Where I’ve come from: my context
As I’ve discovered in reading and hearing the stories of others on their journey towards a life of Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, there are vastly different stories but the themes usually resonate in harmony — people are hungry for an authentic faith that can be traced to the time of Christ; a faith that looks like the first century Church.
I grew up ELCA Lutheran — it was boring to me, meaningless, but was still my upbringing and carries with it some fond memories and events that bore the mark of Christ on them. Towards the end of my high school years, I had genuine encounters with Christ, the encounter with His love and the forgiveness of my sins when I repented, and the joy of being in a body of like-minded believers. And fearing that the Lutheran Church could not sustain this new-found faith, my youth director would sneak me off to a Lutheran Church that was “spirit-filled” and had gone through the Lutheran Renewal movement.
Throughout my 20’s, my life was marked by searching for my purpose and seeking to become closer with God. That quest led me through various sects of protestantism, including a few non-denominational churches, an independent charismatic Lutheran church, and eventually to a charismatic evangelical church, where I served as the “worship” music director for nearly five years. But it was in that last year as the music director that I began to experience a lot of change and growth in my faith and my perspective — I didn’t see eye to eye with our pastor, felt that the church in the United States was going down the wrong path, and felt agony over the empty trends that our church (and many others) so willingly followed.
It took severe burnout — a combination of holding down a 30-hour a week job, working 20+ hours a week at the church, writing and directing the music for the Christmas production, and life in general — to bring me to a crashing halt and bring me to a strange place of isolation from the church of the West. At the same time, I was extremely frustrated with the church because of it’s excessive involvement in political affairs, it’s top-down force-feeding of Judeo-Christian “values” to the general public, and the overall feeling like we were all missing the boat. This lead me to a place where I have been trying to come to terms with my disdain for the church (of the West) and seeking out God and the roots of my faith. I was convinced that the church just didn’t look right, but had not the proper resources or knowledge to articulate how I thought it should be. My only reference was, of course, Acts chapter two.
In the course of discussions with others and crossing paths with others in similar circumstances, the term Orthodoxy started to become more commonplace and set off in me the desire to learn more. Strangely enough, there happened to be an Antioch Orthodox Christian Church just four to five blocks away from my house and didn’t realize it! So I began to attend on and off over the past year and have come to the place now where I will begin classes to become a catechumen this Saturday.
Over the coming months I’ll share about this journey into baptism into the Orthodox faith along with other reflections along the way. I hope they will prove insightful to you and may even help you along your own journey towards salvation in Christ.
Peace be with you.
