Shelbyville teen says being baptized ‘was me—getting made brand new’

Dylan King receives the sacrament of confirmation as Father Michael Keucher traces the sign of the cross on his forehead during the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Joseph Church in Shelbyville on April 4. (Submitted photo)

By Natalie Hoefer

SHELBYVILLE—When Dylan King was confined to bed for several weeks after a surgery in September of 2024, he did what most 14-year-old teens would do—he turned to videos on YouTube and TikTok to fill his time.

Not typical for his age was the subject of the videos he watched—Christian apologetics.

“I was newly Christian and still didn’t know a lot,” recalls Dylan, now 16. “God enlightened me through them.”

One of those apologists made a statement that would change the course of the young man’s life: “If you want to really take the faith seriously, then you need to read the Gospels.”

Dylan did. And what he read led him on a faith journey that culminated during the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Joseph Church in Shelbyville on April 4, when he was welcomed into full communion with the Church.

“It’s been a long time—over a year—becoming Catholic,” says Dylan. “And it’s been a beautiful journey, especially as an un-baptized person.”

‘It’s obvious … Christ established one Church’

“I wasn’t really raised with faith,” says the soon-to-be junior in high school. “My mom was religious, I guess you could say, but she was lukewarm.”

Then tragedy struck: Dylan’s dad died when the youth was about 10 years old.

“I started to question the existence of God, and so I became atheist for, like, two or three years,” he says.

Dylan credits his sister—or rather, God working through her—with setting him on his spiritual journey.

“I love her a lot,” he says of the sibling who introduced him to Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) in 2024.

He joined an FCA Bible study, and “that’s where I came to believe in God and Christ,” says Dylan. “Christianity is one of the only religions that believes God became man and he doesn’t exalt himself. He humbles himself, and I found that pleasing.”

That September, he had a second surgery on his right arm.

“I’ve had a bunch of problems,” Dylan admits. “I don’t know if I have something—but it’s undiagnosed if I do. I have arthritis, and that could be the cause” for his having so many operations by the age of 16: three on each arm, two on one leg and one on the other leg.”

Through listening to Christian apologists and reading the Gospels as he recuperated, “My faith grew a lot,” says Dylan.

By Easter of 2025, he knew he “needed to go to church,” so he said yes when an FCA leader invited him to a service at the nondenominational church where her husband was pastor.

“I took communion, but it was really weird, like, not serious,” he recalls. “I could tell just by reading [the Gospels] that Communion wasn’t symbolic, it’s not just in remembrance of [Jesus], that it is really him, especially when in John 6 he says three times that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink.”

Dylan started researching Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy “and all the other Churches that take Communion seriously and don’t see it as symbolic.

“And it just was so powerful, because it’s so obvious, or at least to me it’s obvious—through the councils, through the saints, the Church fathers, ... the papacy—that Christ established one Church, and he made Peter the head of the Church in Matthew 16:17-19.”

Dylan asked his grandmother, a formerly practicing Catholic, how to get baptized in the faith. She told him to “go to Mass, see if you like it, and then decide.”

But when she joined him for Mass at St. Joseph Church, he says, “I already decided that I’m going to be Catholic, no matter what.”

‘This is one body united in Christ’

Dylan, then 15, contacted St. Joseph’s pastor Father Michael Keucher, who enrolled him in Order of Christian Initiation of Adults adapted for teenagers and confirmation classes.

Through the classes, he says it “became so obvious to me that this is the true faith.”

He experienced the “catholic”—or universal—nature of the Church when he attended the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) with high school-aged youths from St. Joseph in Indianapolis last November.

“These people that you meet [at NCYC], ... we share the same faith,” says Dylan. “It’s not 40,000 different denominations—this is one body united in Christ. And we’re a community. We’re brothers and sisters, and we hold each other accountable. We strengthen each other in faith. And that was my blessing from NCYC. … I got to experience the beauty of Catholicism’s community, this shared faith.”

Another blessing of NCYC was discovering his confirmation saint, Dylan adds, pointing to a rosary bracelet he purchased at the gathering with a medal of St. Benedict attached.

“I got this sense of deja vu when I saw his face, that feeling like you’ve seen something before,” he says. He later realized he had seen an image of the saint in a TikTok video a few weeks prior.

Dylan began to research St. Benedict. And the more he learned, the more he felt drawn to the saint.

“Father Mike said everyone has their confirmation saint that they’re drawn to, that you would feel it—and that’s what I felt,” he recalls, adding that St. Benedict has “been an inspiration for me a lot. All of his ways, his rules, his life—he’s really a model for me.”

Perhaps it was because he felt sure of his choice of saint that Dylan’s confirmation during the Easter Vigil was a happy moment, but one that did not particularly “stand out” for him.

It was a different story for his baptism and first Communion.

‘I was me—getting made brand new’

“I, like, completely blanked,” Dylan says of being baptized and receiving the Eucharist for the first time at the Easter Vigil Mass.

“For my baptism, it was like, ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,’ and then I just started shaking. Father Mike was hanging on to me going, ‘Whoa!’

“And then during Communion, … I didn’t even say ‘Amen’ before I had Jesus on my tongue. And when I went to take the cup, my hands were just, like, shaking.

“I texted Father Mike later and told him I was really overpowered by the sacraments. The Holy Spirit overshadowed me. It was awesome.”

That powerful experience would not have happened if he had been baptized as an infant, says Dylan.

“Being baptized as a teenager, you understand what it feels like to now be a part of the body of Christ as you weren’t before,” he explains. “You really feel it. It’s like, before you felt as if you were alone, and now you feel as if all the saints are with you. They’re all praying for you and you’re closer to God, and now you are one in Christ with everybody else.

“It’s something that not a lot of Catholics get to experience, since a lot of them are baptized as babies.”

As Dylan considers his future, he admits he does “kind of want to go to seminary—I think it would be awesome.”

But he refrains from saying he wants to become a priest. It’s a lesson he learned during a recent visit at Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary in Indianapolis.

“One of the priests said, ‘If you’re in seminary, priesthood isn’t an idea to you. That’s the future. If you’re called to be a priest, that’s the future. But right now, look in front of you, because you’ll trip over yourself if you’re looking that far ahead.’

“So, I think seminary would be nice to go to, just to explore my calling … . If God wills it, I’ll become a priest. If he doesn’t, then I won’t.”

In the meantime, Dylan says he is grateful for finally “being part of the body of Christ. It was just really a long wait. …

“The Church has been a hospital for me, for sure,” says the young man who has had so many surgeries. “Getting baptized, I was me—getting made brand new.” †