In 2006, I moved to Beaverton and down the road from my apartment was a Baptist church where I decided to attend. The worship pastor had written some of his own compositions, one of which 
was titled “Come, Lord” which was based on The Invocation of St. Symeon. What was even more strange to me was the idea that any Baptist church celebrated Lent. Wasn’t that a Catholic idea?
As I slowly started exploring more of the ancient Church’s ideas and trying to answer the typical questions a Protestant seemingly must go through when considering a liturgically based church, I found a copy of The Catechism of the Roman Catholic church. I spent some time starting to read the dense document, trying to make sense of it. Eventually, I was able to get most of my questions answered. But the doctrine of the “Immaculate Conception” bothered me as it didn’t seem plausible. I couldn’t become Roman Catholic, but I also could no longer accept the general Protestant viewpoint. I had been pointed to a book called The Orthodox Church by the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. But at that time, it didn’t entirely “click” either.
Sometime after this, I eventually met my future wife and over the course of the year, proposed marriage. She was attending a Foursquare church where she was comfortable. However, I became increasingly uncomfortable with certain positions that church held. I had difficulty with Pentecostal theology and time hadn’t improved that. My wife tried to explain her position and I found it nebulous; I tried to explain my position, which she found equally inscrutable.
I started going back to some of the prayers that the saints had written and used that when the worship leader paused to allow the spirit to move. One of those prayers was St. Symeon’s invocation. It was, after all, addressed to God himself, so I doubted I would offend anyone.
One night, I walked through the door after a day at work. Her natural curiosity about tabletop gaming led her to a channel where the personality was Orthodox and it led to Frederica Mathewes-Green, which made the concepts I had been presenting understandable. I was surprised at her next statement: “Well, if I change churches again, I’d consider Orthodoxy.” Time went on and the decision was reached to give Orthodoxy a chance, since it had some of what I was looking for and didn’t make her feel uncomfortable.
St. John’s was the closest Orthodox church we could find. We picked a date and went to Vespers. I felt like I finally found the missing pieces. I met several people who made me feel way more welcome than I had ever felt at a church.
After wrapping up my duties and getting my former pastor’s blessing, we started attending St. John’s around Lent 2019. In April of 2021, we were baptized Orthodox. Since then, I’ve been slowly integrating into ministries and trying to help out where I can.
