As a high school student, Chris Stern had some negative experiences with missionaries that turned him off Christianity, especially the “fake news” that, as he puts it, “Jesus is here to give us individual salvation and all we need to do is make some declaration of faith and we’ll go upstairs and if we don’t, we’re going downstairs.”
When he learned about early Quakers, though, and how they became convinced, he felt he had found the “real news.”
“Jesus is available to me, in my heart,” Chris explains. “All I need to do is be open and listen to that, and sit with others who are open to being guided by that power… that they can feel deep within that wants to draw them closer to God’s love and loving one another.”


Comments on Friendsjournal.org may be used in the Forum of the print magazine and may be edited for length and clarity.