‘This is pure Christianity’ : John Atchison reflects on the walk of faith that led him to Orthodoxy
Posted on Monday, October 25, 2004
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/21051/
Like John Atchison, her husband of 33 years, Marilyn Atchison comes from a family who has belonged to the Assemblies of God for generations. "I was raised by deeply Christian parents," she said. "I learned the importance of a walk of faith."
For a couple who spent 20 years pastoring charismatic Protestant churches, that walk has led the Atchisons down a road unfamiliar to many Americans, but one that has been welltraveled by Christians for 16 centuries.
In 1995, the Atchisons and half the members of their Open Bible congregation in Gillette, Wyo., were received into the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and John Atchison was ordained a priest of that church in the same year.
Today, Father John Atchison is pastor of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, located at the corner of Blair and Meadow streets in downtown Springdale.
While 217 million of the world’s more than two billion Christians are Eastern Orthodox, it is a Christian body with few members in the southern and central United States.
Most Orthodox Christians are found in Russia, Greece, and other European countries. Large numbers of Christians in the Middle East are Orthodox. Russian missionaries converted substantial numbers of Eskimos to Orthodoxy in the 18 th century.
While they reject the supremacy of the pope, Orthodox Christians have a hierarchical church with bishops and priests. They venerate the Virgin Mary and the saints, and the influence of monasticism looms large in the consciousness and the practice of Orthodox life.
And in contrast to the services John Atchison conducted as a Protestant pastor, Orthodox worship is deeply liturgical, with roots that date back to the earliest Christian centuries. "The whole emphasis is supposed to be the liturgy, not my brilliance on display," said the clergyman.
Marilyn Atchison remembers the first time she and her husband traveled from their Wyoming home to Denver, Colo., to visit an Antiochian Orthodox church there and speak to its pastor. The sight of that church was overwhelming. "I felt like I should fall on my face," she said. "I felt a holiness and peace. It was a very awesome experience. My mind was swimming. The terminology was so foreign. But the priest was very gracious. And I felt a tugging in my heart, a desire to search it out."
That search, and that trip to Denver, were important steps for both Atchisons in their walk of faith. For John Atchison, it has begun nearly 30 years earlier, when as a teenager he began reading a column about the Fathers of the Church — the great Christian writers who lived during the first centuries after Christ — in Billy Graham’s decision magazine. "I felt, this is the source, the headwaters," said the priest. "This is pure Christianity."
John Atchison was born in 1951 in Canyonville, Ore., where his father was a logger. He was one of four children. His parents had met in Grand Junction, Colo., and during his boyhood, Atchison’s family moved between Colorado and the West Coast. His father’s work was easier in the Pacific Northwest. "It was a lot easier to log pine than oak back in the days of crosscut saws," John Atchison said.
When he was a small boy, Atchison nearly drowned, but was resuscitated. "Mom waded out in the river and saved me. I guess I owe her," he said with a grin. "I’ve talked to other people who have had near-death experiences. All have been very God-conscious."
By the time Atchison was a sophomore, he had been to 16 schools. "You didn’t get close friends that way," he said. "I didn’t have roots. It took time for me to learn to trust people. My favorite person was my dad’s dad. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with him, but I felt he cared for me."
The elder Atchison served as a youth pastor during part of his son’s boyhood, but at a certain point ceased practicing Christianity, and about the time John Atchison graduated from high school in 1970 in Grand Junction, his parents divorced.
But John Atchison’s mother had a steadfast faith. "My mother faithfully kept us in church all those places we moved to," he said.
When he finished high school, having already decided that he would become a pastor, Atchison headed off to study Christian ministry at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas, near Dallas.
During his college days, he and other students from Teen Challenge spent time on the streets of Dallas handing out Christian tracts.
His partner in witnessing to his faith was a girl from Catoosa, Okla., whom he married when he was 20.
Atchison’s college days were hectic after that. He worked long hours at night as a machinist, kept up with his studies, and took care of a young family. He and his wife eventually had two children.
When he finished his degree in 1975, Atchison worked as assistant pastor at Assembly of God congregations in Utah and Grand Junction.
Then in 1981, he went to Lyman, Wyo., and established a new Assembly of God congregation there.
Both Atchisons have always worked secular jobs as well to make ends meet while working to build up new churches. "We sacrifice in order to get something going, to start new beginnings," said Marilyn Atchison.
In 1990, they moved to Gillette to establish an Open Bible church.
During all those years, Atchison did not lose his love for the writings of the early Christian fathers. "I always tried to compare my Christianity and my church to the early church," he said. "In the early years, I used to ask myself, would the Assemblies of God ordain John Chrysostom," Atchison said, referring to the fourth century theologian and bishop. "But 20 years later, I was asking, would John Chrysostom ordain me?"
Atchison said he went through all the fads popular in the years of his pentecostal ministry: demonology, fasting, discipleship, the praise movement.
Looking back on those days after 10 years as an Orthodox Christian, Atchison breathes a sigh of relief. "The early church already went through these things, and already had guidelines," he said. "It is so nice not to have to reinvent the church. It was already invented by Jesus."
In 1993, the Atchisons and part of his congregation began a formal period of study and preparation that culminated in their "chrismation," or anointing as full members of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.
Atchison and his fellow converts were part of a much larger movement. "For three years [in the 1990s], the Antiochian Orthodox Church was the fastest-growing church in America," he said. "In the United States, 90 percent of the priests in the Antiochian Orthodox Church are converts."
Asked why the faith has seen such growth, Atchison does not think the reasons are sociological. "It’s a sovereign movement of God," he said. "Nobody set down and said, let’s double the size of our church. In fact it’s quadrupled. Twenty or 30 years ago, there were 60 churches. Now there are 260."
Historically, most Antiochian Orthodox Christians in America were immigrants from Syria and Lebanon.
The Atchisons came to Springdale in 2001, after he had established and pastored an Orthodox church in Gillette for six years.
The Springdale congregation includes members from those countries, as well as "cradle Orthodox" of Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Rumanian, and Ethiopian origin. About half Atchison’s parishioners are converts.
The Atchisons’ have five grandchildren. Their daughter and her husband live in Farmington. Their son and his family live in Charlotte, N. C.
When Marilyn Atchison speaks of her family, her face lights up. "I’m very proud of my children," she said. "They had to give up a lot because of the finances that weren’t available. They’re raising our grandchildren to have the same walk, the same Biblical foundation. My little grandsons know that Bible inside and out."