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‘I just wanted Christ’: former Protestant pastor finds way to the Catholic Church
By Philip A. Janquart
ICR Editor
Sam Fowler wanted answers.
The former 35-year-old Protestant pastor spent years studying Scripture and teaching the Bible, but some things just didn’t add up.
Most pressing was the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
Sam didn’t know his search for answers would lead him away from the ministry he had spent years preparing for, to the last place he expected — the Catholic Church.
“I just wanted Christ,” he said. “I mean, I just wanted what He’d promised.”
That promise, he added, is found in John 6:54, where Jesus says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”
“I was missing Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, taken into my body so that He lives in me and I depend on Him, like I depended on my father and my son depends on me,” he added.
Sam and his wife, Amanda, were received into the Catholic Church on April 18 at Pope St. John Paul II Parish in Idaho Falls. Their twin boys, John and Caleb, were baptized the same day.
It was the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
Sam grew up in Grand Junction, Colo., in what he described as a nominally Christian home. His family prayed every night, but that was about the extent of it.
His father’s family had left the Catholic Church in 1975, and there was little love for Catholicism in Sam’s home.
Searching for God
Things began to change after his paternal grandmother died in 2002.
Her death led Sam’s grandfather to begin searching for God. He became a Southern Baptist and spent the rest of his life evangelizing and doing missionary work.
That direct influence led Sam to become a Christian at 13, but the years that followed were filled with challenges.
“I was just searching for God, but didn’t know where to look,” he said. “It led me in different directions that weren’t good.”
Eventually, he found a church in Fort Collins, Colo., where a friend took him under his wing and began teaching him Christian doctrine.
After college, Sam married and moved to Idaho Falls, where he now works in agriculture, making farm loans for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
He and his wife became active in a Protestant church, both teaching Sunday school. Sam eventually became a youth pastor.
After his twin boys were born, Sam left law enforcement after six years of service and returned to a more family-friendly work schedule. That gave him more time to study theology and teach. Eventually, he was ordained a Protestant pastor, a responsibility he took seriously.
“I was not willing to lead anybody astray due to ignorance,” he said.
Searching for Holy Communion
The month following his ordination, he enrolled in seminary to pursue a master’s degree in theology. Then came his first assignment: choose any biblical topic and write a paper.
Sam chose Holy Communion.
For years, he struggled with how Communion was practiced in his church. The church celebrated it once a month, and the lack of reverence bothered him.
“I didn’t understand,” he remembered thinking. ‘This is my Body. This is my Blood.’ But then we treat it flippantly.”
He figured he would research Communion, find the answer, write his paper and move on.
That’s not what happened.
Sam started with Scripture. As a Protestant, he strongly believed in sola scriptura — Scripture alone. But the more he studied, the more convinced he became that Scripture treated Communion far more seriously than he understood.
Then he discovered the Apostolic Fathers. He began reading Saint Irenaeus of Lyon and other early Christian writers and found something he wasn’t expecting: They believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Sam researched the different views of Communion and concluded that his own church practiced memorialism — essentially viewing Communion as a memorial, which no longer made sense to him.
“That was a really dark time for me,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat.” There was a lot at stake.
“All I’d ever wanted was to be a pastor,” he said. He had spent a decade in ministry, and the people around him were like family. But the more he studied, the more he realized his church’s teaching on Communion was not right. Still, Catholicism was not an option —at least not yet.
“We don’t want to become Catholic,” Sam said. “But we were also convinced that there was something more about Communion.”
They stopped receiving it at their church; then Sam had an idea.
He would make Communion at home. He learned how to make unleavened bread and bought sacramental wine. One evening, after the children were in bed, Sam poured the wine, took the bread and read Matthew 26 and the account of the Last Supper.
Then he prayed.
“Lord, I’m lost. I’m confused. I’m scared,” he said. “But I know enough at this point that this could actually be true, that you could really be present in the Eucharist. And if it’s true, will you please show me?”
Sam ate the bread; then something happened he still can’t explain.
“I’m not going to tell you that it was a Eucharistic miracle,” he said, “But I will tell you is that it was the most substantial piece of bread I’ve ever eaten.”
Sam likened eating the unleavened bread to eating something like a steak.
“It was not bread,” he said with conviction.
Even today, Sam is careful about what he says happened. He has a degree in natural sciences and has spent considerable time working with microscopes. “I don’t like to jump to conclusions without evidence,” he said. “All I can say is that it wasn’t unleavened bread anymore.”
Amanda didn’t have the same experience that Sam did but nonetheless experienced “something.”
“I’ve never felt closer to Christ than right now,” she told Sam after eating the bread.
Sam turned to his college friend Luke, a devout cradle Catholic living in Montana and started asking questions — lots of them. By then, his seminary paper was the last thing on his mind.
“I was on a different road of finding Christ,” he said.
Finding peace
Sam drew the Twelve Apostles on a chalkboard, traced their disciples and searched for their writings. Again, he found belief in the Real Presence. Eventually, Sam did something he never imagined he would do: He called a Catholic parish, told them he was a Protestant pastor writing a paper about Holy Communion, and asked to speak with a priest. Deacon Thomas Middleton called him back and agreed to meet.
Sam brought his research, hoping he would tell him he had missed something. But he hadn’t. The conversation lasted several hours, and Sam finally revealed his experience with the bread. Deacon Middleton told him about Eucharistic miracles and invited him to Eucharistic Adoration. He knew nothing about Adoration but went anyway.
“I felt peace for the first time in a couple of months,” he said.
In the days that followed, Sam continued taking long walks and praying, ultimately arriving at the point of surrender.
“Lord, I don’t care where you take me anymore,” he prayed. “I just want You, and I want You alone. Take me where you want me to go.”
Things moved quickly after that, as Sam and Amanda spent hours studying Catholic teaching and working through Baptism and other doctrines.
The Blessed Mother Mary was the last major hurdle, but once he worked through the theology, there was no going back. By late November, the decision was made.
“This is real,” Sam recalled thinking.
He enrolled in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, or OCIA, and met yet another deeply personal struggle. Sam’s grandfather, the man who helped lead him to Christ and had left Catholicism died in 2019. Knowing how his grandfather would have reacted to his conversion was painful. Eventually, Sam realized he had his own family to lead and his own decision to make.
“I like to think that, with some refined clarity, he can see now and that he’s pleased with my conversion,” he said. I’ve found a well that has no bottom,” he said.
The Eucharist is at the center, but Sam has also discovered a love for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
“I’ve found great joy in the confessional,” he said.
Looking back, Sam marvels at how his first assignment as a Protestant seminarian led him away from the future he envisioned and into the Catholic Church.
“It went so fast after I gave myself over to God,” Sam said. “It was so, so fast.”
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