Those men’s retreats at M. camp made me want my kids to have a chance at the same camp experience. We started sending them to summer camps at M., and during the ten days of family camp each year we pitched a tent and stayed on the grounds. In earlier years I had gone mainly for the fun and the games, but now, as an adult, I wanted to soak in the services. Twice a day we’d all gather in the main tabernacle—an old, whitewashed building filled with hard wooden benches, its open windows giving it a rustic feel. Loudspeakers on the outside broadcast the service across the campground. The messages and music created an unforgettable atmosphere. There is something inspiring about hundreds of voices raised in song inside a tabernacle where your great-grandmother once worshipped. People were baptized down in the river, and many went to the altars. It felt like a small revival every summer. And we always sensed that something bigger was just ahead—that God was doing something in our time, and that the big revival might break out one of these years.

Maria and I went to the altar together at times. Those moments of walking down the aisle hand in hand, kneeling side by side, and praying prayers of repentance and commitment were some of the most meaningful in our marriage. When the minister came to pray over us, he prayed for us as one. Through all the ups and downs our marriage had weathered over the years, we had come out the other side united by our faith in Christ and our love for one another. It felt like we were finally moving in the right spiritual direction.

But one of my favorite parts of family camp was the little “Tent City” we had on the hill behind the youth tabernacle. Lots of families from C. Church camped together in the same field. We had so much fun being together that one year a friend from church and I each bought commercial-strength 10’x20′ canopies and pushed them together so everyone could fit under one “roof.” We spent countless hours each summer playing board games, singing worship songs, eating junk food, and carrying on conversations under that canopy. Each year we made little improvements to the common area—hanging bulb lights, rigging a makeshift gutter between the two roofs to keep the rain out. All of the families in Tent City had kids, and it was a real pleasure to spend time with them. It reminded me of my days as a teacher. There was one boy, Jo., who was always sitting outside my tent waiting for me when I woke up in the morning. I liked him a lot but always had to remind him to let me have my coffee before we launched into big conversations. The girls would talk for hours as they worked on little crafts, like bracelets, and I always had a few given to me as gifts by the end of the week. We did a lot of laughing and joking while those bracelets were being made. It’s also where I got to hear a lot of their real-life struggles, too, mostly involving school and boys.

One year, I realized I enjoyed those interactions so much that I didn’t want the relationships to end when camp ended. At the same time, the revival messages we were hearing at camp stirred in me a strong sense that God was calling me to serve more actively in His kingdom. It’s hard to explain that kind of calling. For me, it often came while singing worship music—just a feeling I’d come to associate with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and then thoughts would surface. This time, those thoughts were centered on the kids back at Tent City that I’d be saying goodbye to. I didn’t want to wait until next summer to have those special moments with them again. After praying and talking with Maria, I approached the youth leader Br. at our church and asked if he and his wife D. needed help, offering to serve in any way he found useful. He was thrilled—he and his wife had been carrying the full load alone for a few years. So it became official: starting that fall, I would be helping lead the youth.

I stepped into an already functioning group with about a dozen regular students. I was placed on the teaching rotation from day one. I had to adjust to Sundays no longer being a day of rest, since youth group met for the Sunday School hour in the morning as well as two hours on Sunday evening. Add in the regular Sunday church service, and there wasn’t a lot of free time left. But eventually I settled into the new routine. I quickly added my own contribution, forming a band. That first Sunday I got up in front of the youth with just my guitar and led them in worship. I played old songs from the 2010s, cause that’s basically all I knew. It must have been pretty cringe, but two of the older kids took pity on me, and by the next week I was out of the band. Lo and M. played guitar and drums the rest of that year, and they asked one of the older girls – Le – to sing. It was a fledgling group, and it had a lot of mistakes and sounded pretty rough in the beginning. But as time went on, they got it together, added some additional members, and started to sound really good! I was really happy to create this band because I remembered how much it meant to me twenty years earlier to have worship during youth group, and I wanted to give them that same opportunity. And it was strange—though I was bothered by modern worship music in the Sunday service, it didn’t bother me in youth group. I had no real explanation for this.

