I was born into and baptized as an infant in a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) Lutheran church in a little North Dakota country town in December 1981.
Eventually I moved away and I was confirmed in a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) Lutheran church in Henderson, NV on Palm Sunday 1996.
I went to Sunday school as a child and learned the Bible. I went to confirmation classes and learned Luther’s catechism. I stood in front of the congregation on that day and promised to stay faithful to what I’d been taught.
I meant that promise. That’s what makes this hard to write.
What I Was Taught
The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod doesn’t water anything down. It’s one of the most conservative Lutheran bodies in America.
What I was taught was plain: A man is saved by faith alone. Scripture alone is the rule of faith. No church, council or pope stands between the believer and his Bible. Catholics pray to dead people when they should be praying to God. Catholics worship Mary and saints. And the papacy is the Antichrist.
Church Was Always There
Church wasn’t the primary focus of my life growing up, but it was certainly always there. I can remember as a young child going to church, what felt like, very regularly at that little country church in North Dakota. As I got older and moved away, I still went on many Sundays with my grandparents, and often my grandfather and I alone. We certainly went on holidays when I was there as well. I suppose the focus slipped as people got older, maybe there were issues with the preacher, the kids moved away, I don’t know.
I was living in Las Vegas with my mother during the school year, and while she wasn’t overly religious or anything, she did make sure we went to church most Sundays as she thought it was important that I have that formation as a young man. Often it was a Lutheran church, but other times it was a different denomination church for the experience so I could choose my own path. I attended Methodist churches, non-denominational, and others from time to time. She was the driving force behind me attending Lutheran Confirmation courses when I became the appropriate age to do so.
I went to an all-boys college-preparatory military boarding school in the San Diego area shortly after being confirmed in the Lutheran church. The school had a protestant/non-denominational chapel service multiple times throughout the year as part of various school/student body activities, and services every Sunday. I attended many of those Sundays…sometimes instead choosing to sleep in. I am nothing if not a sinner. But, as a young man living away from home for the first time, I did appreciate that hour each week which was uninterrupted by the daily goings-on of a military school.
Later, when I joined the service, I attended non-denominational/protestant services during basic training, and I will say it gave me great strength and comfort looking back. Again, a very different world to be in Army Infantry basic training as a young man and have zero control or input into anything at all. The respite of the chapel was very welcome.
Somewhere in 1999 or 2000…I just stopped going to church. Now, it’s not like I never crossed the threshold again. I attended weddings, other functions, and unfortunately more than a few funerals. It’s not like I had forsaken the church or anything - I never stopped believing, and I still considered myself a Lutheran. I believed it, I valued it, and I just didn’t make it a priority. I can make excuses like it was generally difficult due to the various locations I lived in, duties I held, or I couldn’t find a proper Lutheran church to attend. But that’s all they are - excuses.
Looking back, I think of a line credited to St. Andrew Wouters: “Fornicator I always was; heretic I never was.”
I’m not comparing myself to a martyr. But I understand the distinction he was making. Failing to live the faith and rejecting the faith are different things. I knew I wasn’t living mine. What I hadn’t seriously questioned yet was whether the faith I still called my own was true.
Sometime around 2015 or so, a couple we were friends with invited us to attend church with them. He was a long-time colleague of mine in law enforcement. We worked in different parts of the agency by then but had stayed in touch. He and his family had been renewing their faith, and they eagerly chose to share it with us. By that time I was a detective in the Special Victims Unit investigating some pretty horrific crimes. I welcomed some time in the Word.
They attended a Southern Baptist church. It was quite different compared to the “Catholic light” Lutheran services I was used to. Fire and brimstone preaching. A band. Not hymns per se, but more modern music. Some crazy way of doing communion where they just passed out stuff and had no procession or anything. While I was first a bit taken aback, after going a few times, I began to like it. The preacher did a good job, the message was good, and some of our other friends were in the congregation as well.
After a few months of attending their contemporary services, I thought, OK, here’s a place we can finally land spiritually. I had a chat with the pastor one day on the way out of the service about how we could join the church. He told me we would have to be baptized. I told him that my wife and I were both baptized as babies, and he essentially said that didn’t count as we needed to make a personal, conscious decision to be baptized, and as such we would need to be…re-baptized. That struck me as very odd. I thought about it and discussed it with my wife, and frankly I was not willing to say that our first baptisms didn’t count, or that they were a mistake or otherwise somehow wrong…as such, we never darkened the doorstep of that church again.
I knew that I was responsible for leading my family spiritually, so I looked into the closest Lutheran church to where I lived at the time. It was an ELCA Lutheran church with a woman pastor. Sorry, hard pass for me. Back to square one.
And so, I did what anyone in their early 30s would do at the time, and headed to the internets. YouTube and all sorts of resources were at my disposal. I knew I was supposed to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and I was well formed by my WELS Lutheran catechism classes…surely I can do this on my own, right? Just me and the Big Guy Upstairs.
That was the beginning of what would become nearly a decade-long on-again/off-again quest.
I knew the basics, but I always had a single question in my mind that was never fully answered anywhere ever: Who is right? Which church is correct?
In my mind it was probably the Lutherans…surely my family wouldn’t steer me wrong! But what if it was the Presbyterians? They seem pretty confident. Or the Anglicans. Or the Methodists. Or…maybe even the Catholics. After all they claimed to have direct apostolic succession from the apostles commissioned by Jesus himself!
Why This Series
I spent years as a cop and as a forensic investigator. Both jobs turn on one question: is this witness or evidence credible? You don’t get to keep the stuff you like and toss what’s inconvenient. You weigh all of it and make the call.
That’s how this series is built. It doesn’t start with Luther. It starts with Jesus, because every other question hangs on whether He is telling the truth. If He is, then what He built matters. The Church He left. The sacraments He gave it. The break in 1517 and what it cost. The saints and the Mother of God. And finally, the way home.
My old church taught me to test everything against Scripture. I did. I followed it here.