigeria and Cameroon, including some of my extended family, so I had people who helped me navigate the transition from being a third culture kid living as an expat to living in my “passport country”.  Living thousands of miles from my parents in a country that felt very strange to me, it was a great blessing to have such a loving, supportive church family.

Right after Brian and I got married, we moved to Wisconsin, where we served at Memorial Baptist Church.  I had intended to teach high school English, but the local district had no openings at the time, and eventually I took over as church secretary “temporarily” (which turned out to be 17 years).  A few years after I started working at the church, I also took a position at a ministry to young adults, where my job description was to “find out what needs to be done and do it”; this came to included helping to start a downtown coffee shop, which I managed for three years.  Brian worked one night a week at Connect Cafe, and we developed friendships with staff and patrons that still continue after nearly 20 years.  After the Cafe closed, some of the young adults who were part of the Cafe community got together weekly for late-night pizza, and it was from these gatherings that a Bible study group emerged, which met at our house for the next seven years.  During this time, I was also part of a team that started a small nonprofit called SHARDS, which focused on funding mental health services for people in need, and I served as the administrator for several years.  A connection we made through SHARDS, along with conversations with a pastor friend in the Milwaukee area, led a group from Memorial Baptist to start Stone Soup, which shared a meal every Saturday in the parking lot of the local library with anyone who was hungry.  Strangers ate together, people who were homeless were an essential part of the team, a feast could appear unexpectedly from a bike basket in the nick of time, and there was somehow always more than enough to go around.  It was a little taste of the Kingdom of God.

I never got around to teaching English, but over the years I’ve found that my heart is in nonprofit work, and that I really enjoy the behind-the-scenes details of administration.  So a few years after Brian and I moved to Bloomington Normal, after I had gotten settled into new roles in church life at First Baptist (church kitchens have felt like home to me for as long as I can remember) – and then resettled after the pandemic shook up the whole world – when a church member said that she was looking for someone to do some administrative work for her nonprofit counseling practice, I felt a nudge to ask for details.  The job description included coordinating the practice’s domestic violence intervention program, which is mostly administrative, but also involves group facilitation and working with student interns.  So in a way, I did get around to teaching in the end, though in a different context than I imagined; sometimes we end up on a road that runs parallel to the one we thought we were going to take.  I also get to do nonprofit administration, and I get to hang out with young adults.

Throughout the journey, one of the things I’ve learned is that, when I feel the Holy Spirit nudging me to do something, it will usually lead to something bigger, and often something completely unexpected.