For a while after moving back to our hometown, Maria and I — now with two kids — started hopping around between churches, trying to find one to call home. They were all pretty similar: warm, welcoming people, a handful of modern worship songs, and a long sermon. It was a familiar formula, and to be honest, I struggled with it. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why these churches had such long sermons. After fifteen minutes, my mind would start to drift, and I don’t think it was because of a poor attention span. I simply didn’t connect with that style of worship. I missed the liturgical services we had experienced at the Catholic church, but I knew we were never going to become Catholic, and it felt strange to attend services we couldn’t fully participate in. At least in evangelical churches, I could take communion — grape juice and crackers, simple and symbolic — and even though it felt spiritually thin to me, it did help us feel like we belonged.

One day we were in town for a family fun day, where all the local churches set up booths and turned the square into a small festival. There were bouncy houses, hot dogs, face paint — all the usual things — and the churches handed out tracts or small gifts. And lo and behold, we ran into Pastor S. I hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, so it was a delightful surprise. He was wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey jersey, which I thought was super cool. After we got to talking, he invited us to come back to C. Church. I wasn’t sure, but he pressed the issue. “You won’t recognize it when you come,” he said. “It’s like a whole different church.” That intrigued me. So the following Sunday we took him up on the offer and drove back to that familiar place.

He was right about the church. A lot had changed. The choir loft was gone, and the pulpit area had been expanded into a stage. A ministry wing had been completed — it had been under construction and not in use when I left years earlier — and now it held a full gym, Sunday School rooms, and more. The back hallway had been converted into nursery and toddler areas, as well as a library. Everything looked great, and the atmosphere felt bright and alive. There was coffee available in the lobby, which made me think back to the old coffee shop church days in Lock Haven. We dropped our kids off in the nursery and went into the service.

There was a full worship band now. That was definitely new. Previously, there had been a piano-and-organ duo playing hymns. Now we were hearing the latest songs from popular Christian bands. It still wasn’t really my cup of tea, but the musicians were skilled and I couldn’t complain too much. And honestly, it felt good to hear a Pastor S. sermon again after all those years. There was something familiar and almost nostalgic about it.

But there was another difference. The sermon was presented on screens using a slideshow program. There were QR codes and Bible apps. I smiled at all of it, because I knew Pastor S. had always been a technology guy, and I imagined he had a lot of fun putting it all together.

We left that day feeling pretty good. It was nice to reconnect with people we hadn’t seen in a long time. We lined up some dinners with a few families and decided to go to church there again the next week, at least for the time being.

When the L. family came over for dinner, we got the backstory on all the changes that had taken place since we were gone. The church had gone through the same conflicts that so many churches across the U.S. were facing during those years — the so-called “worship wars,” tensions between older and younger generations, and declining attendance. With the church in a precarious situation, the decision was made to move fully into a modern style of worship, bringing in a band and adopting other contemporary elements. Of course, this caused conflict, and there was an exodus of people who didn’t want the new changes, including many older members.

This bothered me deeply. Something felt wrong about a faith community where old and young couldn’t remain together under one roof and worship side by side. Don’t get me wrong — I completely understood why the decision was made, and in the long run it probably proved to be the right one, as the church rebounded with growth, young families, and stability. But still, the need to innovate to stay relevant naturally gave me a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like the faith was becoming subject to marketing trends and demographic shifts, and that unsettled me.

But there wasn’t anything unique about this. In all the other churches we had hopped around to, the congregations were facing similar dilemmas. Some had made the jump to contemporary worship and were experiencing growth. Others remained more “traditional” and continued to decline in numbers. We were simply living through a time of change.

We were excited for all the opportunities outside the main Sunday service — Sunday School classes, small groups, and helping with outreach. I joined a Saturday morning men’s group that met at a local restaurant in town for breakfast and to discuss Christian books. Most of the books were the typical popular titles of the 2010s, by men like John Ortberg and Timothy Keller, while the ladies were reading authors like Beth Moore. After spending a few years deep in ancient works — philosophy, history, the Great Books — the contemporary Christian books I picked up felt much lighter and more geared toward a broad audience. The contrast was sharp, simply because I’d been living in a very different kind of reading. Most of the time I skipped them, but I still showed up for breakfast to hear the discussions. Most of the books seemed fine — nothing to write home about.

