This July, I’ll be 19 years old in Christ, but I’ve only been to church for about two thirds of that time. I can’t get into detail right now as to what happened. I’m not sure what the exact causes were myself, but the long and the short of it is that I dropped out of church life for about seven years. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t entirely drop out—I was always around the church and its people—I just didn’t regularly attend any one house of worship consistently.

Last Fall, my wife and I began attending Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church in Norfolk, VA. There were a number of things that led us to this church, however, I guess the thing that pushed us over the tipping point was when I read an interview with Todd Hunter in Christianity Today in which he spoke about his spiritual journey. I haven’t reflected on anything long enough in the last couple of years (been too busy going to school and learning things like Greek and Hebrew) to be able to pinpoint exactly what it was about the article that resonated with me, but something did. I checked to see if there were any local Anglican Mission in the Americas churches and discovered Christ the Redeemer in my own backyard. We’ve been going ever since, albeit erratically due to my mother’s health and work/school conflicts. But we’ve been going, and it’s a start, and it is good!

Giving Church Another Chance: Finding New Meaning in Spiritual Practices