About once a year, I take the time to host what I call a “teaching Mass” in which instead of celebrating Mass, I go through and explain the different parts of the Mass. At the end of the night, I always host an open forum in which people can ask any question they wish. At my last teaching Mass, one of the people in attendance began to talk about his hopes that Pope Francis would change a lot of things. I challenged the man to love the Church we have and not the one that he hoped for. I went on to explain to him that staying in the Church hoping that the Church would change was like a husband who promised to love his wife only after she lost twenty pounds. Ever since then my heart has been wrestling with the idea of “loving the Church, I have,” and how could I do this better? To answer that question, I decided to reflect on the advice that I give engaged couples as I prepare them for marriage and I came up with 10 ways in which we can love the Church we are in.

Today will be our last reflection on Allen Hunt’s book: Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor: How I Discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church. Please know that there are many more great insights in his book that I am choosing not to cover because of space. So for one last time let us look at a few more quotes from the book. They will be in bold and my thoughts will be in regular font.

I hope you have realized by now that the title for this month’s spiritual ponderings, “Hunting for God’s Church”, was a play on Allen Hunt’s last name. He of course is the former leader of a Protestant mega-church who converted to Catholicism. He shares his stories with his readers in his book: Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor: How I Discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church. Let us look at a few more quotes from the book. They will be in bold and my thoughts will be in regular font.

What would cause a successful pastor of a Christian mega-church to give up everything and become Catholic? In the book: Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor: How I Discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church, Allen Hunt explains why he left his successful mega-Church to become Catholic. He also invites Catholics to reflect and learn more about their Catholic heritage so that they may come to understand the sometimes hidden (or at least sometimes taken for granted) of the Catholic Church. Quotes from the book will be in bold and my thoughts will be in regular font.

I was sitting in an airport recently and I had just finished the book I was reading and still had an hour to kill before my flight would board. I therefore took out my IPad and began to browse the different books being offered. I came across a book that caught my attention it was called Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor: How I Discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church. I was intrigued because I am always hearing how Catholics are leaving the Catholic Church for Protestant mega-churches and so I thought it would be interesting to read about someone leaving a mega-church to become Catholic. I would like to share with you some of reflections and thoughts on the book. Let us begin by sharing with you Dr. Hunt’s biography from his Dynamic Catholic website pro-file: