Alex Jones: the evangelical who became a Catholic deacon

The Deacon's Bench ^ | November 10, 2007 | Deacon Greg Kandra

[annalex]

Alex Jones: the evangelical who became a Catholic deacon

One of the more celebrated Catholic converts -- and a recently ordained deacon, by the way -- is former evangelical Alex Jones. He now spends much of his time traveling the country, talking about his journey back to the Church. And a paper in Fort Wayne, Indiana profiles him this weekend:

Ten years ago, Alex Jones was the charismatic preacher of a thriving black independent Pentecostal congregation, Maranatha Christian Church in Detroit.

Today, he still preaches, but it’s as an ordained Roman Catholic deacon.

Jones doesn’t like to use the word “convert” when it comes to his experience, but his story makes him one of the Catholic church’s rarer flowers – a black evangelical Protestant who has wholeheartedly embraced the faith.

“There is spiritual conversion and ecclesial conversion. I was the latter. I was a Christian before I became Catholic,” says Jones, who will speak at St. Henry and Sacred Heart Catholic churches Friday and Saturday.

“It was never about going to heaven or knowing the Lord. Those things were accomplished while I was in the Pentecostal church. It was simply coming into the fullness of the Christian faith.”

Indeed, Jones says he’s still often asked why he would want to be Catholic.

“No one wants to be Catholic where I come from. Not even Catholics,” he says with a laugh. “It was almost like you were leaving Christianity.”

Jones says his journey is one from which the church – which has 130 million Catholics in Africa but only 24,000 blacks among his Detroit diocese’s 1.3 million members – can learn.

His conversion began, he says, when he began looking at early Christian worship with a congregational study group. That led to a reading of the early church fathers, including St. Ignatius of Antioch, a friend of the apostle John, and St. Clement of Rome, the third successor to St. Peter as head of the church.

“I wasn’t looking for truth,” he says. “But I saw the continuity from the apostles to the church today, and that necessitated a further look.”

As he continued to pursue his questions, he instituted a Liturgy of the Word and a Liturgy of the Eucharist on Easter Sunday. He took the Bible from front and center on the Communion table as it morphed into an altar.

He began to see that as a pastor, he was missing apostolic succession and a hierarchy that ensured continuity of teachings. It took a two-year journey during which he sought help from other Catholic converts, but after he saw what he needed to do, “it was clear as a bell,” he says.

Jones joined the church in 2000. His wife, family members and 54 of his church’s members followed. Some of those people have “returned to their Pentecostal roots,” he says, but many have remained.

He now is a deacon for St. Suzanne/Our Lady Gate of Heaven Catholic community, two congregations that share one priest.

He also has written a book and produced a documentary about his experiences and speaks at Catholic events nationwide.

Jones says the reasons more American blacks are not Catholic are partly historical and partly cultural.

American blacks “tended as slaves to take on the faith of their slaveholders,” he says, noting that only in Louisiana and Maryland were they Catholic.

And within the church even today, he sometimes finds an “us-and-them” mentality about those from other races or denominations.

“If (they) blacks knew more about Catholicism, if they saw their face reflected in the liturgy and the church leadership, they’d be more inclined to investigate further,” he says.

Catholic parish schools, another traditional influence on blacks, are on the wane in many city neighborhoods where black families live because they are expensive for dioceses to maintain, Jones says.

“The Catholic Church is going to have to learn how to inculturate,” he adds.

The Rev. Daniel Durkin, who serves both St. Henry and Sacred Heart, says Jones’ visit represents an evangelistic outreach to people in the churches’ southeast Fort Wayne neighborhoods, which he says are 90 percent black.

“A lot of ministers are saying we need to be doing more (evangelization) on the south side. A lot of us feel we’re losing a lot of people on the south side.”

Durkin, who is white, says Benoit Academy at St. Henry is another example of the Catholic outreach. About 65 percent of students are black; only 35 percent are Catholic.

In Jones, “We’re hoping to bring someone to the church that can identify with them (black neighborhood residents), and they can identify with as well,” Durkin says.

Jones, 66, who was director of evangelization in the Detroit diocese until his recent retirement, says he has asked his bishop twice about becoming a priest.

“Both times the answer was no, so that’s that,” he says. “If they offered it to me, I’d take it in a heartbeat, but it’s not likely in this diocese. They don’t allow married priests.”

He points out that 80 dioceses do allow priests who are married when they come to Catholicism from other denominations.

Deacon Jones also has his own self-titled website, with a great gallery of pictures, information, and details about how to book him for a speaking engagement or mission.

I'm hoping and praying for him -- and praying that one day he may be welcomed into the priesthood.

Whatever ministry he practices, he's a real gift to the people of God.

[annalex]

50 Days of Easter 2008 Celebration ping, dedicated to converts to the Catholic faith. If you want to be on the list but are not on it already, or if you are on it but do not want to be, let me know either publicly or privately.

Happy Easter. Christ is risen!

Alex.

