Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal—Robert Slattery had several different religious experiences during his search for meaning in his life. But none of those gave him the direction he needed.

"I've been on the roller coaster of faith where you fall away from God, you come back to God, and you find relevance in different Scriptures at different times in your life," says Robert, a member at Living Hope, Redmond, Wash. "But I have never found an issue in life where I cannot find an answer to it in the Bible. And every time I've asked Lutheran pastors, 'What does the church say about this?' they always back it up with the gospel and with the Word.”

The beginning

Robert's journey to faith began as a child. Although both of his parents attended church growing up, they stopped going after they got married. Robert says he remembers going to church maybe five times as a child. "God had no place in our family," he says. "The only thing I knew is that I'd go to heaven when I died."

When Robert was 13, a pastor from the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS)—WELS' sister synod—moved in next door. He had two sons who were Robert's age, and they all became friends. The pastor used these opportunities to invite Robert to church; Robert began attending and was baptized and confirmed the following year. In retrospect, Robert says that his understanding of the gospel at that point was still not fully developed. "But I knew who God was," he says, "and I knew that Jesus had died for my sins on the cross."

When it was time to go to college, Robert says he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life; he ended up attending Western Oregon University with his high school sweetheart. "While dating her, we did not attend church," he remembers. "My relationship with her replaced my relationship with Christ." Two years later, Robert says the relationship came to a bitter and emotional end. "This began the darkest era of my life," he says. "I had lost my reason for living." He says he became depressed, couldn't sleep, and even had thoughts of suicide.

During that time, his friends encouraged him to start attending the university's Campus Christian Fellowship. "I experienced the new-age 'evangelical' worship style for the first time," he says. He also began attending Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal churches with his friends. "I realized quickly that the other churches were not rooted in the Scriptures in the way the Lutheran church is," recalls Robert. "I missed the traditional service: the hymns, the Word, and the gospel.”