The church worship leader helped us set up a sound system, and some of the men installed a projector in the ceiling so we could display lyrics on a screen. One of my weekly tasks became preparing PowerPoint slides for the band. This took a lot longer than it should have, because my personality refused to allow the words to be un-centered on the screen. I spent more time formatting the slides than actually writing the lyrics, but at least each song only had to be added once. We arrived about half an hour before youth group so the band could practice and I could finish typing up the slides. Often I found myself still typing while the kids were eating the opening meal.

But far more time consuming for me was planning the lessons. I worked extremely hard on them, probably harder than I should have. I poured hours each week into a single youth lesson, often creating slides to go with it. I didn’t want them to be caught off guard by the arguments and memes that had led me down a road toward atheism, so I always tried to give them lessons that went “deeper” than I imagined typical Sunday School material went—referencing philosophers like Plato and church fathers like Augustine, in addition to the Bible. I wanted them to see that Christians could have an intelligent worldview, that faith and reason could stand together. Perhaps I also had a bit of a hero complex, feeling like my super deep and powerful lessons would change their lives. It was a bit performative, and I enjoyed the positive feedback I often got after a lesson. It fed my vanity, no doubt.

The group time was divided into three parts: a shared meal, worship and the lesson, and then fun and games. The importance of sharing a meal—something we had learned from the Thursday night men’s group—led us to make it a regular part of youth group as well. Each week a different member of the church provided dinner for the teens, a generous gesture we deeply appreciated. It’s not cheap to feed a dozen hungry teens plus leaders, and I know it took a bite out of people’s own time to shop and cook. I remember one week when I had signed up to provide the meal and didn’t feel like cooking, so I just ordered a pile of burgers and McChickens. The youth devoured them in seconds.

That year I also felt it was important to get the youth involved in trips and retreats. Those retreats had given me life-changing opportunities—a chance to get away from the “real world,” focus on Christ, and make real decisions about my faith. I felt like my youth group kids deserved that same opportunity. So I signed us up for JOLT, a middle school retreat held in October of that first year. But retreats weren’t a normal part of our church’s youth experience at the time, and only two boys signed up. A few girls wanted to go, but we couldn’t find a female chaperone, so they had to stay behind for that first trip.

We arrived at the campground surrounded by beautiful fall foliage and joined the many other groups from western Pennsylvania who had come for the retreat. It had all the elements I remembered from my own youth retreats, and I smiled watching all the kids pile out of church vans and buses with their luggage. Our favorite activity between worship services was 9-square, and we spent hours playing it during free time. One of our boys dove for the ball and landed flat on his chest, letting out a strange oomph. The girls playing laughed, and he spent the rest of the weekend diving on the ground trying to get the ball anyway, bruising both elbows and his knees in the process. I just laughed at what a teenage boy will do to get a smile out of a girl. Otherwise, with just me and those two boys, there was a quietness to the retreat that was new for me. I didn’t have to tell anybody where to go, to stop being crazy, or try to calm down any drama. We had actual time to think, reflect, or simply be.

On Saturday night, during the worship service, the speaker, J., handled something unusual with remarkable skill. The worship grew so intense that students began chanting the name of Jesus over and over. I had never seen anything like it. I had seen tears and weeping at events like this, and I had seen things lose control and turn chaotic at others. But I had never witnessed this kind of sustained, ecstatic chanting. I felt like it had the potential to spiral, but J. kept it grounded—encouraging what was happening without letting it get out of hand, instructing the students on ways they could lean into the experience and catch the spirit of what was happening. I watched him in awe. The moment lasted so long that the message was cancelled entirely. The service simply became a night of worship. I saw things I had never seen before—laughter beginning with one child and spreading across the room, kids lying peacefully on the floor, others embracing one another. It was all so calm, so powerful. I was convinced I was witnessing something of the Holy Spirit. I just watched, with tears in my eyes.

