Rayla sent me an email and gave me permission to share it. Calvary Chapel (my wife Janet was associated with them in her younger days) boasts that 80% of their members are “ex-Catholics.” Thanks for sharing Rayla!

I came across your blog and am very impressed. After being raised Baptist, them attending Calvary Chapels for 20 years, I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, for many of the same reasons you converted to the Roman Catholic Church. 

I got so sick of the anti-Catholic rants (which to my shame, I used to believe), the ridicule of Catholic theology, especially  pertaining to the Holy Mother of God, the constant focus on the end of the world and the ridiculous Rapture theory, and the awful rock music.

But most of all I got tired of the smugness and surety that they are God’s cutting-edge church on earth. Not to mention most of them are so ignorant of church history and actually think that the early church believed and worshipped the way Evangelical Protestants do now. 

I was bitter for a while, angry, feeling I’d been duped. But I’ve come to regard members of Calvary Chapel (especially the young ones) and those in similar denominations as being like natives in the deep jungles. They just don’t know. They know nothing about church history before Martin Luther. 

Anyway, I do not engage with them, unless challenged, and even then I am careful. 

When I realy realized the problems with Protestantism, (it is said that to study Church history is to not remain Protestant), I was amazed that I didn’t see them before. Twenty thousand + denominations and they don’t agree, something clearly the Bible is against, that and the stripping away of the sacraments and not honoring the Holy Mother…What a disaster. Now I can see it so clearly. Thank God I’m out!

May God rich bless you and your family.

See similar articles I’ve posted about mega-churches:

Mega-church Mania: One Mom’s Observations (she’s a good writer) and Observations from the Early Church 

As A Baptist I Never Asked: “What Did the First Christians Do on Sunday Morning?” 

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This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Daniel Rossiter

    God Bless and welcome home. I was just received into the Church this past Easter Vigil after having been Protestant for nearly 40 years. I remember coming to the realization after a lot of study; What do I have left to protest against? I totally know what you been about the veil being lifted from your eyes.

  2. anil Thomas

    I was born in a protestant family.i returned to the Holy Church with my family.i hope and pray that all our brethren return to the true faith.

  3. Micha Elyi

    When I hear the anti-Catholic rants from such Protestants, I sometimes recall that Jesus cautioned his disciples, “whoever is not against us is for us” (Luke 9:50, Mark 9:40) then I might make an intercessory prayer for the ranter and those who listened to the rants. Besides Rayna’s Calvary Chapel congregation, the local Seventh-Day Adventist preacher in my area loudly declares the Catholic Christians are idol worshipers, make a god of the Blessed Mother, blah blah blah. (Then they rent their hall on Sundays to a Greek Orthodox congregation. Go figure.)

    Also it is useful to recall that Scripture records that the demons of hell know who Jesus is. Thus we hear of satanists performing a Black Mass but never a Black Altar Call. No one bothers to steal then attempt to desecrate grape juice and Wonder Bread.

  4. Marian Hornfeck

    Thank you for posting the article from Rayla! I just want to say “Amen, brother”! As a convert for twenty seven years now, I could not have said stated it any better. As a believer in Jesus, when I began to become serious about my faith, I discovered how ignorant I was and the more I learned about church history, how ignorant those “Bible teachers” were that I had been listening to for years. When I started attending the Catholic church, I discovered that it was not a “cult”. What I had been told for years was not true about Catholicism, not only is the gospel read and preached, it is the sacredness and holiness I love. I found that a personal relationship with Jesus is multi-faceted in Catholicism…communion with him in the Eucharist, the prayers and getting to know Him through his mother, our blessed Mary.

  5. David Bobe

    Happy New Year. Thank you for your Super work.

  6. Mike K.

    I was raised Catholic and this is my first time reading this and I feel relieved to find someone who has seen and heard what I have. Like the author, I attended a Calvary Chapel in Philadelphia and experienced the same things: awful rock music, infatuation with End Times, extreme Anti-Catholic views, and gross misinterpretation of the Bible; claiming that it has been translated incorrectly from the Greek. My wife still goes there but I cannot do it. Lately, it has also become a haven for politics. When I go to Church, I'm there to honor and worship God; not listen to a political speech. I told my wife that I no longer wish to attend it and desire to go back to the Catholic Church.

    STEVE RAY HERE:
    Thanks for sharing your experience. There are many many people like you. It always seems like a good idea to leave the Catholic Church but when you find out what else is out there the beauty, tradition, history, theology of the one holy Catholic and apostolic church brings many people back.

    When I discovered it 24 years ago myself I said that it was the best kept secret. I was raised fundamentalist Baptist been kind of Bible church evangelical but when I discovered the Catholic Church my wife and I fell in love. God bless you and thanks again for sharing.

  7. Mike

    Wherever Jesus is honored is the most important thing. My grandparents immigrated from Ireland and were Irish Catholics. So, I had some background to the Catholic church from them, but unfortunately, never got connected with Jesus in a personal way there growing up. It was one of those “aweful rock concerts” at Calvary Chapel that you had alluded, where I had an opportunity to encounter Christ in a personal way in 1977. It was the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa where they used this as a medium to be relevant and reach the youth that were lost. I have ALWAYS detested when people bash the Catholic church! I will say it again, I have ALWAYS hated when people have talked negatively about the Catholic Church. I have always had an affection for the church and consider it my roots spiritually; wherever Christ is honored is what matters, whether it be the Catholic or Protestant church. In fact, Christ can either be honored or dishonored in either one.

  8. Alan Gross

    Unfortunately, in your article and in the following comments, you do exactly the same thing that you complain about with Calvary Chapel churches: you expose all the faults of their churches and explain why you now belong to the true and right church, not those at Calvary Chapel. It’s like a pot calling the kettle black. Why do any Christians act as if some other Christians in another denomination are their enemies, they’re not, even when they don’t act in Christian love. And apropos church history: the catholic church builds their claims on the apostolic succession. But let’s be completely apostolic: which NT apostle ever called Mary the “Holy Mother of God”? That’s what protestants have as a legitimate complaint against Catholic teaching on Mary; and I say that as someone who is very well aware of the fact that we are descendants of the early Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian,etc.). The Roman Catholic Church never in all of church history represented all Christians and Christian denominations. That’s the great myth of the Roman Catholics that everyone is aware of who has studied church history.

    STEVE RAY HERE: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I would suggest you read Eusebius’s “History of the Church” written in 325 AD. There you will find there WAS one Church and it was called Catholic. It was based on the apostolic succession and the Petrine primacy. My book “Upon this Rock, Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church” soundly proves that.

    We are not saying that the mega-churches are our enemies or that they don’t do great good for many folks, but when it comes down to defining “what is the Church” we conclude that Jesus did not want many “churches”. He said “I will build my Church (singular) and one cannot get away with claiming that the church is on big invisible unity of those who love Jesus. Jesus said we are to be “perfected in unity that the world may know the Father send the Son.” It has to be a visible, organizational unity or the world cannot see it and has the right to say, “the Father did NOT send the Son.”

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