Conversions to Orthodoxy

[MariaRegina]

Don't we have a revert or two among us - an Orthodox Christian who left and then came back into Orthodoxy.

Don't we all have a conversion experience whenever we repent of our sins? Therefore, aren't we all converts?

One Greek Orthodox Priest said that in a sense we are all catechumens undergoing instruction and through theosis attempting to put on Christ.

 

[DonVA]

well, it seems to me that i am the only original orthodox among you ...
quote]

You are the only roginal or craddle orthododx in THIS is thread, because this thread is for converts to relate their conversion stories...

<cof> <cof>

Not so. I know of one REvert who felt like a convert, and posted a testimony here.

 

[Rdr Iakovos]

Don't we have a revert or two among us - an Orthodox Christian who left and then came back into Orthodoxy.

Don't we all have a conversion experience whenever we repent of our sins? Therefore, aren't we all converts?

One Greek Orthodox Priest said that in a sense we are all catechumens undergoing instruction and through theosis attempting to put on Christ.

Bravo.
cue standing ovation.

 

[MariaRegina]

David Bryan..
Wow..thats a great testomony.
God Bless you for the time and effort you put into it..may it speak to many searching
evangelicals.Bishop Mark (Antiochian Bishop for my region) went and taught
at ORU.My priest is going to set up a time for all of us to go to lunch together..I can't wait.
God Bless , In Christ ..Shawners

P.S. can I send that link to some of my
evangelical friends ?

So, was Bishop Mark the one who converted so many to Orthodoxy?

 

[NyssaTheHobbit]

Now that I've contacted the priest of my local Greek Orthodox parish and plan to enter the catechumenate, I'm posting this here. This is edited from a letter I sent to Father Peter a couple weeks ago. (I couldn't help noting that he said to me, "Yes, I got through it (the letter).")

I’ve been going through a long, tiresome spiritual journey, though from what I hear, there are many people who’ve been through at least as many denominations before coming to Orthodoxy. I was raised in South Bend, Indiana as a Nazarene, a Holiness sect with the doctrine of total sanctification, but without the extremes of another Holiness sect, Pentecostalism. Central Indiana and downwards had Nazarene churches with Pentecostal-like rules on what you could wear, makeup, hair, etc., but in other parts of the country, Nazarenes looked just like anybody else. We just weren’t supposed to dance, drink alcohol, gamble, or go to movie theaters (though nobody restricted renting movies to watch at home). We disagreed with the Pentecostals on speaking in tongues, though we agreed on sanctification/baptism with the Holy Spirit; we were more sedate and dignified in church, while Pentecostals did whatever they felt the Spirit moved them to do. In fact, the old folks in my Nazarene church tended to be the loudest and most active, occasionally raising a hand and saying, “Amen!”

I went off to college in Wisconsin in 1991. To my surprise, there were no Nazarene churches, and I had no car, so I went nowhere for about a month. (The college was out in the country.) Then I found out there was a Nazarene house church in town, with a handful of people, and I now had a boyfriend with a car, so we started going. But after a while, the leaders of the church decided they couldn’t do this anymore; they weren’t preachers, and had other jobs, so they were tired. And I no longer had a boyfriend with a car. I could only go to a church occasionally, whenever a friend could get a ride. I didn’t get to choose the church. I could have walked to the UCC church on the corner, but I didn’t feel comfortable with their beliefs or practices.

Once, I was taken to the Evangelical Free Church; it was similar in many ways to my own, except that it was “livelier.” I asked for church information, and it seemed to be much like the Nazarene Church, so I felt I found a church home–if only I could get there more often. I got a new boyfriend who had a vehicle and was Catholic. We went to my church one week, his church the next. I was impressed by his church, which was like a Gothic cathedral, the walls covered in beautiful statues. It even had a pipe organ. I didn’t want to convert to Catholicism–which became an issue when we got engaged–but I wanted to keep going to that church along with my own.