---

Previously posted conversion stories:

Anti-Catholicism, Hypocrisy and Double Standards
Hauled Aboard the Ark
Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part I: Darkness
Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part II: Doubts
Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part III: Tradition and Church
Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part IV: Crucifix and Altar
Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part V: The Catholics and the Pope
Why I Returned to the Catholic Church. Part VI: The Biblical Reality
His Open Arms Welcomed Me
Catholic Conversion Stories & Resources
My Personal Conversion Story
My (Imminent) Reception into the Roman Catholic Church
Catholics Come Home
My Journey of Faith
LOGIC AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF PROTESTANTISM
"What is Truth?" An Examination of Sola Scriptura
"Have you not read?" The Authority behind Biblical Interpretation
The Crisis of Authority in the Reformation
Our Journey Home
Our Lady’s Gentle Call to Peace
A story of conversion at the Lamb of God Shrine
Who is Mary of Nazareth?
Mary and the Problem of Christian Unity
Why I'm Catholic
A Convert's Response to Friends
My Story
Courage to Be Catholic
Finally Catholic! My Conversion to the Catholic Church
Southern Baptist Pastor Leaves Everything for the Eucharist
The Short Version (the Way International convert)
Shower of Roses-- An Independent, Fundamental Baptist Becomes Catholic Through Mary's Intecession
Confessions of a Catholic Convert

Also see:
Sheep That Go Astray
Pope Benedict Goes to Washington Ecumenical Meeting at St. Joseph's Church, New York
Orthodox and Catholic Churches are allies, (Orthodox) Bishop Hilarion says

[kellynla]

Cradle Catholic Bump!

[sockmonkey]

I was relieved it wasn't that Alex Jones, too.

[Kolokotronis]

““It was never about going to heaven or knowing the Lord. Those things were accomplished while I was in the Pentecostal church. It was simply coming into the fullness of the Christian faith.””

So, Alex, is this what the Latin Church teaches these days? Off hand, do you know who the heresiarch was who ordained this very badly catechized fellow who now gets to peddle heresy to the faithful? He is, as one of our priests once said to a convert from evangelical Protestantism, merely a Protestant in a rasos swinging the thurible.

The more of these conversion stories I read, the more concerned I get about the future of the Latin Church in America.

[NYer]

For those who may have missed it ...

Pastor and Flock Convert to Catholicism

Also ... (click on image for link to web site)

[bboop]

Well, as a convert from Evangelical Protestantism myself, I welcome him with open arms. And frankly I think that we converts are bringing a lot into the church. Perhaps I will leave it there.

[Kolokotronis]

“Well, as a convert from Evangelical Protestantism myself, I welcome him with open arms. And frankly I think that we converts are bringing a lot into the church. Perhaps I will leave it there.”

Orthodox churches in the U.S. are seeing an astonishing influx of evangelical converts...but they are generally very well catechized before they are chrismated. People who hang on to heretical views, like the fellow who is the subject of this article, simply aren’t chrismated until they come to understand and accept the theology of The Church. Apparently in at least some dioceses of the Latin Church, not only are they chrismated, they are ordained and sent out to preach. To make matters worse, apparently the author of the article, from a blog for deacons, doesn’t understand the Faith any better than Jones does. One more reason for Orthodoxy to proceed very carefully in reunion talks.

[annalex]

I think, the distinction between making a decision for Christ, of which an Evangelical Protestant is perfectly capable of, and coming to the fullness of the Catholic Church and her sacraments is indeed a valid distinction. To say otherwise is to deny the Evangelicals their Christian character, something I am not prepared to do en masse. I also think that the strength of his hope of salvation is a good thing, so long as it does not cross into presumption. Since he is, we can safely assume, partaking of the regular sacraments and accomplished a valid sacramental conversion, I see no ground to accuse him of presumption based on one turn of a phrase.

Your larger point is indeed valid, that the influx of Evangelical converts and the evangelical mindset they bring is a problem as well as a blessing, given the mindset that they surely retain.

Regarding the union, I agree that it should not be rushed into, given the massive upheaval of the Reformation, which the Catholic Church has a special burden of healing. I think, the signs are good, but there is a large future ahead of us in that regard.

[AnalogReigns]

Fascinating from all these postings, you’d think evangelicals were turning to following Rome in record numbers. I suspect however it’s an advantage of a centralized authoritarian Church organization, as they can systematically get the story of every evangelical who turns.

With all the various evangelical denominations though with “only” Christ as the Authority through His Word, there’s no one to sniff out all the Roman Catholic-to-evangelical conversion stories in these Churches.

Still, if I were a betting man, at least for every one evangelical who becomes Roman Catholic, there are ten Roman Catholics who become evangelical...

[andysandmikesmom]

And if I were a betting woman, I would bet that your numbers are way off...I know that anecdotal stories, are never a good way to go, but just from my own personal experience I know of some Protestants, who have converted to Catholicism, and I know about equal numbers of Catholics, who have converted to one of several various Protestant religions...so I think your numbers are way off, and it is a good thing you are not a betting man, as I suspect, you would lose your shirt over this one...

And I suspect that tho we may never know the real numbers, my own sense is that there is a shifting back and forth, in approximately equal numbers of both Catholics and Protestants, who leave their initial faith, and go to another...

And in the final analysis, this is not a numbers game...it does not matter who has the larger numbers, it matters who has more of the truth on their side...

And as we have seen on all these religious threads, all sides, with their differing dogmas, think that they have the fuller truth...

[annalex]

Feel free to post any conversion stories yourself. I don’t post them for the numbers, and in fact if mass conversions of Evengelicals were to happen, I’d worry for my Church. Most of Americans are not ready for Catholicism.

[murphE]

ping to #6

[murphE]

I was relieved it wasn't that Alex Jones, too.

I was hoping it was.

[Salvation]

**charismatic preacher of a thriving black independent Pentecostal congregation, Maranatha Christian Church in Detroit.**

I certainly hope he wasn’t a Wright!

And, who knows, perhaps J. Wright may become a convert, too. (~~~~Dreaming~~~~~)