Missionary Resources - New Lecture

Over the last few days I have been completing a 6,000 word article describing how and why I became Orthodox, and some of the differences I had to take account of between the Evangelical Protestantism I had grown up with, and the Orthodox Faith I was growing into. Such accounts of how a person became Orthodox are useful, (not that mine has any particular merit) because they allow others to see that they also could become Orthodox.

Here is a section of it...

I am immensely grateful to my parents and those other faithful Christians who gave me a knowledge of God and a desire to serve Him. I am grateful for many of the opportunities I received to serve God and to exercise a measure of faith and trust in Him. But I gave up all of this evangelical experience, and all of the possibilities which lay before me within the evangelical protestant world and I became Orthodox. I was not a nominal protestant, I was entirely committed to God. I was not ignorant of the faith, but had trained for ministry. I was not without any prospect of service, but had already received an invitation to become a youth pastor in an evangelical church in which I had helped to run a children’s mission.

If the person who has become Orthodox does not adopt a negative and polemical approach towards the community of their origins, and this is rarely useful, then the description of the various teachings and practices which they had to reconsider in the light of their journey towards Orthodoxy can become something which produces thoughtful reflection on the part of the one reading such a testimony. This is because the questions raised are from a person who has shared the same background, and not from someone who might be considered an 'outsider'. There is sometimes a sense that within Orthodoxy people should not share their testimony, or their life story, but it need not and should not be a matter of self-pride, indeed more often than not it is a cause of great thankfulness towards God.

I have recorded this particular talk and it is available for download here - Born Protestant, Became Orthodox. I'd be very interested in any comments folk might have.