I couldn’t convert to Catholicism; I felt it would betray everything I had been taught. My dad was staunchly anti-Catholic, of the mindset that during the Middle Ages, some Catholics may have said the Sinner’s Prayer and been saved, but most weren’t. For a time, though it made me sad, I thought he was right; maybe around college-age, I realized that Catholics were saved, too. But I felt they had gone too far astray from biblical teachings, and I couldn’t possibly confess my sins to a priest, believe the Eucharist was truly Christ’s body, believe in Purgatory, or believe artificial birth control was a sin. For my fiancé’s sake, however, I agreed to use natural family planning. However, this fiancé turned out to be very controlling, and that relationship ended.

Though I tried to hold firm in my faith, college was also a time of immense spiritual testing; I often failed. I became more moderate, which I feel was a good thing, but I also made horrible mistakes regarding men. I also fell into the Charismatic teachings of Pat Robertson, believing everything he and guests on The 700 Club said about getting “words of knowledge/wisdom” from God about what we’re supposed to be doing in our lives, something that’ll happen in the future, that sort of thing. It was more fortune-telling than true works of the Spirit, but I didn’t know this at the time, and fancied myself some sort of prophet. These “words of knowledge” got me into trouble because I’d think I was meant to marry guys who broke up with me, and they never came back. I’d wait and wait; one turned Pagan, and the other was emotionally abusive. However, it took years before I stopped believing in the charismatic sign gifts. Once I did, I wanted nothing to do with Charismatic beliefs.

In 1995 I finally met my husband, a Lutheran (Missouri Synod). We agreed to marry without either of us having to convert. We lived in a different city in Wisconsin. I found another Nazarene house church, but it had only a few people. Going from hubby’s Lutheran church to my church became tiring, and we both agreed to start looking for a church which suited us both.

We thought we found such a church in an independent Bible church in 1996 or 1997. It had grape juice communion and familiar music, no strange hand-clapping or any of that stuff. However, we eventually discovered that it was very fundamentalist, with doctrines I could not agree with.

We went to the local Evangelical Free church after that, I believe in 2000. I had thought about going to it before going to the Bible church, but we discovered the church’s address was a home, and I didn’t want to go through yet another house church. But now, it met in a middle school auditorium, and had about 200 members. We were there for quite some time, even getting involved in different ministries. I began helping in the youth group, and loved it. Hubby had some trouble with the tithing talk and evangelical doctrines, and we were a bit uncomfortable around the hand-waving, but we felt we had found a home. I got used to the contemporary music, and began to like it.

Then in 2002, some big tithers had left the church, leaving it in financial straits, and we kept going from one building to another because we couldn’t afford our own. The pastor began preaching heavily on tithing: It must be 10% gross, given to the church, with charitable donations coming afterwards, or else you just don’t have enough faith. But we couldn’t give any more, and the pressure was too much for hubby. The pastor went on sabbatical and did a lot of reading and praying. When he came back, everything changed.

He must have been reading a lot of books by John Piper and Rick Warren. He began preaching “Cat and Dog Theology,” http://unveilinglory.gospelcom.net/ which used the glory theology which Piper, a Calvinist, has been spreading in Evangelical circles. We never heard of this glory theology until then. Coming from Calvinism, it says that every single thing God does is primarily driven by a passion for his own glory–even the Cross. http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/mevangel/glryevan.htm We knew this was wrong, though we had no materials to back us up. In early 2003, the youth group was disbanded for lack of money, and the youth pastor essentially fired. It was so distressing that at least one of the kids cried. The other leaders tried to get the group back together, but with little success. The kids started going to other youth groups.

To be continued.......

 

[NyssaTheHobbit]

Hubby wrote a letter to the pastor about the glory theology and some other things (the church was in trouble), but felt ostracized after that. We felt driven out by wrong doctrine, and finally found the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2004. Last we heard in 2005, the E-Free church was dying, with so few members they didn’t know if they could get another pastor when that one left. Apparently, it's still around, but we don't know what's going on with it anymore. Hubby feels it was spiritually abusive, especially since it’s taken him a while to recover from it.