When I got home, I embraced Maria and cried on her shoulder. I told her about the beauty of what I had witnessed and how convinced I was that the Holy Spirit had been present. It felt like, for the first time, I had seen a truly spiritual moment. It was different than the retreats I had been to in my teenage years. It seemed more authentic somehow, probably due to the spontaneity of how it happened. I felt like I would never be the same. I couldn’t wait to get back to youth group the next weekend to continue the momentum I had picked up at the retreat.

But by now you can probably guess what happened. Even though it felt so real, even though I was convinced something was different this time, it turned out to be just another ride on the rededication cycle. As the ecstasy faded and I came down off the spiritual high, I landed in the same place I had been before. A frustratingly familiar place. I wondered how it was possible that this kept happening. I knew the cycle so well, yet I kept hoping for an experience that would last—something that would finally bring the permanent transformation I longed for.

In my heart I sensed that a consistent prayer life was the key, but it seemed impossible to implement. I had tried and failed many times before. And I didn’t want to go back to doing methods like “ACTS” again. So as I continued teaching and working with the youth, I also began researching and experimenting with ways to keep the spiritual slump away.

I began by investigating my own denomination, the C&MA. Our founder, A. B. Simpson, often spoke of a “higher” or “deeper” Christian life. The idea was that a believer could come to live a consistent, victorious Christian life through total surrender to Christ—finding victory by depending on Him rather than by striving in their own strength. Certain phrases were often repeated in our circles that reflected this Higher Life theology, such as “Let go and let God” or “He will do it all through you.” Both statements illustrated the surrender and lack of striving we were aiming for.

I purchased and read The Higher Christian Life by William Boardman. Boardman lays out the ideas mentioned above and gives examples of real people who seemed to live them out. Our own statement of faith aligned with this vision, particularly in section 1.7, which reads: “It is the will of God that each believer should be filled with the Holy Spirit and be sanctified wholly, being separated from sin and the world and fully dedicated to the will of God, thereby receiving power for holy living and effective service. This is both a crisis and a progressive experience wrought in the life of the believer subsequent to conversion.” I had experienced the crisis. It was the progressive experience I was looking for.

I noticed that we rarely heard much about this Higher Life in church on Sundays, and I wondered why we had not continued with this teaching. But I did not let that bother me, and I began teaching it to the youth group while trying to put it into practice myself.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be nothing more than—as one author put it—a “pleasant mind-trip.” For me, there was a huge problem with the idea of totally surrendering to Christ: I didn’t know how to actually do it. It sounds easy, but in practice, I found it impossibly difficult. It requires your will to be completely subservient to His, which I wanted to do, but could not seem to accomplish. As long as my mind was thinking Surrender! I could actually do it, and I saw some progress. But I couldn’t maintain that level of watchfulness all the time. I would forget to surrender, something would trigger me, and I would be overtaken by anger, or lust, or gluttony. In the end I was simply kicking the can down the road: where before I was striving for victory, now I was striving for surrender. Either way, I was still striving and still losing. I stopped teaching the Higher Life soon after this realization.

Next, I had the idea of taking occasional personal spiritual retreats—weekends away from my family where I could fast and pray. I imagined that a distraction‑free environment would allow me to set aside worldly cares and focus my mind and heart entirely on Christ, growing closer to Him in the process.

One cold winter weekend I went to M. Camp and stayed alone in a dorm room, fasting for almost seventy‑two hours and drinking nothing but water. This was not well thought out. I had no experience with extended fasting, and in hindsight it could have gone very badly. I got very weak and spent a lot of time just lying in the bed or walking slowly around the campsite. Fortunately, I was physically okay, and I did spend a great deal of time in prayer. I tried to be quiet and listen for God, and at one point I felt as though He was speaking to me. I had no discernment to know whether it was truly God’s voice, but I accepted it as such and began making plans to take another retreat a few months later.

