My Spiritual Journey outline for the process of becoming “the Reader Gabriel.”

Bio for Dean W. Arnold

I was raised by a Protestant pastor, Jack Arnold, in Roanoke, Virginia. Both he and my mother Carol converted from unchurched families at UCLA as part of the first Campus Crusade for Christ group, about 40 college kids under founders Bill and Vonette Bright. Dad played basketball for the famous UCLA team, but with Coach Wooden’s permission pursued the ministry instead of basketball his senior year. He decided to attend Dallas Theological Seminary where he earned his doctorate and won the award for the best theology student. 

He was an ardent Calvinist early on, not quite as strident later. More importantly for my Orthodox future, he was a strong advocate of the institutional church, and I was raised with a strong commitment to church life. Even with all the Protestant weaknesses, I have good memories of a faithful church life and family, several services a week, tithing faithful Christians who backed up their talk with their wallets, and folks who generally tried to put Christ first in every way. My parents were genuine people, and I respected them. 

When I reached the age of consciousness to interact personally with God, I grew uncomfortable with the Evangelical formula that you must publicly make some kind of profession of faith. This seemed to include a public emotional performance, and I didn’t want to do it. So I didn’t. I pretended I was a “real Christian” like everyone else, but knew I hadn’t taken that personal step. By age 13 or 14, a couple years into this syndrome, I was tormented inside that I would go to hell if I died. But the longer I faked it, the more embarrassing the required public confession would be. I felt trapped. 

At age 17 I started hanging out with some fellow students at my public high school whose lives had been changed by Christ through a ministry called Young Life. I was very drawn to their desire to pray together, read the scriptures, and be very intentional about Jesus’s first commandment to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Finally, I confessed to one of those friends my dark secret of hypocrisy. That same week I prayed to God for what seemed the first time for him to take over my life. Interestingly, this was during a communion service, conducted by my Father. 

My life changed. I felt the love of God. I no longer felt condemnation. I had a strong desire to read the scriptures, to be involved with church whenever possible, to talk to others about Christ. In my own mind, none of these changes could happen until I publicly confessed to the church and my Father my fake life, all the while crying and asking for forgiveness. It didn’t happen that way at all. I gently moved toward being more vocal about my faith, and about a year in I took my Dad to lunch and told him what had happened to me. He was obviously pleased. For me, it was a good first lesson in how our God is not primarily angry at us, but “he is good and loves mankind.”

I moved on to Covenant College in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a liberal arts Christian College of the conservative Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). My Father had recently joined this denomination, looking for some better ecclesiastical structure after being an Independent Bible church guy for 25 years. At Covenant I studied a good bit of Theology and Philosophy, even as a freshman, while my buddies and roommates mainly partied and goofed around. For some reason, I was pretty serious-minded early on. 

The root question I was always asking is: “Who says?” Growing up, I had seen my father go through two or three very ugly church splits. These were hard to watch, and of course both sides always believed they had the bible and God on their side. I wasn’t concerned to ensure my father was right. Maybe he wasn’t. I was more concerned that it seemed impossible to know the answer. As I continued to ask root questions like “Who’s in charge?” and “Who says?”, I became especially confused by Sola Scriptura and how the Protestants rationalized their acceptance of the canon of Scripture via the church fathers. “Says who?” The early church, they said. But they didn’t follow the rest of the early church’s instructions. 

With that theological question in limbo, I set out on a spiritual journey to find God more intimately. One of my partying college roommates had turned over a new leaf and discovered the desert Fathers and the Philokalia. That led to a few years of our involvement in the Charismatic movement, and me serving as a worship leader in low church settings (my roommate Pat became a pastor), and even leading my own house church for a season. As often happens, this led to a general giving up of the concept of the institutional church in general—the real, physical, visible church. If it’s just about the invisible church, then why not just have church however you want? Maybe by yourself? Maybe never? Again, “who says?”

At the tail end of these years I got married and had two children. Seven years later the relationship ended in divorce, those details for another place and time.

My personal circumstances, however, left me in a place to have more freedom to think “out of the box” theologically. A major figure in my father’s Presbyterian denomination became Orthodox, and I took note. Than a PCA youth leader, elder, and urban Young Life leader in Chattanooga became Orthodox. Warren was a good friend and we spent many hours discussing it over coffee. My many questions from nearly 20 years of searching were getting answered. There was an answer to the question “who says?”.

I decided to visit Warren's church, the local Greek parish. It was Pascha. I wasn’t particularly moved. I was from a low church background and couldn’t quite appreciate the liturgy. But several months later, I talked to another PCA friend who had turned Orthodox, and I realized that I had been subconsciously moved by the dozens to hundreds of “Lord have mercy’s” in the service I had attended. It soothed me. It spoke to a deep need. I needed to hear it particularly because of my personal saga. And as an Evangelical worship leader I knew that people can’t enjoy God’s presence without assurance of God’s love and forgiveness. It was my first taste of the wisdom of the Fathers, that they know so much more than I do. My heart was slowly being prepared to submit to the goodness, wisdom, and authority of the Orthodox Church.

Around this time, the Greek bishop approved Warren and a few other converts at that church to start an “English speaking mission” in Chattanooga. Warren began hosting in his home Fr. Stephen Freeman on Thursday evenings a Q&A for inquirers. I was the first one to show up at the first meeting. We eventually had a vespers service or two and then a liturgy in Warren’s home. This ultimately became St. Tikhon Mission (OCA), and I was chrismated by Fr. Stephen on September 9, 2001, about a year after these initial meetings in Warren’s home. 

In 2009, Fr. Jonas Worsham officiated my wedding with the now Dorothy Elizabeth Arnold. Dottie joined the church at the same time and loves God and the mission with all her heart. She is very involved.

Church life at St. Tikhons has been a tremendous blessing the past near 20 years. I consider it the most important part of my life, the fulfillment talked about both by our Lord and the Church Fathers. Years of “programming” have caused me to acquire a love for the services and the liturgy. I have served as Parish Council President several times, and was asked about eight years ago to lead the choir, which has grown slowly but surely in both quantity and quality. In 2010, my best friend from college, the one partying while I was theologizing, followed my lead and became Orthodox after being a Protestant pastor for 20 years. As the last protege of Fr. Peter Gillquist, he was ordained a priest a couple years later in the Antiochian diocese where he serves in St. Louis. I am his godfather. 

Telling my own father about becoming Orthodox was an important moment. I had no idea how he would react. When we sat down to talk, he told me he had read a booklet on it and said he felt good about the Orthodox Church. I have no idea to this day what he read, but I was quite grateful. My Father, who loved the church, never approved of the growing mindset in Evangelicalism that the institutional church is irrelevant, and I personally feel that I am carrying his torch into the future. He did the best he could with what he had. 

Two weeks before he died on Jan. 9, 2005, he gave me an Orthodox cross for Christmas. While preaching in the pulpit on “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” he fell to the floor near the end and died of an instant heart attack at age 69. It made international news. Knowing what he knows now, I believe he is looking on from above, cheering his son who is wholly committed, like him, to building and preserving the Church of Jesus Christ. 

—Dean Woodruff Arnold

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ever ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen. (Eph. 3:21)