I did a lot of searching on the PCUSA website, which is full of information, and felt satisfied that we’d found a good church. Glory theology was absent; they follow the theology of the cross. Tithing is encouraged, but we’re not accused of a lack of faith if we can’t manage it. The PCUSA allows considerable theological freedom among its members; I could be a conservative Calvinist, a liberal who believed homosexuality is perfectly okay with God, a universalist, or somewhere in the middle. Since I no longer believed in inerrancy, premillennialism, or strict literalism in the first chapters of Genesis, this was a comfortable place to be. Hubby and I became members and felt we were finally home.

I discovered we had a website with our server, and began tinkering with it. I posted a theology page as a reaction to things the E-Free preacher had taught, a way to deal with them, then began expanding it. As I searched for theological webpages disputing glory theology, they seemed to be sadly lacking, and I wondered if we were wrong. Hubby found a webpage by Lutheran writer Don Matzat that contrasted the theology of glory to the theology of the cross. As it turned out, this was an entirely different kind of glory theology, dealing not with God’s passion for his own glory, but with man’s constant striving to be “good enough” for God, the Sinner’s Prayer, rededicating your life to God when you “fall away,” etc. My own Nazarene church fell under this kind of theology of glory. In the first reading, I was offended that it said the teachings of Holiness churches were wrong. After a second reading, I was amazed at how wrongly I’d been taught in the Nazarene church. http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/journals/gloryvs.htm

Then, while reading a paper on the Lutheran (MS) official website disputing premillennial dispensationalism, I discovered that dispensationalism, along with Calvinism, are sources for the doctrine that God does everything for his own glory. Lutheran theology disagrees vehemently with this, saying that everything is centered in the Cross. Not only that, but I discovered the Nazarene church is premillennial dispensationalist, and that many of its teachings are wrong. This was quite a shock; I couldn’t tell which doctrines were correct and which were wrong anymore. I believe this was in the summer of 2005.

The more I searched the Lutheran Church website, the works of Don Matzat, and blogs on various issues, the more convinced I became that evangelicalism was full of wrong doctrines, but I wasn’t sure what was correct doctrine. One day I sang too many silly songs in the contemporary service, and began to want to sing hymns again. Hubby and I tried reading Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, but it was full of prooftexting and wrong conclusions, so we couldn’t finish it. I read most of the way through the Message Bible, but discovered it took far too many liberties with the original text. The pastor of our new church occasionally asked us to do motions to songs, but we didn’t, standing there motionless while the people around us did these motions. We’d had far too much of this at the E-Free church, especially when visiting song leaders told everyone to do “clap offerings.” I began to see the problem with emotionalism in worship services, because I felt manipulated by song leaders.

The PCUSA does not teach the Nazarene, Fundamentalist or Evangelical version of Hell, a version which I had begun doubting. But what it does teach is unclear. I discovered that some people in the denomination are universalists, so out of curiosity I began checking it out. Universalist webpages described teachings of Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, claiming that the Early Church was originally universalist, but when Constantine made Christianity legal, paganism infused the church–leading to the demise of universalism. They also debated the use of the word “eternal” for “aeon” or “ages of ages.” I didn’t know what to make of this.

Then, one day, maybe a little more than a year ago, this guy VK posted on a Goth Christian Web forum, listing the problems with evangelicalism. He was Greek Orthodox. He wasn’t received very well by the other posters. I knew very little about Greek Orthodoxy, so I asked him what GO believes on various doctrines I'd been pondering. He couldn't answer everything, but his answers amazed me, especially one that said his priest told him that the meaning of "eternal" has never been dogmatically fixed. Wanting to know if the universalist webpages were correct, I began checking into the Orthodox view of Hell, using websites VK linked for me, and came across “River of Fire” by Alexandre Kalomiros in late 2005. It blew my mind. After that, everything changed.

I kept searching the Orthodox websites VK gave me, such as for GOARCH, OCA, and Orthodox Info. Originally I just wanted to find out whether or not the universalists were right about Church history. Instead, I found that the Orthodox had better theology about Hell than the universalists, but more loving than the fundamentalist doctrines I was used to. My dad had told me about the Harrowing of Hell, though he didn’t tell me the name for it; it always comforted me when thinking about the pagan generations who died before Christ. Then I discovered that Lutherans don’t believe in it, and didn’t know what to think about the fate of those generations. Then I discovered that the Orthodox do believe in the Harrowing of Hell.

