Kevin Kelly/Key photo Scott McKellar, foreground right, is the director of the new Bishop Helmsing Institute. Also on staff, from left, are Keith Jiron, resource director; Jennifer Gordon, instructor; and Jeremy Sienkiewicz, associate director.

In August, McKellar moved his wife, Wendy, and their five children - Wesley, 13; Mark, 10; Claire, 8; Brendan, 6, and Anna, 4 - halfway across a continent and into a new country from British Columbia.

He quickly settled the family into a new home near St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in Gladstone, enrolled their children in new schools (Wesley, an eighth grader, is attending St. Charles Borromeo School because St. Andrew won't offer eighth grade until next year). Then he hit the ground running when he reported for duty at the chancery on Aug. 18.

"I saw this as an exciting opportunity to serve the church, and bringing into being the kind of vision the bishops had in their documents on the laity," said McKellar, who taught at Redeemer Pacific College in Langley, B.C., southeast of Vancouver, and is working on his doctoral thesis.

He said his new job will be a logical extension of his university work.

"I was helping Catholic college-age students learn about their faith," he said. "I appreciate the opportunity to broaden the focus to adult lay people throughout the church."

McKellar said that when he read the reports of the two adult faith formation commissions appointed by Bishop Robert W. Finn and led by Vice Chancellor Claude Sasso, he embraced the concept of adult faith formation that they expressed.

The Bishop Helmsing Institute is designed to serve everybody, fully recognizing that the church has broad arms that embrace everyone.

"We want to keep our vision broad enough so that people of various spiritualities will feel comfortable," he said. "I hope we can be that broad, embracing the fullness of the Catholic Church."

McKellar and his wife are fairly recent Catholics. They joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1995 at St. James Parish in Abbotsford, B.C.

"I grew up in a mainline Protestant church, and through my college experience, I became immersed in evangelical Protestantism," he said.

McKellar even studied to become a Protestant minister.

"As I began my studies, I found various Protestant groups each proclaiming to follow the Bible, and I had the chance to study the Bible and find out who was right," McKellar said.

His studies led him into a search through the writings of the early church fathers, where he discovered that the tradition that most resembled the church of the earliest Christians was the Roman Catholic Church.

"As I studied, I discovered the church that Jesus founded - the Catholic Church," he said. "Eventually, we (he and Wendy) both came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was the church that Jesus founded."

In 1999, McKellar began his teaching career at Redeemer Pacific, a Catholic college with a unique arrangement with a nearby Protestant university, Trinity Western, that allows Redeemer students to take Catholic courses for Trinity credit.

McKellar admits that he is still learning about Catholicism, but then again, learning is a lifelong process.

"To really become knowledgeable about anything takes 10 years and a lot of hard work," he said. "I've had my 10 years, but I'm not an expert. I'm still learning and hope to be a lifelong learner."

The Bishop Helmsing Institute is designed for those with a thirst for lifelong learning, McKellar said. The institute will offer both a three-year course for full certification, but students will also be encouraged to enroll in classes at their own pace, and according to their own desires.

McKellar said students can enroll for a full semester load, or for any of the individual classes. Its initial course offerings, ranging in price from $41 to $53 each, are Spiritual Life I, Biblical Foundations, Apologetics and Creed I.

All courses will be offered at four locations in three-hour blocks - Monday evenings at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in St. Joseph, Tuesday evenings at St. John Francis Regis Parish in Kansas City, Thursday evenings at St. Therese Parish in Parkville, and Saturday mornings at Sacred Heart Parish in Warrensburg.

Those unable to attend classes at any of those locations can apply to take the courses online at www.bishophelmsinginstitute.org.

Teaching the fullness of faith is both simple and complicated, McKellar said.

"The Catholic faith is simple enough for the simplest person, but so mysterious that St. Thomas Aquinas gave up" trying to explain everything, McKellar said.

"The whole spectrum is there," he said. "Our task is to understand all that we can, and to live it, to go those 12 inches from the head to the heart."

The more he learns about the church, the more deeply he falls in love with it, McKellar said. That is something he is anxious to share through the Bishop Helmsing Institute in order to help Catholics live their faith fully in the midst of today's world.

"Any honest, upright profession can be lived in a Christian way," McKellar said. "That should be our goal - to be fully Christian in the midst of the world."

When people are in love with Jesus and their faith in him, that becomes obvious to everyone around them.

"This takes us into a new vision of evangelization," McKellar said. "Let's take Joe, who is a house framer. If Joe is demonstrating his joy through his faith, then all the framers at that worksite are going to hear about Christ. There will be something about him that they will go up to him and ask him. The idea of the new evangelization is that Christ is going to be there, at that worksite with Joe, and the new evangelization will take place when Christ is present in every walk of life."

The Bishop Helmsing Institute seeks to deepen knowledge of the Catholic faith and its teachings, deepen the prayer lives of its students, and lead them into stronger practice of the faith in service to others that will become obvious to those around them, McKellar said.

"We are all different," McKellar said. "Each one of us has a unique character that God has given us. We are called to Christianity, and to a unique way of expressing it to the uniqueness of our personhood."

"This is open to everyone," McKellar said. "You don't have to be invited. You don't need permission from anyone. We are here for everybody."

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