Peter Gillquist

One of the most important books I've read during my investigation of Orthodox Christianity has been Becoming Orthodox, by Father Peter Gillquist. It is the story of how he and a couple thousand of his friends found the Ancient Church.

Father Peter accepted Christ in college, and in the 1960's was a major player in Campus Crusade for Christ, which is an evangelical college ministry. He and his Campus Crusade colleagues eventually became dissatisfied with what they saw in Christianity at large, and decided that they would set out to recreate/rediscover the ancient Christian Church. They soon realized, however, that their knowledge of the Church was incomplete: As Evangelicals, they were familiar with the Church of the first century, and as Protestants, they knew all about what had taken place since 1517. But, whatever happened between the end of the New Testament era and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, they had no idea.

So they decided to break off into teams to research what exactly happened to the early Church; what did it look like? What did it teach and believe? How did it worship? How was it administered?

They were shocked at what they found.

They discovered that Christian worship was liturgical and sacramental from the very beginning; that the early Church was made up of bishops, priests, deacons, and laity; that it did not have a book called "The Bible" for the first 350 years of its existence, and yet still managed to preserve the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints." They learned that the early Christians venerated Mary and the Saints, and made the Sign of the Cross over themselves and their meals and their beds.

Furthermore, they discovered that the church they sought to restore, the Church of the first century, the Church described in the book of Acts, the Church established by Christ Himself, still exists, and still teaches the Faith of the Apostles, unaltered, unadulterated, untainted. They learned that the very church of Antioch, whose parishioners were the first to be called Christians, is alive and well today, and that its Patriarch lives in Damascus on the street called Straight.

Their search for the Church of the Apostles led Peter Gillquist and his colleagues straight to the Orthodox Christian Church, into which they and two-thousand of their friends and family members were received in February of 1987. Father Peter was eventually ordained a priest and works today in the Mission and Evangelism department of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

I'll give my copy of Father Peter's book to whoever wants it, on the condition that you pass it along to someone else when you're done with it.

For more information:
Reverend speaks on his conversion (newspaper article)
An Hour with Father Peter Gillquist (Our Life in Christ--audio)
Fr Peter's articles on Beliefnet.com