The second time, I went to Black Moshannon State Park and spent a weekend in a small log cabin, praying, walking, and reading The Imitation of Christ. The experience was less impactful than the first, and I left feeling disappointed. I really wanted to hear from God. I’m not even sure why—I simply believed it would be a good and meaningful thing. But after both retreats, whatever spiritual high I felt (and it wasn’t very high) faded quickly, leaving me right back at ground zero.

Around this time a preacher, R., came to M. Camp promising transformation through a method known as Soul Care, a collection of spiritual tools he had developed. In particular, he emphasized repentance, breaking family sin patterns, and deliverance—freedom from demonic oppression. These ideas clicked with me because I was still searching for a way to live that sanctified life I had been chasing. My wife was also drawn to these practices and some of the other tools Soul Care offered.

As we listened to R., I found myself thinking that maybe this man had finally figured out the problem I was trying to solve. His stories were fascinating. He told about actual conversations he had with God. Listening to him, his method of prayer seemed to be authentic. I felt myself wishing I could talk with God like that. He talked about taking trips to a monastery and learning from the monks. I found myself wondering why, if he found those monastery visits so spiritually fruitful, he’d never considered converting to Catholicism himself. It reminded me of my own history of visiting Catholic churches and shrines, desiring to convert, and my eventual decision not to.

He ran a series of conferences around the country where attendees could go deeper into the Soul Care method, and Maria and I bought tickets. We arranged babysitting and drove four hours to Columbus, Ohio to participate in the Soul Care conference.

I didn’t get much out of it during the first day or two. The content seemed geared toward people struggling with identity issues, unforgiveness, or emotional wounds. It felt less like the kind of Christian conference I was used to, more like group therapy. But Maria was really enjoying herself, and I was enjoying the weekend away with her.

At the end of the conference they offered an opportunity for “deliverance,” where participants could be freed from demonic oppression. The speaker warned us that we were going to read a creed about Christ together, and if we found ourselves unable to say certain parts of it, that might be a sign of demonic oppression and a need for deliverance. I never imagined I would be involved, but when the creed was read, I unexpectedly choked on one of the phrases about Christ. I was then invited to go to one of the ministers for deliverance. I won’t go into too much detail, but the experience felt good, if a little awkward, and I did feel somewhat “free.” Maria felt that she had a powerful experience in her own deliverance. She even mentioned seeing a vision of Christ. I was supportive but skeptical. After all, my rational mind did not die just because I gave up atheism.

However, we grew disappointed almost immediately after returning home. That very first night, Maria reported having such powerfully evil thoughts and feelings that she had to sleep with the lamp on. It seemed that whatever had happened to her at Soul Care had not improved her situation at all. I wasn’t quite ready to give up on it, though.

For days I practiced the prayer routine they had taught us. I don’t remember the details exactly, but it involved long stretches of quietness and listening for God to speak. I followed the steps to get my mind into the state where I would be able to hear from Him. And I think I started to hear things. I assumed these impressions were good, so I continued the method.

Until one day, I heard things that were not good. Not good at all. And I sensed—very suddenly—that I was being laughed at or mocked as I reacted to the disturbing things I was hearing. I immediately took the Soul Care workbook and threw it in the garbage. I realized I was going down a road I did not want to go down. Maybe the method worked for R., but it did not work for me, and I would rather not “hear from God” if the process required experimenting with something so unstable. This method of spirituality felt dangerous to me, and I decided not to trust it.

Meanwhile, Maria continued to struggle for weeks with negative thoughts and dreams. She even felt like maybe she was hearing voices. This was unusual for us, and I was certain dipping our toes into the spirituality recommended by Soul Care had something to do with it. Eventually she reached out to our own pastor, S., who had received training in these methods. He and the elders gathered around her and delivered her again. The very fact that she needed another deliverance after already having gone through one was enough to turn me off to Soul Care entirely.

