Archpriest Columba - I am Convergent

In 2026, it will be twenty years since I received my first Bible.

I had some experience with Scripture before then. I had heard Bible stories. I had been around churches. I knew enough to know the Bible mattered. But I did not yet have a copy that was truly mine. That changed at Christmas in 2006, when my aunt gave me my first Bible.

I did not know then how much that gift would shape me.

Reading that Bible lit something in me. It stirred a love for Jesus and a hunger for Scripture that has never really left. Over time, I even started collecting different versions of the Bible. That hobby continues to this day. Some people collect stamps, coins, or old books. I collect Bibles because each one reminds me of that first hunger. The feeling that God was speaking and I wanted to listen.

That love for Jesus also pulled me more deeply into the Church. But even that did not happen in one straight line. My family carried more than one Christian stream. My aunt was Pentecostal, and she often took my brother and me to her church. My grandmother was Presbyterian, and we would go with her too. My grandfather was Roman Catholic, and I enjoyed going to Mass with him.

There were weekends when I would find myself at a Pentecostal church on Saturday, and then at Roman Catholic Mass and a Presbyterian service on Sunday.

At the time, I did not have the language for what was happening in me. I only knew that I loved something in each place.

I loved the meditative and liturgical worship of my grandfather’s Roman Catholic parish. There was a steadiness there. The prayers did not depend on anyone’s mood. The altar, the candles, the rhythm of the Mass, and the sense of reverence all taught me that worship was bigger than my own feelings.

I loved the emphasis on Scripture and the life of the mind in my grandmother’s Presbyterian church. There was a seriousness there. Sermons mattered. Study mattered. Faith was not treated as something shallow or sentimental. It was something to be considered, questioned, taught, and lived.

I loved the passion and spiritual presence of my aunt’s Pentecostal church. There was fire there. People expected God to move. Prayer was not treated as a formality. The Holy Spirit was not a doctrine trapped on a page. There was an immediacy to it, a sense that God was near and active.

Looking back, each of those churches gave me something. Each one showed me a piece of what makes the Church beautiful. Each one carried a gift. But even then, though I could not yet say it this way, I began to sense that none of them alone held the whole.

A few years later, I felt called to ministry. Because of that call, I returned to the Presbyterian Church (USA). I was confirmed there and began working toward ordained ministry. It was not a random return. It was a return to one of the ancestral churches of my family, a community where my family had been active for generations.

Even though I later had to leave the PCUSA, there is one moment from that season that still stays with me.

One Sunday, during worship, the pastor, who was also my mentor at the time, was preparing to lead the congregation in reciting the Apostles’ Creed. The person who prepared the bulletin had accidentally printed a version of the Creed that said “holy Christian Church” instead of “holy Catholic Church.”

My pastor stopped the service.

He explained to the congregation that the Creed is a Catholic creed, and that Presbyterians confess a Catholic faith.

That moment startled me.

Like many Americans from Protestant backgrounds, I had been taught, directly or indirectly, that Catholic meant Roman Catholic. So the idea that Presbyterians confessed a Catholic faith sounded strange to me. But my pastor was right.

Catholic did not mean only Roman. Catholic meant universal. It meant whole. It meant the faith of the whole Church, across time and place.

That moment opened a door for me.

I began to understand that I had been misled by the way American Christianity often talks about itself. The Protestant Reformers were Catholic Christians. They wanted reform and renewal. They did not set out to surrender the ancient faith. They did not intend to create a world where Christians would forget the Creeds, the sacraments, the saints, or the worship of the early Church.

They wanted the Church to be made faithful again.

That realization changed how I saw the Church. I began to learn that there were Orthodox Catholics, Old Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, Roman Catholics, and other Christians who understood themselves as part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Later, I learned that some Pentecostal and Evangelical churches had also rediscovered the Catholic faith in their own way. That rediscovery helped give rise to the Convergence Movement.

When I first heard about the Convergence Movement, it made sense to me almost immediately.

It gave language to something I had already lived.

I thought back to those weekends with my family. Pentecostal prayer. Presbyterian study. Roman Catholic liturgy. I thought about how each tradition had offered something true, something needed, something rooted in the life of the early Church.