The more I searched, the more intrigued I became. I used to think the Orthodox were just Eastern Catholics who let their priests get married and had a Great Schism with the Pope in the Middle Ages. Instead, studying the Orthodox Church became, for me, like an archaeologist coming across an island full of Stone Age people: the Early Church preserved throughout the ages, untouched by the various changes in Western Christianity.

I had issues with various doctrines–what Protestant doesn’t? But I bought the Orthodox Study Bible and began using the prayers in the back of the book. I began practicing the sign of the Cross. I left Evangelical forums which opposed everything even remotely Catholic, and joined an Orthodox forum to learn more. I became more and more dissatisfied with contemporary worship services, megachurch practices and Protestant doctrines of all types–Charismatic, Evangelical, Baptist, Presbtyerian, Lutheran.

I also learned that “River of Fire” is very controversial, though I e-mailed the guy who answers questions on the OCA site, and he said that the fires of Hell are metaphorical. I also found this on catechisms on the (I believe) Toronto church website and the Orthodox Europe site. On this and other things, I have to agree with a Lutheran blogger who wrote that it’s hard to pin down what exactly the Orthodox believe on many things, because you’ll read one thing and somebody will say, “No, that’s not true Orthodoxy. Try this website instead.”

The more I study the Early Church Fathers and histories, the more convinced I become that the Orthodox faith has the pure faith of the Early Church–and that it’s the most loving of all denominations I’ve investigated. With our local PCUSA church going into the megachurch “relevance” mindset, and the homosexuality issue driving more conservative churches into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, I just can't stay there anymore. There’s a huge crack in the denomination, formed from some 25 years of arguing over homosexuality and other issues, and a recent denominational decision has started a split.

Every day that passes, I feel more sure that Orthodoxy is the original faith of the Apostles--that I've finally found what I was looking for. And that's why I'm entering the catechumenate.

 

[nikostheater]

Hello brothers and sisters in Christ!
I am Greek and i am Orthodox all my life,but i feel that i am truly converting to God all my life.
I am happy to see so many people from all over the world to learn and convert to the Orthodox Church!
May God bless you all my friends!

 

[Greg the byzantine]

Welcome Niko, and xronia polla (even though it's a little late)

 

[nikostheater]

Thank you Greg,eyxaristw!

 

[E.C.]

I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. When I was six years old my parents divorced and my dad had been the one taking my brother and I to church. When I was about eight, he met a lady (who would later be my step mom) who was Russian Orthodox. I never liked going to her church because it was too long and you had to stand all the time.

Due to my dad's job, he was transferred to Miami Florida and our mom never knew about it and still does not. The next year (2004) my brother and I left our mom's house to live at our dad's permanently. His then fiancee was living at his house and we lived with her there. That school year was the last I would be in a Catholic school. I had never been to a public school before and was extremely nervous. What was a bit of culture shock to me, was the absence of religion that and the fact that I was not getting to church due to my step mom's illness (chronic fatigue) and the lack of religion lead me away from Roman Catholicism and more towards an Agnostic view on life. This view would remain for about a year and a half. Every six months, my dad would have enough leave time to be up for two weeks and it was during these times that we would go to the Orthodox church for my now step mom and to the Roman Catholic church for me. My brother had given up on religion in general and holds to it to this day.

It was not until last school year (2005-06) that I decided I would "try" to be a Roman Catholic again, mainly because the summer before, my dad converted to Orthodoxy in Miami and I could not find it in me to convert because one side of my family had been Roman Catholic for generations upon generations in Germany. I guess it was some sort of rebelliousness that made me want to go to church again, so I found a ride.

This past summer, I went to Miami with my dad for two months; July through August. It was sometime in mid June when I thought to myself "I may as well become Orthodox because this is the only church I'm getting to and the local Roman Catholic church is getting a bit too modern for me." So, while I was in Miami, my dad and I went to Christ the Saviour Cathedral for vespers and Divine Liturgy. It was the absolute kindness of the people that really helped in my becoming Orthodox because 1) my dad was renting a room at the house of a priest's mother and 2) the house we were staying at while I was down there had been willed to the cathedral and the niece of the reposed allowed my dad and I to stay there while helping her empty the place out with various yard sales.

