Loren Paulsson

Pastor Shawn Neider and I discussed our way through Martin Luther's “Small Catechism,” spring of 2013. He remains a tolerant friend and patient interlocutor. He took time for this interview during last October's 500th anniversary commemoration of the reformation. Could you describe your growing up experience and how you became a Lutheran pastor? My father was Roman Catholic. My mother was Lutheran. They felt that it was important to attend church together so they planned to go back and forth through life. I was born while they were Lutheran and baptized by a pastoral friend at home as an infant. While I was young, another Lutheran pastor helped my father to understand that saved by faith alone meant that he didn't have to hope that he was a good enough person, but his hope was in Jesus's death and resurrection and promises. So we stayed in the Lutheran church. Faith life, devotions, bible reading, and the church were very important in our life. My dad had considered th...

Nima Duncan and I met while he was on staff at Saddle Rock Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Wenatchee, Wash. Though our paths crossed relatively briefly, it was long enough to spark this conversation. He graciously agreed to share his story. Could you start by summarizing your growing up experience and the steps along the way to Orthodoxy? ...My mom and biological father came to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution of the late 1970's. I am full-blooded Iranian and a first generation U.S. citizen. Growing up I felt estranged from the world around me. I had tan skin, black hair, and an odd name...living in a mostly b lack neighborhood. I did not grow up religious per se. Rather, my mom and step father had connections to religious types of people. Most of them were Christians of some sort, either Protestant or Catholic. There was also some Muslim influence from our Iranian family, mostly from my grandmother. But because of the radical and militant Muslim extremism reported in the n...

Scott Harrison has been my friend since we were classmates at the ELS Seattle CELTA course. He and another classmate and mutual friend have since found their respective ways to Saudi Arabia to take jobs using the skills we learned there, teaching English. Could you start by describing your growing up experience and the steps from where you grew up to where you are now? With regards to religion, I grew up in a Southern Baptist family. My dad was a Sunday school teacher. During my late teens, I stopped going to church on Sundays, but I went on Wednesday evenings because it was "youth night." (Like many, I went there for the girls.) After reading about so many horrible things in the news (murders especially), I began questioning why the world is full of such injustice and crime. Working as a security guard at the time, I convinced my partner to leave his bible with me during my graveyard shift as I wanted to "return to Jesus" that night to find some answers for why the...

Michael Faber has been a friend since another friend invited us to a Facebook conversation about the sacraments…if memory serves. This last week he shared his time and story with us. Could you start by describing your growing up experience and the steps along the way, as you say, Baptist to Charismatic to Charismatic Catholic? I was born into a Baptist family, but we didn’t go to church much except on Christmas and Easter and a few other times a year. My uncle Vernon, who was more religious, made sure to take me to church summer camp, several times in junior high.... Despite this lack of heavy church involvement, my interest in faith increased.... I remember conducting a “Bible study” under a table in the fourth grade with my pocket Gideon New Testament for several friends. I started a Bible study club in junior high when they were no longer allowed in public schools. I was baptized at age 14 at our family church, and when I was in the 11th Grade, I had a “born again” experience and wa...

Gentry McKeown has been a friend since we met at a mutual friend's birthday party. We've had some lively discussions about religion, politics, and other stuff, and she graciously agreed to share her story here. So to start off, could you describe your growing up experience, your perspective on life then, and how your perspective started to change? I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, the heart of the Bible Belt, so it’s no surprise I grew up in a Christian household and attended a fairly conservative Southern Baptist church. I went to Sunday school every week, participated in the youth group, and was even saved at the age of six. My sister and I were home-schooled, so our only social interaction was with friends we met at church. Because I was always surrounded by like-minded people, I accepted Christianity without question and believed the Bible was the literal word of god. As I got older, I studied the Bible on my own. I began to question the stories they taught me in Sund...