I began trying to help her forget the whole thing and encouraged us to focus instead on seeking Christ together through more normal means—praying, reading our Bibles, and grounding ourselves in the basics of our faith. I never confronted anyone in my church about this, because I was afraid of breaking their hearts. Many of them spoke so highly of Soul Care and how it had changed their lives that I felt it would be kinder to quietly keep my concerns to myself. I didn’t want to wound people who were genuinely grateful for what they had experienced. But from that point on, I never personally recommended Soul Care to anyone who asked me about it.

I was disappointed, though, that so few of us—myself included—seemed to be asking harder questions about it, and I wondered whether we’d been exercising real discernment as a church family. I found myself wondering why our denomination was pushing Soul Care so strongly. Was it really helping people? Was it truly biblical? I didn’t know, but at that point I didn’t investigate any further.

But I do have to mention one aspect to Soul Care that I truly appreciated, and that I am grateful for, namely the idea of confession. R. recommended that each of us find a trusted fellow Christian and do what he called a life confession with them. This involved examining our conscience, and honestly opening up about all of those things in our lives that caused shame and guilt, and bringing them into the light. I did one of these life confessions. I called up an elder in our church, E., and asked if he would be willing to hear my confession. He kindly agreed to do so. I spent the next twenty-four hours looking back on my life, at the sins and shame I had carried with me, from the time I was a child up to the present day. And I told him everything. I didn’t hold back. I didn’t try to make myself look better. I was completely truthful. After it was over, E. gave me some “fatherly” advice and prayed with me. He encouraged me to remember that Christ had forgiven me for everything I had done, and to go forward with a clean conscience. Years later, as I gave my life confession to my priest on the eve of my Orthodox baptism, I couldn’t help but look back on this time with E. and realize that what we had done was sacred—a participation, I now believe, in something that had existed as a norm in Christianity all along, but had been lost in evangelicalism.

I felt more free after that confession than I ever had in my life. I committed to making confession a pattern in my life. But I didn’t know how. Our church did not have a sacrament of confession. I didn’t want to bother E. all the time. I didn’t want to burden Maria. So I looked around in our Thursday night men’s group to try to find a likeminded person. Perhaps a partner who could engage in confession with me. And I found B.

B. had read the Soul Care book, and like me, he was interested in doing a life confession. And so one night we met at my house and sat around the campfire for hours, just me and B. I played the part for B. that E. played for me, listening to B.’s life confession, and offering encouragement and prayer. It was one of the most humbling and spiritually fulfilling experiences in my life. I didn’t feel worthy to hear his confession. And I knew I had been entrusted with something for which it would be better to die than to ever tell another person. Like a sacred charge. We agreed to meet more in the future and confess to each other. And we continued to do so until the day B. moved out of the country to pursue missions work.

But without B., I no longer had a confession partner. And I found myself once again in spiritual Limbo. I longed for an authentic spiritual life, a real relationship with God. Besides confession, everything I tried was not working. And even confession was now lost to me. My own denomination’s spirituality felt thin on its face, and they also seemed to be treading dangerous waters with Soul Care and a few other trends. Whenever I tried to talk about what I was searching for, I would often get a response along the lines of “all you need is Jesus.” I understood where this came from—there was a real, deep-seated fear in our circles of sliding into works-based salvation, of somehow trying to earn your way to God. But the response still frustrated me. I knew I needed Jesus. It was how to actually experience Him that I was after. I loved teaching youth, but I struggled every Sunday morning. I loved the people, but I wished for depth in worship—something more than songs and a sermon. Nowhere I looked offered the solution to my problem.

Gradually I began to settle into a kind of resignation: maybe there was no church out there that could help me come to know God in the way I longed for. But we had good people at C. Church. Good families. A good youth group. We were involved. Things were fine. So I gave up the search and simply settled into the situation I was already in.

Until one day, stumbling upon a random YouTube video changed the trajectory of my life forever.