Pentecostal pastor takes Catholic path

And he paid a personal price for his conversion

Deacon Alex Jones

By VIRGINIA BATTISTE
Special to the WCR
Calgary

The journey from his Pentecostal roots of faith to the Catholic Church was a struggle for Deacon Alex Jones, but one he says had to be made "simply because it was the right thing to do."

Raised in an African-American, Pentecostal home in Detroit, where he now serves as a Catholic deacon, Jones says it cost him everything to leave the Church of his youth, where he had served for 25 years as a pastor, to embrace the Catholic faith.

"No one becomes a Catholic from my background, because there is such stigma attached to it."

Ostracized

Family and friends, including his wife, thought he was either mentally off balance, being demonically attacked or was having a nervous breakdown when he announced his decision to seek membership in the Catholic Church.

Jones, now based in Farmington Hills, Mich., shared the personal story of his faith journey with close to 200 people gathered for the Calgary Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services What is Truth? Conference on May 10.

Jones had experienced the Holy Spirit in a powerful way that brought him to conversion at the age of 16, and he loved his Pentecostal expression of faith and the denominational ties. However, his study of the Church fathers and the early documents of the Church convinced him the Catholic Church was the one, true Church. To be obedient to what he learned, he felt there was no alternative but to make the change.

Seeking to understand the sources of worship in the Christian tradition, Jones undertook the study of the early Church documents. To his amazement, he found the model of worship practised in the early Church was the exact representation of the Catholic Mass.

Wanting to be faithful to what he was learning, he began to introduce the form of worship into the Pentecostal congregation he pastored. As it was recognizable as the form of the Mass, his elders began to challenge him that he was becoming Catholic. He argued that he was becoming "apostolic" and was simply following the directives for worship that the apostles laid down.

Eventually, he realized that the Catholic Church was the one Church that could claim to trace its roots back to the apostles. After teaching on the early Church fathers and the apostolic tradition of worship to his congregation for several months, he, his family and about 60 of his church members determined to join the Catholic faith.

Coming into the Church was not without challenges. The unprecedented move raised issues on both sides. Church officials hardly knew what to do with them. Simply integrating such a large number of people into a parish at one time was challenging. There were also cultural and traditional differences between the African-American, Pentecostal beliefs and the Catholic approaches to Scripture, authority and the role of women. And, to some degree, there was the issue of racism.

Many of his family and friends wanted to know why he was joining "that white man's Church." He was told they wouldn't be wanted or accepted. But, he countered that in the Protestant churches there was even less mingling of the races than in the Catholic expression of faith.

"In the United States the hour of worship on Sunday mornings is still the most segregated hour in America in many Protestant churches," he claimed.

He paid the price

While these were challenges, for Jones they were not deterrents to keep him away. Once he recognized that the Catholic Church was the apostolic tradition handed on by the apostles, he could not in conscience stay away and still be faithful to his beliefs in Jesus. He says there were greater mysteries in God than he had ever known and no price was too great to stand by that. He came to understand his subjective experience of God had to give way to the objective truth. Giving up his position to become a layperson became part of his submission to the objective truths he had discovered.

"Just as the Lord Jesus gave up everything to become a human being, I felt I could do no less. I had to give up everything. I had discovered the truth, the 'pearl of great price' and was willing to pay whatever it cost to have it."

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