On August 19 I was chrismated. It was one week before I was due back home and chose the name of Constantine. My step mom and I now get to church somewhat regularly and after four years my dad is being transfered back home.

 

[Naozane]

I suppose I'll volunteer my story now... It's a bit long, so grab a cup of tea or something and settle in!

I was born into the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and baptized Episcopal as an infant. I was active in ECUSA until my late teens, and was confirmed prior to falling away from the church.

During my late teens, I had fallen in with the complete wrong crowd, and as it turns out my parents picked exactly the wrong way to deal with it (I certainly don't blame them for acting the way they did - it was reasonable but completely wrong for how I was). This drove me further away from the life I had once known, and I abandoned my Christian faith at the time.

I spent a few years wandering in neo-paganism, the New Age movement (that didn't last long - too little intellectual rigor for my tastes) and the like, eventually settling in to a carefully-selected syncretic mystical belief system. During this time, I married.

My spouse and I began to have difficulties in our marriage, and they quickly grew to be insurmountable. We separated after just under three years of marriage, and began divorce proceedings.

At that point, I reconciled with my parents (the fact that they were willing to provide a place to sleep was a nice bonus - I was outdoors as they say, and it gets cold in January where I live) and began to reconnect with my Anglican roots. I started going to church again, to the same church that my parents attended. It was low-church Episcopalianism, but the priest was theologically conservative and held more or less to the core of the faith. I didn't find out until much later, but his stand for small-o-orthodoxy cost him his parish and his clerical livelihood! Though the churchmanship was pretty relaxed, it was a good place to be.

During this time, I met the woman who was to become my wife. She's actually active in the Forums (she convinced me to sign up), and you might know her - she goes by rainbowbright around these parts. She was from a rather vague nondenominational background, and after going to church together a few times, first to mine and then to hers, she decided that she wished to become Episcopalian as well. Her parents encouraged her in this, and I get the strong feeling that they later wished they hadn't!

I was very proud to be present at both her baptism and confirmation in the Episcopal Church. She was living a few hours away from me at the time, going to school. She had found the local Episcopal Church in the town, and started attending (it's where she was baptized). She became active, joining the choir and making friends with the clergy. I'd attend with her when I could. We were later married in this same church - one of the happiest days of my life! We set up house in the town where her school was, and I began attending college myself at the state school in a nearby city (kind of a late bloomer, I was).

All was not well on the Episcopal front, though. Though I hadn't been aware of it, liberal theology and revisionist practice were making vast inroads into even our little outpost of ECUSA.

We soon moved back to the city where our parents lived (and we've been ther ever since), when the economy went bad. We shopped around the various ECUSA churches in town and started going to the big conservative church. We were very happy to discover that it was not only theologically conservative, but also high-church. During this time, we became pregnant with our first child. He was baptized in the Episcopal Church. We were happily proceeding along the Episcopal life, but sought deeper understanding of the faith. During this time we became members of an Anglican/Episcopal Franciscan Tertiary Order (the Franciscan Order of the Divine Compassion), and began learning the mystical side of the Western Church. The FoDC was certainly heavily Anglo-Catholic! I had also started my college studies back up during this period, majoring in Asian Studies with a focus on Japanese religious history.

Then Gene Robinson was elected bishop.

Though the rector at our church vowed to stay and fight it out, we couldn't in good conscience remain in the Episcopal Church. A friend of ours (our son's godfather) was a former Episcopal priest who had left the church over theological issues. He had started supplying a local Anglican splinter church where we began having our FoDC services as well. Sadly, the splinter groups seemed to carry schism with them, and that church began to fragment. It was at that church that I began serving at the altar and doing the readings during the Mass, but it became a burden to put up with the politics of the church.

Having seen the church I grew up in begin to splinter under the weight of intellectualist moral relativism, liberal theology, and whatnot, my faith began to waver. We started to seek for a church where we could be at home.

