Check here for "statements of faith" from members of the Crossroads community! If you are interested in writing and sharing about your own ideas and experiences of faith, God, Christianity, or "whatever" you call it, please contact one of the pastors or peer ministers.
I often see a "Statement of Faith" section on many church or religious group websites. That works for some people - but for others, Christianity isn't about conforming to a bullet list of what we're supposed to believe. In the Episcopal tradition, there's a longstanding principle called the via media or "middle way." It means that many people with a wide variety of beliefs, religious backgrounds, and faith journeys can and should come together around God's table and share their lives with each other.
- Alex Kim (last year's peer minister)
"How I got Here" -- a reflection on Faith from Charles Cadwallader, Senior, 2008 ...
How I got here…
I started coming to Crossroads Campus Ministry when my friend Gretchen Olson told me about it in Autumn quarter 2006. Now, I was pretty nervous about coming because 1) it is nerve-racking going into a new place and 2) I had never been a member of a congregation or anything.
See, when I was a kid my parents didn’t (and still don’t) actively practice a religion. They identify with the Christian tradition and uphold a lot of the American ideas of Christianity, but they have always said they don’t need a church to pray and that if they want to talk to God they will do it in their own house.
This is something that has very deep roots in my family, my grandparents and great grandparents stating similar things.
So when I was about 8 and started asking myself “What is all this God stuff?” no one was really there to help me much. Sure my parents kept a bible, and I had one in my room since I could remember, but I had never picked it up or made any concerted effort to study it.
I went to my mom and asked her if we could go to church. She kind of laughed a little and said sure, though she didn’t attend a church. She called my grandmother who thought about it and remembered that I had an aunt who attended a Baptist church near my grandparent’s house in Kent, Washington.
The calls were made and arrangements set, I was going to church the next Sunday.
So when the time came I was dressed in a nice shirt and slacks, finally understanding what one’s “Sunday best” meant, and with my little, black Red-Letter King James bible tucked under my arm, I was off to church.
I had no idea what to expect, except that I would be “finding” God at the church. Now, thus far, all of my understanding of churches had been from TV, movies, the two weddings I’d been ring bear for and the funeral of my Great Uncle. So I expected to be sitting in a pew, listening to a sermon, beyond that I was at a loss.
First thing that happened was that I was split from my aunt; she went into the church while I went out back to a schoolhouse type thing. Up a flight of stairs and I was in a classroom for my first day of third grade Sunday school.
My memories of my two years of Sunday school are so generic that I merge it into one day in my head. We started out by talking about the reading from the previous week. We would have an oral quiz on the reading; the reward for each answered question was a piece of candy. It wasn’t long before I was memorizing verses just to get the candy.
Then we would have a lesson about a concept for that week. Of these I remember very little. Then we would have an assigned reading for the next week, a public prayer offering where we wrote our prayers on the chalk board and then leave, to repeat the next Sunday.
Like I said, I went for two years until I was disinterested and stopped going with my aunt on Sundays. What did I do instead? My grandfather played Bingo on Sundays, for the next couple years, so did I.
My curiosity over “this God stuff” never went away but I seemed to fall into line with the general belief of my family, God was there for me in a private way and I didn’t feel the need to express that in any public setting.
So for the next few years I was complacent, I wore a gold cross, that I still wear today, that my mother had given me because I asked for one, but besides that I didn’t explore religion or develop any ideas of my own beyond what I innately felt/believed.
I was a freshman in high school when I read Dante’s Inferno for my advanced English literature class. We discussed the themes throughout the book, and we had debates about different things. One of the interesting questions I got after a class was from a friend who asked me, “Are you Catholic?” Apparently I had been able to answer a lot of the questions about Catholicism from my classmates because I had done some outside research.
The question caught me off guard because I, like my parents, hadn’t chosen a denomination to identify with, though definitely a member of the American Christian tradition, it was difficult to explain to myself, let alone others.
I started investigating the origins of the many churches that made up the Christian faith and found myself utterly confused. Schism, reformation, foundation, division; I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.
I began then to also look for the answer inside of my own thoughts and reasoning. I briefly explored many different religions in the Christian tradition including Catholicism, Baptist, Mormonism and others.
Nothing “fit” right with me, but I started to wonder to myself how people could believe different things and if only one was “correct” what happened to the other, literally billions, of people? I struggled with the question as a 16 year old, but soon came to a solution that I felt unified all religion.
“To each person his own path…” became a quote I created when drafting my theory of Unified Religion. Basically stating that IF there was an Omnipotent deity that I refer to as God, and if that deity knew the past, present and future of all men, then as the needs of individual men change, could not the form God were to choose also change to meet their needs? So if in my heart, God knows I am the person who believes in X, could not a god choose to be X for me and for those like me?
Anyway, I digress. I felt great comfort in this theory as it seemed more and more apparent to me.
Now then, I went another few years without any regular church involvement, never being called to it, though I felt as if I was searching for something still, that I had started years before with my simple question, “What is all this God stuff?”
In conversation with my best friend who lived in Hawaii at the time, I spoke with her of my faith saying, “I feel as though I am a knight, kneeling before my lord, waiting for my call to rise, I don’t know what I’m waiting for.” I would begin to explore my call to rise as the years progressed.
Gretchen Olson, the Lutheran peer minister at the time for Crossroads, asked me to come with her to visit this great place she went too. So I did once and then again and if I could help it I haven’t missed Wednesday worship in over a year.
I was quickly drawn in by the message I heard each week and soon found myself asking, sheepishly at first to Gretchen, what if I wanted to get baptized?
She told me to talk to Scott, the Lutheran Campus Pastor for Crossroads. I was a little shy, so she brought it up one day as I sat with both of them, before worship.
Soon I was reading a book, almost childish looking but very informative, that Scott had given me. After a few months I was baptized at Covenant House on May 16, 2007.
As I write this we are about a month away from my baptism date and as the date approaches I remember being sponsored by the entire community at Covenant House as I was washed in the waters of Baptism.
It was at Covenant House, through the Crossroads Campus Ministry, that I found a community I was called to take part in. Here I was given the chance to cantor and began searching my heart for my life’s calling.
I am a Lutheran, and I have a lot to learn about the church, the faith and myself; but I have found my passion to read and understand the word of God and with the voice I’ve found while raised in song at Covenant House, I have found a way to ask the questions that will let me search out the answers I have been yearning for my whole life.
“Come and see,” said John.
“Here I am,” I now reply.
Peace be with you.
- Charles Cadwallader, 2008
- John 4:42