The Presbyterian part of my background taught me to love Scripture and study. I remain grateful for that. We can look to the prophets, apostles, Church Fathers, and great teachers of the faith and see a deep concern for Scripture, theology, philosophy, and history. You cannot really understand St. Paul without understanding something of the Hebrew Scriptures. You also miss something if you do not understand the Greek world in which he preached. The Christian mind matters. Theology matters. Careful study matters.

But I also saw what was missing.

In much of the mainline world I knew, the Holy Spirit often seemed suspiciously absent. The Scriptures and the stories of the saints show the Spirit working in power. We see the sick healed, the dead raised, the outcast included, the poor lifted, and the meek inheriting the earth. We see courage where there should have been fear. We see people changed from the inside out.

I did not always see that same expectation in the church spaces that had formed me.

At the same time, I also saw how many Protestants had forgotten their own liturgical inheritance. The Presbyterian tradition has liturgical roots. The Book of Common Worship exists for a reason. The Reformed tradition did not begin as a rejection of reverence. Yet in many places, worship had become thinner than it needed to be. Ancient patterns were set aside, sometimes out of fear that anything too structured was somehow less spiritual.

But Scripture itself does not support that fear. The worship of Israel was liturgical. The Temple had rhythm. The synagogue had form. The early Church gathered around the prayers, the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and the life of the Spirit. Liturgy and Spirit were never meant to be enemies.

I do not say any of this to pick on Presbyterians. I say it because Presbyterianism is part of my own story. It is one of my ancestral streams. It formed me. It gave me gifts I still carry. But the limits I saw there are not unique to that tradition. Every church tradition has gifts.

Every church tradition also has places where it forgets something.

Some churches have sacraments but little fire.

Some have fire but little structure.

Some have Scripture but little mystery.

Some have mystery but little mission.

Some have justice language but little sacramental depth.

Some have beautiful worship but little concern for the wounded outside their doors.

This is why I am Convergent.

I am Convergent because I believe the Church is not meant to choose between Word, Sacrament, and Spirit.

At the heart of convergence is the recognition of three streams in the life of the Church: sacramental, evangelical, and charismatic. The sacramental stream reminds us that God uses visible signs to give invisible grace. Water, oil, bread, wine, hands, bodies, voices, and tables matter. The evangelical stream reminds us that Scripture must be proclaimed, Christ must be preached, conversion matters, and the Gospel must be heard and lived. The charismatic stream reminds us that the Holy Spirit is not a memory. The Spirit still speaks, heals, disrupts, comforts, and sends.

Many churches emphasize one or two of these streams. Few hold all three together well.

The Convergent Catholic Communion adds a fourth stream that is essential to our life together. We are affirming.

That word matters.

We believe Scripture, Tradition, reason, and the Spirit call us toward an expansive vision of God’s love and justice. We believe the Church must honor the full dignity of all people, including those whom religious institutions have too often wounded, excluded, or treated as problems to be managed. We believe the table of Christ is wider than the fears of the Church.

This affirming stream is not an add-on to make us more acceptable to the age. It is part of our faithfulness to Christ. At Pentecost, the Spirit did not fall on one nation, one language, or one kind of person. The Spirit gathered difference into communion. The early Church had to learn, often painfully, that God was already at work among people they had not expected.

Again and again, the Church has had to be converted by the mercy of God.

That work continues.

The Convergent Catholic Communion is not perfect. No communion is. But I believe we are trying to receive the whole gift of the Church with honesty. We are trying to be sacramental without being rigid, evangelical without being shallow, charismatic without being chaotic, and affirming without becoming vague.

That is not easy work.

It requires maturity.

It requires humility.

It requires us to stop treating our favorite tradition as though it alone contains the whole of the Church. It requires us to receive from one another without pretending every difference is small. It requires us to be honest about the failures of the wider Church and honest about our own.

We live in a time when churches are struggling. Historic mainline Protestant churches have faced decades of decline. Roman Catholic communities continue to carry the wounds and consequences of systemic clerical abuse. Conservative Evangelical churches have been shaken by their own scandals, political entanglements, and failures of accountability. Eastern Orthodox churches have also faced division, including painful political and ecclesial fractures. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated much of what was already breaking. Many churches are smaller now. Many people are more suspicious of institutions. Many are asking whether the Church has anything left to say.

