I have been following the recent trend of Gen Z, particularly its young men, piling onto the ark of the Catholic Church. Some are reverts, cradle Catholics renewing their engagement in the Church; others are converts, abandoning atheism, or often, Protestantism. I relate to them: in 2023, after three years of pastoring a Baptist church, I too entered the Catholic Church. Whatever that means. I’ve never been as publicly candid about this subject as I will be here. My conversion to Catholicism was, by my metrics, rather unfortunately public: the sensation of a Baptist pastor converting to Catholicism was covered locally by the MVTimes, and it was rather impossible not to note the change on my YouTube channel, since so much of my content was theological studies. Catholic podcasts took note and interviewed me. I lost a lot of Protestant followers. But I didn’t necessarily lose the Protestant in me. To be sure, in 2023, I was convinced of the Catholic Church’s claims to exclusivity on some level, but with a catch. I noted the Catechism’s charitable attitude towards Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox, and the Church’s teachings on ecumenism weighed heavily in my decision to join her. To be honest, I had always been very attracted to the Eastern Orthodox Church: one of my first mentors in the Christian life was a Greek Orthodox priest, a painter who understood my dual calling to the pastoral and arts ministries. And guitar-shredding Orthodox priests seems to be a thing, like Fr. Dionysios Tabakis. Had there been an Eastern Orthodox ministry on Martha’s Vineyard, the isolated island where I live, the chances are high that that’s where I would have ended up. Maybe I’d even have been on my way to becoming an Orthodox priest by now. But for lack of one, I spent more time researching the Catholic Church, which had a parish here. Like the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church claims to truly be the “ancient faith” of the apostles. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? So in I went.
My family’s 2023 reception into the Catholic Church, Easter 2023.No sooner had I been received into the Catholic Church than Rev. Charlotte Wright of the Chilmark Community Church invited me to be the minister of music at her church. Fr. Paul over at the Good Shepherd parish ok’d it, and also gave his blessing when Rev. Charlotte got into the habit of asking me to preach in her absence. She also had the habit of poking me back toward the pastoral ministry. After all, not everyone has a call to it, and I do — it’s rather absurd to ignore such a rare but, according to her, obvious calling. And she wasn’t the only one reminding me of this, either. Indeed, I immediately missed the rhythm of the pastoral life: preparing Sunday sermons, meeting with and counseling my friends in the faith over coffee, meals, and outdoor walks, and leading worship with prayer and teaching on Sunday morning. I dove deeper into my online ministry, following in the footsteps of other Protestant pastor converts to Catholicism who managed to stay active like Dr. Scott Hahn and Keith Nester. But I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit that, at first, leaving behind the pastoral ministry was a bit of a relief. In 2023, my music career was hot. I was playing a lot, perhaps too much, between music festivals on the mainland and quintuple daily shifts on the island. And my family was growing, with our second infant fresh on the scene. Even three years in, pastoring was still new to me, while performing is long-since second-nature. By comparison, pastoring was resource-intensive on my psychic and emotional reserves, especially given the unusual challenges at our small Native American-founded church, with its peculiar conflicts between church, town, and tribe. 
My family band’s performance on Paste Magazine’s podcast on the heels of our date at Beach Road Weekend music festival in 2022.I was burning out. I was only a few months into Catholic life when Fr. Paul and I began discussing my options for ministry: whether the diaconate or even becoming a married priest. Ultimately, both options were extremely limited for a young working father on Martha’s Vineyard, since all the paths to these ministries were on the mainland. I put my head down into my music, and on the ministry side, I focused my energies on publishing my Bible studies online and cobbling together whatever in-person lay ministries I could on the island... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to Seán McMahon to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
|
No comments:
Post a Comment