We considered the various other Protestant denominations, but the lack of any liturgical consciousness (or the active rejection of same) was dreadfully unappealing. The only option left, in our minds at the time, was Rome.

As others have experienced, our attempt to convert to Roman Catholicism was thwarted by a legal technicality. My first marriage required an annulment, and we couldn't get one. We were told that there were not enough witnesses willing to talk to the marriage tribunal - not a big surprise, given that most of the folks who I associated with during the time of my marriage were (and still are) vehemently anti-Christian! I also hadn't spoken to most of them in literally years, as I sought to put that part of my life as firmly behind me as possible. Due to the paucity of testimony, the marriage tribunal rejected the annulment with all the love and compassion one might expect from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

At this point, my faith died for a while. This time, though, I avoided the traps of the New Religions and the New Age movment and whatnot, instead seriously studying Theravada Buddhism and philosophical Taoism. During the course of my studies, I had to take several classes on East Asian religion, and had found myself strongly attracted to the strong ethical tradition in Buddhism, along with the mystical foundations of Taoism. Further, we had become pregnant with our second child.

During this time, my wife had been considering the available avenues and suggested that we check out the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy was not unknown to me, as part of my family was Orthodox. My aunt (now reposed - Memory Eternal!) had married a Roman Catholic who later converted to Orthodoxy - you may know of him - Fr. Alexey Young, now Hieromonk Ambrose. Prior to our serious investigation of Orthodoxy, I had only attended my aunt's funeral up at the ROCOR parish my uncle served, but that was one more Orthodox service than my wife had attended!

The Orthodox Church felt like home. We did the usual inquirer's classes prior to becoming catechumens, and were received into the Orthodox Church just before Holy and Great Lent in 2005. My wife and I, along with our children, were baptized - the date of our baptism corresponded nicely with the 40th day after our daughter's birth. We elected to be baptized again as our previous baptisms had been by sprinkling rather than full immersion. We felt the full immersion was also symbolically appropriate.

Since then, we've been working out our salvation in the Orthodox Church. Our third and fourth children were recently baptized into the Orthodox faith. It's been equal measures joy (Orthodoxy is a great place to be), sorrow (the non-Orthodox among our families are still dead set against our being Orthodox and have been very hard about the whole thing), and hard work, but we are persevering by God's grace. After many years, we feel we have found the true expression of Christianity, and have come home.

 

[nikostheater]

Nice story!

 

[ma2000]

Hello everybody!

I was searching for the source for an orthodox-related article and the search engine gave me a link to this site. I've started reading this thread and I was very happy.
My name is Marius and I'm from Romania. I was baptised as an orthodox when I was a few weeks old so I don't have beautiful stories like yours to tell.
I see the site isn't coping too well with so many threads so I'll write in here instead of creating a new one to introduce to my orthodox brothers and sisters.

It is nice meeting you all and may God bless us!

 

[Matrona]

Nice to meet you, Marius!

 

[KATHXOYMENOC]

I was baptised as an orthodox when I was a few weeks old so I don't have beautiful stories like yours to tell.

That in itself is a beautiful story. Welcome to TAW. May your time here benefit us and you spiritually (Romans 1:11-12).

 

[MariaRegina]

My story is here.

I don't know why, but all I see is a blank screen.

Do you think you can reprint your conversion story?

thanks

 

[KATHXOYMENOC]

I don't know why, but all I see is a blank screen.

Do you think you can reprint your conversion story?

thanks

It is working fine now. Sometimes Blogger goes down for awhile. http://fromprotestanttoorthodox.blogspot.com/

 

[Mirc]

Hello everybody!

I was searching for the source for an orthodox-related article and the search engine gave me a link to this site. I've started reading this thread and I was very happy.
My name is Marius and I'm from Romania. I was baptised as an orthodox when I was a few weeks old so I don't have beautiful stories like yours to tell.
I see the site isn't coping too well with so many threads so I'll write in here instead of creating a new one to introduce to my orthodox brothers and sisters.

It is nice meeting you all and may God bless us!