I believe the answer is yes.

But not if we simply protect what is familiar.

The Church does not need nostalgia. It needs renewal. It needs repentance. It needs courage. It needs priests and prophets.

I often think about the ministries of priests and prophets in the Old Testament. The priests served in the temple. They offered sacrifice. They guarded worship. They carried the holy things of God for the people. The prophets stood in the world and called the people back to covenant faithfulness. They named injustice. They confronted kings. They reminded Israel that worship without mercy is empty.

The Church still needs both.

We need priests who will tend the altar, administer the sacraments, preach the Word, hear confessions, bless the sick, and keep the worship of God at the center of the community. We need people who understand that liturgy is not decoration. It is formation. It trains the body and soul to live in the presence of God.

But we also need prophets. We need voices willing to stand in the world and call the Church back to Christ. We need people who will name injustice, defend the poor, welcome the excluded, and refuse to let the Church become chaplain to empire, party, race, wealth, or respectability.

The priestly without the prophetic becomes hollow ritual.

The prophetic without the priestly becomes untethered outrage.

The Church needs both altar and street. Both chalice and justice. Both incense and fire. Both confession and courage.

As a Convergent Catholic, I believe we are uniquely positioned to hold those together. Not because we are better than other Christians. We are not. But because our very identity asks us to refuse false choices.

We do not have to choose between Scripture and sacrament.

We do not have to choose between the saints and the Spirit.

We do not have to choose between reverence and renewal.

We do not have to choose between Catholic order and radical welcome.

We do not have to choose between holiness and justice.

Christ is not divided.

That conviction is why I am Convergent.

I am Convergent because the Church I found across my family’s traditions taught me to recognize gifts in places that did not always recognize one another.

I am Convergent because my first Bible taught me to love the Word, but the altar taught me that the Word became flesh.

I am Convergent because Pentecostal fire taught me to expect the Spirit, but liturgy taught me to be patient enough to be formed.

I am Convergent because Presbyterian study taught me to think, but Catholic worship taught me to kneel.

I am Convergent because I believe the Church is called to be more than a reaction against what wounded us.

We are called to be a home.

A home for those who love Scripture and still hunger for the Eucharist.

A home for those who cherish liturgy and still expect the Holy Spirit to move.

A home for those who honor the saints and still believe reform is holy.

A home for those who have been excluded but have not stopped longing for Christ.

A home for those called to priestly care and prophetic courage.

This is not sentimental work. It asks something of us.

The priests and prophets of old both understood sacrifice. But for us, sacrifice cannot mean feeding violence or pretending God delights in bloodshed. In Christ, sacrifice is transformed. It becomes self-offering. It becomes the surrender of ego, comfort, control, and fear. It becomes love made costly. It becomes the courage to lay down whatever keeps us from faithfulness.

The question before the Convergent Catholic Communion, and before the wider Church, is not whether we have the right language. The question is whether we are willing to become what we confess.

Are we willing to be formed by Scripture, not just quote it?

Are we willing to receive the sacraments, not just defend them?

Are we willing to welcome the Spirit, even when the Spirit unsettles us?

Are we willing to affirm the dignity of those the Church has wounded, not as a slogan but as a practice?

Are we willing to build communities that are accountable, prayerful, grounded, and alive?

If we are, then I believe there is still hope for renewal. Not because we are impressive. Not because we are large. Not because we have everything figured out.

There is hope because Christ is faithful.

There is hope because the Spirit still breathes.

There is hope because the Church, even wounded and divided, still belongs to God.

I am Convergent because I have seen the beauty of the Church in more than one place. I have heard it in Pentecostal prayer, Presbyterian preaching, and Catholic liturgy. I have carried it in my first Bible, in the Creed, in the sacraments, and in the call to ministry.

I am Convergent because I believe the Church is wider than our inherited divisions.

I am Convergent because I believe the future belongs not to Christians who cling to fragments, but to communities willing to gather the gifts of the whole Church and offer them back to Christ.

I am Convergent.

And I believe God is not finished with us.