Greetings! My name is Josh. I have no presumptions about this site. My only published writings are about the Dallas Mavericks and appear in the archives of a somewhat obscure NBA blog I stopped writing for in 2013. So what is a marginally experienced sports blogger doing creating a site dedicated to Eastern Orthodoxy? It started in 2010. I was raised in a devout Evangelical home with Church of Christ roots. My family hopped around a bit in my pre-teen years but ultimately settled at a Southern Baptist church when I was 14. My high school years were spent there, whereupon I went to a nondenominational Christian college. While at school, I poked around at an assortment of non-denom, Baptist and Presbyterian churches. I then got married to an Evangelical wife, graduated college in 2003 and for four years visited Evangelical churches of a similar diversity as when I was still an undergraduate.
A pattern of Evangelical church hopping continued until 2007, at which point my wife and I settled at a small nondenominational church that met at a junior high school in Redmond, WA (in the shadow of Microsoft HQ). While our memories of that church are nothing but joyous, it was three years into our time there that I encountered Orthodoxy.
My journey began with a video in my Facebook feed, took off when I stumbled across Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Way, reached a point of no return during a lengthy email interaction with Fr Patrick Henry Reardon of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, and was finally consummated on April 4th, 2015 when my wife and children and I were formally received at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, TX. I may have skipped over a detail or two in that chronology, so if you're curious for the broader picture, I'm happy to respond to emails.
My primary reason for creating Evangelical Expatriate is because during my own meandering journey, finding reliable Orthodox content on the internet was often a challenge. Truthfully, the Orthodox Church has a woeful blind spot when it comes to its internet presence. That problem is mitigated somewhat by the recent advent of sites like Ancient Faith Blogs, which has managed to corral some of the better English language Orthodox blogs into a single hub. Even so, the Orthodox Church's visibility online is dreadfully faint by comparison to other Christian churches and denominations, to say nothing of other religions. My own concept of this site is as a bystander along a bleak road serving thirsty runners. I probably can't take you across the finish line, but I might be able to provide a small cup of water that can see you further down the path.
Why "Evangelical Expatriate?" If an expatriate is someone uprooted from one place and living in another, this well describes me as a former Evangelical-turned-Orthodox Christian. While I continue to develop an Orthodox mind, my heart remains Evangelical. I'll be posting a variety of spiritual, theological and autobiographical reflections here, and on no particular schedule. I'm not a prolific writer, so it may very well be that this site's most significant service becomes the email form below. Please feel free to use it. If you're an inquirer into Orthodoxy, be sure to check out the Topics, Books, and Videos pages for some better content than my own. No matter who you are, be a friend and answer the poll question on the home page. Thanks and God bless!
Χριστός Ανέστη!
A pattern of Evangelical church hopping continued until 2007, at which point my wife and I settled at a small nondenominational church that met at a junior high school in Redmond, WA (in the shadow of Microsoft HQ). While our memories of that church are nothing but joyous, it was three years into our time there that I encountered Orthodoxy.
My journey began with a video in my Facebook feed, took off when I stumbled across Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Way, reached a point of no return during a lengthy email interaction with Fr Patrick Henry Reardon of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago, and was finally consummated on April 4th, 2015 when my wife and children and I were formally received at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, TX. I may have skipped over a detail or two in that chronology, so if you're curious for the broader picture, I'm happy to respond to emails.
My primary reason for creating Evangelical Expatriate is because during my own meandering journey, finding reliable Orthodox content on the internet was often a challenge. Truthfully, the Orthodox Church has a woeful blind spot when it comes to its internet presence. That problem is mitigated somewhat by the recent advent of sites like Ancient Faith Blogs, which has managed to corral some of the better English language Orthodox blogs into a single hub. Even so, the Orthodox Church's visibility online is dreadfully faint by comparison to other Christian churches and denominations, to say nothing of other religions. My own concept of this site is as a bystander along a bleak road serving thirsty runners. I probably can't take you across the finish line, but I might be able to provide a small cup of water that can see you further down the path.
Why "Evangelical Expatriate?" If an expatriate is someone uprooted from one place and living in another, this well describes me as a former Evangelical-turned-Orthodox Christian. While I continue to develop an Orthodox mind, my heart remains Evangelical. I'll be posting a variety of spiritual, theological and autobiographical reflections here, and on no particular schedule. I'm not a prolific writer, so it may very well be that this site's most significant service becomes the email form below. Please feel free to use it. If you're an inquirer into Orthodoxy, be sure to check out the Topics, Books, and Videos pages for some better content than my own. No matter who you are, be a friend and answer the poll question on the home page. Thanks and God bless!
Χριστός Ανέστη!
