A spiritual appetite that had been slowly growing for many years fueled my journey. It was a hunger for rootedness, a desire to be part of a denomination not built on modern, nitpicky doctrinal statements but on the ancient consensus of the creeds, and a craving for what I now know to be the beauty of sacramental theology.
How Maundy Thursday Hooked Me
A few years ago, leading up to Holy Week, I was about 50/50 on becoming an Anglican. I saw some things I liked, I didn’t understand a handful of other aspects, and I wrestled with leaving a tradition that raised me, and then Holy Week got me. It was all over from there. Now, I…
How Anglicanism Saved Me from “Following My Heart”
Hello, my name is Ethan, and I am a recovering expressive individualist. You are familiar with “expressive individualism,” even if the term isn’t familiar. I’ll define and describe it below, but phrases like “be authentic” or “follow your heart” capture the idea to a tee. I became an Anglican to “be authentic” and “follow my…
A Sunday Service that Directs Me to Christ
The thought snuck into my head every Sunday. “Is this it?” Despite the faithful preaching, something was missing from the standard order. There were three songs, a prayer, announcements, a sermon, a final song, and then lunch at Chipotle. It wasn’t that I was looking for more components that suited my preferences. I wanted to…
Living in Liturgy: My Anglican Journey
We first enter through the bright red doors of an Anglican church, a preteen and two teenagers in tow. Questions permeate my thoughts, how will our children endure this shift, especially at this stage of their spiritual development? Is this even the right choice for our family? We have all grown up within the Church;…
My Anglican Journey: Burnout and Hope
There’s a movement happening—a movement of followers of Jesus rediscovering ancient forms of worship in a way that ignites fresh love and zeal for Jesus and his Church. Robert Webber described this movement more than thirty years ago in his book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. In the thirty years since Webber released his book,…
A Gift of God: The Eucharist Revives a Weary Christian
“OK, let’s sing that verse again,” the worship leader said. “And this time sing it with everything you’ve got!” I was sitting in the back row of the church cradling a sleeping baby. I was lonely and exhausted—deeply disconnected from the upbeat music coming from the stage. A voice inside my head whispered back to…
The Long Way Home: Dwelling in the Anglican Way
My “Anglican story” is intimately tied to the desire to be firmly anchored in the tradition it represents and the calling to establish more churches in that same tradition. A few years ago, my wife and I joined the Anglican Church in North America through confirmation. This is intriguing because, at that time, I was…
Marching from Fundamentalism to the Canterbury Trail (By Zach Jones)
Growing up, words like “Jesus” and “Church” were commonplace. My parents raised me and my siblings in a Christian household, and I cannot remember a time where I did not know about how Jesus died for my sins and rose again. In my Baptist upbringing, the Gospel was shared almost every Sunday. I knew the…
Getting Over the Hurdle of Infant Baptism: An Atonement Argument
Like many current Anglicans, I grew up as a Baptist, a Southern Baptist in fact. I even went to a Baptist college on the campus of a Southern Baptist seminary and got an excellent foundational education in the Scriptures and Great Books. When I married an Anglican, we started attending Baptist churches but never found…
Another “Anglicostal” Journey: The Spirit and the Body
Recently, Fr. Bryan Wandel wrote about how his Pentecostal faith set him up for the Anglican Church. Because I have similar sentiments, I shared it with several of my Pentecostal friends, and I recommend that you read the post. However, if I might add personal reflection to Wandel’s piece from my own journey, it is…
“Anglicostal”: How Pentecostal Faith Prepared Me for the Anglican Church
At my ordination, the bishop gave me the option of kneeling or laying prostrate while he prayed over me. Laying face-down in a worship service in front of hundreds of people? That might seem odd, but for me it was a no-brainer. As a Pentecostal, this was my assumed position for laying it all before…
