I Once Was...But Now I've Found... an interview at Tyler Tully's "The Jesus Event"

When Tyler Tully asked if he could interview me for his "I once was...but now I've found..." series, I said sure, but I was a little perplexed as to what the topic could be.  I never had any sort of major moment of conversion that is popular in much of evangelical Christianity and although I left church for a time as a teenager and came back, I never really felt it was that momentous and didn't completely redefine my faith or who I was.  So we came up with the idea of exploring the ecumenical Christian journey I've been on since, well, birth.

Kelly, you were raised in an ecumenical environment, where you were exposed to different flavors of Christian worship and practice. Why were you exposed to that type of cultivation, and what did you enjoy most about it?

I was exposed to ecumenism because my parents had always gone to different churches and that didn’t stop when they got married.  My dad was Catholic and my mom was Protestant (United Church of Christ).  I guess they wanted us to be able to go to both rather than picking one.  I was even baptized in both of them–on the same day!  I can’t say that as a child I enjoyed anything about it; it was more of an annoyance to often go to both churches every week (Saturday night Catholic mass and Sunday morning Protestant church service) but as an adult I have greatly appreciated it because it helped me to understand from an early age that no one denomination is perfect or right about everything.  I do remember as a child that when we would say the Lord’s Prayer, I would recite it the opposite way of the church I was in (the versions were slightly different) and when we would recite the Nicene creed in the Catholic church, I wouldn’t say the line about believing in one holy catholic church, because to me, I went to two churches that were equally valid.  I didn’t know then that catholic in that context meant universal.

To read the rest of the interview, in which Tyler asks me about church shopping, modesty culture, college ministry, and the future of the church, please visit "The Jesus Event".