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The Testimony of John Morris

Greetings, and may the Lord be gracious unto you and bless you.  My prayer is that you would find the clear, refreshing and protecting Truth of the early church sooner than I.  It was a fifty-nine year journey for me!

Being the son of a Disciples of Christ pastor and professor, and growing up in a very close extended family, all of whom were believers, I am the product of Protestant theology, from the cradle until…Holy Saturday of Pascha, 2003.  In 1976 my wife, two sons and I moved from the East coast to a small town in central Kansas.  Soon after, we joined a Baptist church, where under the guidance of several pastors and a wonderful teacher, my family grew in the understanding of, and commitment to, Christ.  For seventeen years we were in this incubator community, somewhat isolated from the issues of the world, learning more of Christ, and learning to give ourselves to Him and to others.

1. Then in 1997, we moved to Houston, Texas, as empty nesters.  And the journey to the early church began to quicken, without our knowing it at first.  During the first several years my wife and I visited many churches in the area, and came to feel the church was changing.  At least, it was different than where we had been.  How?
• prayer in services was minimal, and the Lord’s Prayer was almost never said; communion was intermittent or irregular – certainly not of much significance; the reading of Scripture was generally not a focal part of services,
   
• there were no organs, no hymns attesting to the history and traditions of Protestantism; there were loud bands, praise songs, and staged productions replete with impressive lighting and audiovisuals coming from tons of equipment mounted on ceilings,
   
• liturgical statement of faith was rarely done, and in many churches there was a plethora of sermons and programs on topics such as coping with anxiety, dealing with fear, managing your finances, and realizing your spiritual gifts; there was no teaching or exhortation on sin, confession, or those human activities the Scriptures clearly say are to be excluded from Christian behavior and life.

But we found a church, that met in a school, that readily prayed together, that made constant use of Scripture, and that was led by a pastor who preached from it.  I became an elder, and we helped build the first church building.  But even here, something was missing as we began to ask, “For whom is the Church?”, and to believe, “For God, for worshipping Him.”  And this just does not fit with the, “What can the Church do for me (them)?”, that seems to be the common approach.

2. In 2000, our youngest son, in his last year of graduate school (we thought), began attending an Orthodox mission.  We are close and seek and share advice and experiences.  Through many telephone conversations we began to learn of Christian Orthodoxy, about which we knew absolutely nothing.  But our conversations assured us that Christopher was not getting weird.
    
3. In 2001, at about the same time I took responsibility for coordinating the construction of the first church building for our little Protestant congregation, our pastor asked me to teach an adult ‘elective’ course.  Discussions with my son had drawn my interest to the early church, and the pastor had a 9-session ‘canned’ course called The History of Christianity. In preparation, I found the course plan too cursory.  (I took Mrs. Karl Menninger’s excellent four-year Bible study years ago and its method is an excellent standard.)  This Baptist curriculum started with the Apostles and zipped through the first five hundred years in forty-five minutes!  Thus, I began studying the early church.  At this point my wife noticed a newspaper advertisement inviting people to join a Wednesday night study of the early church, led by Father John Morris, new priest at a local Orthodox mission.  Do you see how the Lord was bringing our growth to the point of Christian Orthodoxy?  Ironies!  Even to the glorious name of our new teacher, and ultimately, priest!

In 2001 the Lord also provided an opportunity for me to ‘retire’ from a long and rewarding career in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and development.  He provided the subtle knowledge, the feeling that worship must be directed to Him.  He provided a son to tell us of his entry into and growth within the Church of the Apostles.  (Christopher is now an Orthodox seminarian.)  He provided the experience of constructing a church that we might be of help as our new Orthodox home builds its first sanctuary. He led us to a desire to know the early church by asking us to teach others.  He led us to Orthodox teaching when we had no conscious intention of becoming Orthodox.  My wife and I then spent over a year as catechumen; for a while only those around us knew it, not we.  In late 2002 we knew we must become Orthodox Christians.  I finished my term as a Protestant elder, and we completed construction of the Protestant church.

Obligations fulfilled, we came to Orthodoxy on April 26, 2003.  Of all these reasons to do so, what was the most compelling?  It is the early church.  Somehow I lived a Protestant life for fifty-nine years without knowing the movers and shakers of early Christianity, without knowing the defenders, sustainers and martyrs of the Faith, without knowing Polycarp, Athanasius, Irenaeus, the Cappadocians, Chrysostom and many others.  They are here, in the Christian Orthodox Church, where you can hear and see them, along with the Apostles and our Lord Jesus Christ, and where we can all worship our Lord as He intended and established.

John Morris

10 September 2003
 

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