For eleven years, I stood on a stage every Sunday morning with a guitar strapped to my chest.

I led worship at a big, growing church with great coffee, a great band, and a lighting rig that cost more than my first house.

I loved it.

I loved watching two thousand people lift their hands and sing.

I never once imagined I would leave.

And I definitely never imagined I would become Catholic.

Growing up, Catholics were the people who had drifted from the simple faith of the Bible.

Too many rules.

Too many rituals.

We were the ones getting back to the way it was in the beginning.

At least, that's what I thought.

The Project That Started It All

One year, our pastor asked me to plan a sermon series on worship in the early Church.

The idea was simple.

Find out how the first Christians worshipped, and bring some of that back to our Sunday mornings.

I bought a stack of old books and started reading at the kitchen table after my kids went to bed.

I expected to find small house churches singing simple songs and reading Scripture together.

That's not what I found.

The First Surprise

I started with a short document called the Didache, written so early that some scholars think parts of it are older than the last books of the New Testament.

It told Christians to gather on the Lord's Day, to confess their sins, and to celebrate the Eucharist.

It called that celebration a sacrifice.

I read that line three times.

Then I closed the book and went to bed, a little rattled.

The Bishop on His Way to Die

Next, I read the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, written around the year 107 as he was being taken to Rome to be killed.

He told the churches to stay united around their bishop.

He warned against people who stayed away from the Eucharist because they refused to believe it was the flesh of Jesus.

This was a man who may have learned the faith from the apostles themselves.

And he sounded Catholic.

Not a little Catholic.

Very Catholic.

The Sunday That Sounded Familiar

Then I found Justin Martyr.

Around the middle of the second century, he wrote a defense of Christianity addressed to the Roman emperor.

In it, he described what Christians did every Sunday.

They gathered.

They read from the apostles and the prophets.

The one presiding gave a homily.

They prayed, they offered bread and wine, and they received it as the flesh and blood of Jesus.

I set the book down and stared at the wall.

I knew exactly what he was describing.

It was a Catholic Mass.

The thing I thought was a later corruption was there at the very beginning.

The Question I Couldn't Answer

The hardest moment came from a question my twelve-year-old son asked at dinner.

He wanted to know who decided which books went into the Bible.

I opened my mouth to answer, and nothing came out.

I had built my whole life on the Bible.

I had never asked where the table of contents came from.

So I looked it up.

The list of books we now call the New Testament was affirmed by Church councils at the end of the fourth century, guided by bishops who also believed in the Eucharist, in confession, and in the authority of the Church.

I trusted those men completely about which books were Scripture.

Why didn't I trust them about anything else?

That question kept me up for weeks.

Telling My Wife

Rachel had noticed the stack of books.

She had noticed I wasn't sleeping.

One night, she sat down across from me and asked what was going on.

I told her everything.

She was quiet for a long time.

Then she said she was scared, because she loved our church, our friends, and our life.

I was scared too.

We agreed on one thing.

We would not decide anything until we had both read it for ourselves.

For the next year, we read together on the couch.

We argued.

We prayed.

We snuck into the back of a Catholic Mass on a Saturday evening so nobody from our church would see us.

There was no band.

No lights.

Just an old priest, a small choir, and a room full of people who knelt when he lifted the host.

Rachel squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.

She whispered that it felt like the books had come to life.

What It Cost

I won't pretend this was easy.

When I told my pastor, he was kind, but he couldn't keep a worship leader who was becoming Catholic.

I understood.

It still hurt.

Some friends stopped calling.

A few told me they would pray I came to my senses.

I found a job managing a music store, and we tightened our budget in ways I never thought we would.

There were nights I wondered if I had thrown my whole life away.

But every time I went to Mass, the doubt quieted down.

Because I wasn't choosing a church I liked.

I was choosing the Church I believed was true.

So Why Did I Become Catholic?

People ask me that all the time now.

Here's the honest answer.

I didn't become Catholic because I fell in love with incense or Latin or stained glass, though I've come to love all of them.

I became Catholic because I went looking for the Church of the first Christians, and I found it still standing.

Same Eucharist.

Same Sunday gathering.

Same line of bishops reaching back to the apostles.

I became Catholic because Jesus said His flesh is true food, and I finally believed Him.

The Night We Came Home

Rachel and I were received into the Church at the Easter Vigil, with both our kids watching from the pew.

When I received the Eucharist for the first time, I didn't sing.

For the first time in eleven years, I didn't need to lead anything.

I just knelt there and let Him lead me.

I still play guitar.

Sometimes I play at our parish's Sunday evening Mass, tucked in the corner of the choir loft where nobody can see me.

I like it better that way.

The spotlight was never supposed to be on me.

It was always supposed to be on the altar.

Tom is a composite character, and this story is illustrative, inspired by the real journeys of many people who have found their way into the Catholic Church.

Your turn: What first made you take a closer look at the Catholic Church? Tell us in the comments below.