But then there was Nudge, a book by Leonard Sweet that our breakfast group decided to read. I couldn’t stand it. To begin with, it was almost unreadable — you had to get through invented phrases like “a Jesus in you person” and “our noses are antennas of truth — a hush-hush secret agent for Jesus,” phrases so unusual I struggled to know what they were meant to convey. But beyond the strange language, the book felt like it was proclaiming evangelism as awakening people to the idea that God is already in them, rather than proclaiming the gospel of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. I hated this book so much that I almost left C. Church over it. And once I started looking around at what other books the small groups were reading, I saw a disheartening pattern: books that seemed “spiritual” but didn’t have much depth or truth. Maria and I were both on the verge of leaving when we asked Pastor S. and his wife to come over for dinner to talk about it.

When they arrived, we had a long, thoughtful conversation. Meeting face-to-face has a way of softening the extreme ideas you imagine beforehand, especially when you’re sitting across from someone you’ve respected for most of your life. They acknowledged our concerns, explained their perspective, and in the end, we were convinced, choosing to settle in permanently at C. Church.

Eventually, I had the chance to attend a men’s retreat at M. Camp, the same place where I had slept on Grandma’s back porch as a child and where I had gone to the altar as a teenager and young adult. The retreat followed a familiar pattern: strong worship services and messages woven between good meals and fun activities. Most of the activities were lighthearted competitions — carnival-style games, shooting ranges, and similar events. The winning team usually took home a “manly” prize like a nice pocket knife or an axe. None of my teams ever came close to winning, but we still enjoyed ourselves.

The messages at this retreat woke me up spiritually after years of living in a rut. Through reading Augustine, I had come to acknowledge God and wanted to follow Him, but I didn’t really know how beyond the familiar advice: read the Bible, pray, go to church, join small groups. These messages spoke directly to us as men, challenging us to get off the couch, step away from the TV, reclaim the leadership role God designed for our families, and be men of God — to let go of worldly distractions and focus on the eternal things that matter most. It energized me.

After one of the messages, our whole group gathered and a spontaneous time of confession and prayer broke out among us. We were excited to go home and live differently. On the final morning, I was inspired by the leader’s stories of men meeting in his home over a shared meal, praying together, and studying Scripture. I suggested we try the same, offering my house as the meeting place. Everyone agreed it was worth pursuing.

And so began a Thursday night men’s group that continued for the remaining seven or eight years of my time in the evangelical tradition — and still meets today. It quickly became a fixed part of my weekly rhythm, and I rarely missed a gathering. My son came with me, first as a little boy and later as a young man on the verge of high school. For both of us, this group mattered more than the Sunday service. I heard the same from others as well; there was a sense of community you simply didn’t find on Sunday mornings. At our very first meeting, one of the men brought pizza. It broke the ice and made conversation easy, and from that night on, sharing a meal became a defining tradition of the group. I cannot overstate the spiritual impact those Thursday nights had on my life, and I will always be grateful to God for those men.

Our third child arrived during this period — a beautiful daughter, Photini. She was a joyful baby, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so delighted simply to be a baby. Around eight months old, she developed a painful condition called septic hip, though it took nearly two weeks before anyone identified what was wrong. During that stretch, the men in our group prayed earnestly for her and surrounded us with support.

After she underwent emergency surgery, several of the guys drove more than two hours to the children’s hospital to visit us, see how we were holding up, and pray with us. Again, I cannot overstate the impact that group of men had on my life and on my family. Thanks be to God for them.

Unfortunately, returning to retreats also put me back into the rededication cycle. The spiritual high came and went, just like in youth group. Strong feelings faded, and I slipped back into the same old patterns. Maybe I didn’t fall as far into the rut as before — perhaps there were some signs of real maturity — but my personal prayer life was still almost nonexistent. I found prayer extremely difficult. In this tradition, prayer is mostly extemporaneous. I would kneel beside my bed and begin speaking to God, but within a few sentences I would run out of words. The only way I could seem to keep going was by asking God for things — help with my sins, help to be a better person, and so on.

