My Faith Story by Kate Dittmeier Holm

Today I stand here to reaffirm my faith, but in the Baptist tradition.  This is not the beginning of my relationship with God and Christ.  In fact, my roots are deep.  This is where I have been and why I stand before you today.

I was raised in the Catholic Church.  It’s inextricably part of who I am.  When I was a few months old, I had an infant baptism.  My family attended mass every weekend, and on Monday afternoons after school, my brothers and I attended religious education classes at our parish.  When I was 15, the time came for me to prepare for the sacrament of confirmation.  Looking back, I was a very serious kid and approached confirmation with a great intensity and earnestness.  During the span of a year, I engaged in prayer, deep reflection, retreat, and service projects.  My decisions about what I believed and how to make my faith my own were very emotional and deeply personal.  During that time, I even thought very seriously about not being confirmed.  If I was going to do it, it had to be for the right reasons.  Ultimately, this process honed my beliefs and led me to decide that I wanted to adopt Christ’s example as my own aspiration.  I had a very influential youth minister who emphasized service through Christ to be the presence of God’s love on earth.  It was this practical application of Christ’s message to life that made me want to be confirmed and take ownership of my faith.  So, at age 16, I made my public declaration of faith in a ceremony before my family, friends, and community.         

When I went off to college at Western Kentucky University in 2001, I started attending the Catholic Church right off campus.  I felt something was missing, though, so I tried another Catholic Church in town.  Soon, I realized my dissatisfaction stemmed from my disagreements with some of the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church.  Eventually, I accepted it was time to try something new.  I visited churches of other denominations and considered other faith traditions.  But I couldn’t seem to find the right fit. 

Feeling dissatisfied and disconnected, I decided that perhaps I could live my faith without being part of a faith community or tradition.  I continued to pray and embrace my beliefs, including the call to serve others as the presence of God’s love on earth.  My faith continued to influence what I wanted to do in my professional life and how I lived my life day to day.  But instead of engaging with others, I stayed home on Sunday mornings.  After a while, though, I began to feel something was missing and a stalemate creeping in.   

Meanwhile, I had fallen in love with my best friend—a Baptist boy from Paducah—and we had decided to get married.  He eventually convinced me that being a part of a faith community is important and necessary.  With reluctance on my part, we tried attending a few more churches together.  But it wasn’t until we moved to Louisville in July of 2005 that we found our home at Highland Baptist Church.

Highland espoused a message of love.  The people were warm.  There was an embrace of hope and a sense of optimism.  “Thinking, feeling, healing community of faith” wasn’t just a slogan.  I loved that Highland was a progressive voice.  At last, I found what I had been searching for. 

When Hollan and I joined Highland in the fall of 2005, I chose not to have a “believer’s baptism.”  At that time, I didn’t feel called to do it.   On one hand, I had already had my baptism: my confirmation.  That was my public affirmation of my faith, made after long and careful consideration, study, and prayer.  I didn’t feel the call to do it again.  I also did not want to disrespect Highland or the Baptist tradition by engaging in a hollow ceremony.  I wanted it to be meaningful.  I wanted to wait for the day when I felt called.  So, I did.

So, I stand before you today to reaffirm and declare my faith, this time in the Baptist tradition.  My core beliefs are largely unchanged from those when I was confirmed 11 years ago.  And today I reaffirm that I believe God is love.  I believe God calls us to love and serve others and that in doing so, we are God’s loving presence on earth.  I believe that in an act of love, God gave us Christ as an example of a better way, of a way to bring his love to our lives and the lives of others.  In a spirit of optimism, I follow this path in hope of spreading that message and making God’s love real in my life and the lives of others.