Catholics and Evangelicals have been meeting in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles since 1987, when the Los Angeles Catholic/Evangelical Committee was established by Msgr. Royale Vadakin, then ecumenical officer for the Archdiocese, and Dr. Richard Mouw, a professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and now its president.

From the beginning, the Committee has been committed to an inclusive membership. Catholic members have included four Archdiocesan ecumenical officers, several campus ministers and religious women, a pastor of a Hispanic parish, the assistant director of the Archdiocesan Office for Hispanic Ministry, and several faculty members from Loyola Marymount University. On the Evangelical side members have come from InterVarsity Fellowship, Young Life, World Vision International, and the Fuller faculty. Several have been woman pastors.

Since then the Committee has addressed a number of sensitive issues, among them evangelization and the Hispanic community, Mary and the saints, evangelization and mission as well as Pope John Paul II's "new evangelization," liturgy and worship, and social justice in both traditions. In more recent years, the Committee has sponsored a number of events that have partnered Catholic and Evangelical congregations in the effort to move the dialogue away from the specialists and into the pews.

On November 8, the Committee brought together about 40 Pentecostal pastors from the Pasadena area and Catholic priests, deacons, and pastoral associates from four Pasadena and San Gabriel deaneries at the San Gabriel Mission for a chance to get acquainted. After an opening prayer service led by Dr. Anthea Butler from LMU, the two co-chairs --- Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., a professor of Ecumenics at Fuller, and myself --- made initial presentations.

In an effort to find the common experience that so often lies beneath their different languages and religious cultures, both told personal stories about their own call to ministry and involvement in the search for reconciliation between Christians.

Dr. Robeck, a fine Patristics scholar who has several times participated in meetings with Pope John Paul II, told of growing up in a family with several Assemblies of God pastors. His own call to ecumenical work, not always appreciated by his Church, was as much a surprise to him as it was to his family. He spoke movingly about how his own understanding of grace has grown and deepened through his contacts with Roman Catholics, particularly his sense for God's patience and mysterious working in the lives of others which so often remains unknown even by those close to them.

I spoke about finding confirmation for my own call, and my initial, somewhat challenging, but ultimately very rewarding experiences with the charismatic renewal at LMU in the week before I was ordained, with people singing in tongues, raising their arms, and praying spontaneously.

Both of us stressed how much we can learn from each other, as well as the difficulty of reducing the experience of conversion to a single moment, though for some it happens that way. I was moved to hear several of the Pentecostals, including Professor Robeck, speak of a gradually deepening relationship with the Lord in a way most Catholics could appreciate.

As one well-known Evangelical theologian has emphasized, the "born again" experience, so foundational to Evangelicals and Pentecostals, is not "just a feeling," but far more one of conversion, decision and commitment. This means that once it is disentangled from the interpretative rhetoric of an Evangelical religious culture, it becomes apparent that millions of Catholics can claim a similar experience.

Afterwards the participants shared a lunch together, a time to introduce themselves in smaller groups and tell something of their own stories. In the discussion that followed, all sorts of questions emerged:

---Why do Catholics pray to the saints when the practice is not mentioned in Scripture?

---What do Pentecostals understand by the "Lord's Supper," and can they celebrate it without an ordained pastor?

---What is understood by Purgatory?

---Can non-Christians be saved?

A particularly moving moment for me was when one of our Pentecostal hosts said he longed for the day when his Catholic priest-counterparts would accept him as a peer in ministry. The morning ended with a jointly prayed Our Father.

In his book "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" (Oxford University Press, 2002), charting the incredible growth of Christianity in the "global South," Philip Jenkins stresses that the churches that have grown most dramatically have been the Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal communities. Given the importance that both communities will play in the Christianity of the future, it is all the more important for Catholics and Pentecostals to get to know each other a little better.

Jesuit Father Thomas P. Rausch is the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.