I tried different methods of prayer that I had heard about. One was called ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication). I would kneel by my bedside and begin the process. It felt so choppy, like I was trying to check off a list of requirements. In sequence, I would tell God great things about Himself, like how powerful He is and how much He loves us. Then I would try to confess all the bad things I had done that day. For the thanksgiving section, I basically repeated everything from the adoration section, just adding “thank you” ahead of it (“Thank you for being so powerful, and for loving us…”). Then would come a long list of supplications, with no regard for whether these requests were good for me or for my salvation. And after my list of supplications, I would just end with “Amen.” I actually felt embarrassed praying that way. I imagined God looking down on me like, “What are you doing, man?” I bounced around trying other prayer and devotional books as well, but nothing ever seemed to stick. I felt like I was just spinning my wheels.

On the outside, though, I think I appeared spiritual. I thrived at discussion in Bible studies — picking verses, cross-referencing, analyzing, threading ideas together. People often complimented me on my ability to explain and understand Scripture. One night after group, a man came up to me and shook my hand. He thanked me for everything I contributed and told me the group wouldn’t be the same without me. I thanked him. Inside, I felt a strange mixture of pride and shame — pride for benefiting someone’s life, but shame because I had no prayer life. My faith was just intellectual. Learning about God was a high priority, and I felt like I knew a lot about Him. But did I know Him? That’s a different question altogether.

There were people in my church I was convinced did know Him. They were usually older members of the congregation who often didn’t play a major role in the church, but just lived consistent lives of service and love. I always hoped I could grow to be like one of them. But it felt so distant from where I was at the time.

As I continued trying to take ownership of my faith, attending the yearly men’s retreat, I kept searching for new ways to strengthen my prayer life. I found myself thinking about the Christians who came before me over the past twenty centuries. They didn’t have weekend retreats with worship bands. Many lived in difficult circumstances, and even those who were well-off worshiped in a way completely different from what we knew. It made me wonder how they maintained a consistent walk with God.

As I continued to dig into church history, I came to understand that for most of Christian history, worship had been liturgical — an ordered, shared pattern rather than something improvised in the moment. I began looking at different liturgies for private devotion, and stumbled upon the Book of Common Prayer, from the Anglican tradition. I began practicing the morning and evening prayers. I discovered a prayer called Phos Hilaron and found out it was an ancient hymn dating from as early as the third century. It read: “O gladsome light, pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven, O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed! Now as we come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the vesper light, we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices, O Son of God, O Giver of Life, and to be glorified through all the worlds.” It blew my mind. I had no idea prayers that old were still in use. I felt connected to the ancient Christian faith for really the first time in my life. There were other ancient prayers too, and I loved them all. Overall, praying from the Book of Common Prayer gave me longer, richer prayer times. I could spend more time with God without needing everything to be spontaneous, and the prayers often expressed things I felt deeply but had never been able to articulate.

I had a lot of success using this book, and I even began leading my children in the Family Prayer section each night before bed. But it was still something I was doing alone — without a communal body around me, and detached from any history our church cared about. I looked around my region and found there were no Anglican churches nearby. And even if I had found one, I wasn’t sure I would find it practicing this faith the way I’d come to know it. A lot had changed in churches over the 20th century, and many denominations today would hardly be recognized by their own members from earlier generations. It felt like I was borrowing from a tradition with no living expression in the world around me. In other words, I was on my own.

It seemed like there was nowhere else for me to go than where I already was. So while I felt a bit spiritually homeless, I just kept doing what I was doing. I kept spinning my wheels.

As our fourth child, Alexander, came into the world, we found ourselves in a place of spiritual cruise control. We wanted to go deeper, but in a tradition where spiritual disciplines are not heavily emphasized, in part because of a real theological concern that structured practices might morph into “earning your salvation,” there was only one typical way to go deeper: you get more involved. And this is how I eventually became a youth leader.