My Story: From Church Outsider to Pilgrim

 

​My journey of faith has been anything but conventional. Unlike many believers, I wasn't raised in the church. In fact, from what I recall, I may have been asked not to return to Vacation Bible School when I was five! That experience might even be why my mother became an agnostic, closer to an atheist – she certainly wasn't happy with me or the church. Who knows what cardinal sin a five-year-old could commit?

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However, in 2005, I started attending church with my wife. I spent a few months hopping from one denomination to another. Out of sheer frustration, I eventually settled into a typical church mode: show up on Sundays, smile, sing, lift my hands, listen to sermons, and try not to ask the kinds of questions that got me kicked out of Vacation Bible School.

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I was "lukewarm" at best.

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I tried to blend Christianity with my career as a secular university professor, where Jesus was to be left at the campus entrance and picked up again on my own time. I was conflicted, but I was comfortable. My career was thriving, and I earned tenure. Yet, I felt like a fraud at church. I was putting on a mask – a persona – that I was teaching graduate students in counseling how to identify and replace with authenticity.

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My career was "who I was," while Christianity was something "I did" on most Sundays.

 

But God had other plans.

 

Shortly after I returned from the Walk to Emmaus, a transformative spiritual retreat, God began dropping hints that He was calling me, despite my polka-dot personality in a striped-pants church. I was sitting, zoned out in a milk-infused sermon, bored out of my mind, and a message ran across my mind's eye. It was like a ticker tape scrolling along, repeating the line, "Write about Me and for Me, Your Lord."

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I truly wondered if I was experiencing a psychotic break! But no. God did have plans, and they weren't going to be confined to the contemporary church. The plans God had for me, and possibly for you, were for a new (old) version of Christianity—a radical, transformative relationship with the living Christ.

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This blog chronicles that journey: from religious conformity to spiritual pilgrimage, from passive attendance to active discipleship, from spiritual milk to solid food.

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Who This Is For

 

You might be here because you've felt that same holy restlessness. Maybe you love Jesus deeply but struggle with contemporary church culture. Perhaps you're hungry for biblical depth beyond the same remedial messages week after week. You might be wrestling with whether leaving a church means leaving your faith (spoiler: it doesn't).

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This space is for believers who:

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• Choose spiritual growth over institutional comfort

• Ask hard questions instead of accepting easy answers

• Seek authentic fellowship beyond formal membership

• Refuse to settle for lukewarm faith

• Feel called to the narrow path, even when it's lonely

 

What You'll Find Here

 

On Narrow Path Pilgrim, you'll discover:

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• Honest conversations about faith, doubt, and discipleship.

• Biblical exploration that goes deeper than Sunday school.

• Reflections on what it means to follow Christ in a complex world.

• Letters to God from the road.

• And encouragement for fellow pilgrims who've chosen the more difficult but more rewarding path of authentic Christianity.

 

A Word of Welcome

 

If you've found your way here, it's probably not by accident. Whether you're questioning, seeking, wrestling, or simply hungry for more authentic faith conversations, welcome. You're among friends who understand that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is step away from religious routine and step into kingdom adventure.

 

The road to Emmaus awaits. Let's walk it together.