Hello everyone! Just like Marius, I was baptised in the Orthodox Church of Romania when I was very young, so I didn't need to convert.
I knew a priest, from my city (Bucharest), who is probably the best priest I've ever met, and I was helping him inside the altar, so I spent a lot of time in the church some years ago. I was dressing in some special clothes and helped him with candles and holding his books, etc. But this is not so important.
I am member on another big forum (100,000+ members) since 2005, and I was very surprised by the number of atheists there, which seem to be 70% of the members. There was a time really not wrong ago when I was spiritually confused, being afraid by what's going to be after death, etc.
On that forum however, in the Off-Topic section, a certain category of threads, "Ask a...." threads, are very popular. And I was browsing through one of those threads, "Ask a Muslim". In there was a guy from the USA who labeled himself as "fundamental Muslim". He started every post of his with "Hello, Brother [user name]". I was extremely pleased by his view on the world, tolerance and everything. This lighted up in me a certain wish of tolerance, good will, and religion. I was then browsing through the Internet trying to convince me not all the forums are dominated by atheists. One of the results of my serches led me here, and I am convinced that not all forums are dominated by atheists. On that forum, I am a hunted minority, everyone is mocking me and laughing at my belief. So here I am. I have hope that the world is not going to lose the greatest thing it still has: religion. And I am willing to post and dedicate a certain part of my time to prove this.
After finding this forum I was looking through this topic and I found it extremely interesting so I decided to make my first post here.
I have never labeled myself as anything else than an Eastern Orthodox Christian, however as I mentioned above there have been times when I was not so sure of the truth. Now I am, and I hope this will last for the rest of my life. (you can see I am very young, for this kind of forum especially)
About myself: my name is Mircea (male!); I am from Bucharest, Romania (and I proudly say it's one of the most Eastern Orthodox countries in the world, being the country with the highest percent of Christians in Europe); I am 15 years old, which I think is young for this kind of forum, and have always been a religious person, even though in the past year I had some unfounded doubts about Christianity. I can only hope God will forgive me. Fortunately I went past this period, for ever, I hope. Maybe God took care of me.

This forum seems a very nice place. Maybe sometime, I'll be active here.

 

[NyssaTheHobbit]

Hi there! We have several teenagers on this forum, and they're all just as much a part of it as anybody. Don't feel alone; I've been through various up-and-down periods with my faith all through my life.

 

[KATHXOYMENOC]

I added a post about my early Orthodox experiences to my Weblog:

http://waterandspirit.blogspot.com/2007/02/in-beginning-or-my-first-experiences.html

"In the beginning...," or: My First Experiences with the Orthodox Church

My first experience of an Orthodox Church was actually a year or so (and maybe more) before I began looking seriously at Orthodoxy, i.e., sometime in 2003 perhaps. I went to St. Maximus the Confessor Orthodox Church (OCA) in Denton, Texas (the church we now attend) for a Vespers service, I think.

(I remember that I was purposely kind of secretive on the phone when I called the church to see if I could attend a service, because I didn't know what kind of follow-up or anything they would do if I gave them my name!)

So I went to the service, and what I most remember was how strange it seemed, in almost a humorous way. I remember describing it to a friend, and I imitated the priest chanting the Gospel selection (I think it was about the shepherds in the field at the announcement of Christ's birth), saying that they read the Scriptures, but it and everything was done in this repetitive sing-songy mode. I also mentioned how the priest was sometimes dressed with this weird robe or vestment that stood up over the back of his neck, and that he went in and out of these doors, and sometimes they turned the lights on and off, etc. As I recall, I left before it was over because I didn't want to have to talk to anyone or let them know who I was. At the time, the thought of returning didn't even enter my mind.

I think it was maybe a year later, as one who was now somewhat interested in Orthodoxy, that I attended a Vespers Service at St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Cathedral (OCA) in Dallas. Again, I found it kind of strange, and also rather boring. (St. Seraphim is the "mother church" of St. Maximus, as well as of all the other churches in the OCA Diocese of the South.)

Then at some point, after having visited several of the local Catholic Churches a few times, and having less than positive impressions of them (I won't go into detail), I decided to attend a Divine Liturgy at St. Maximus, even though I didn't think Orthodoxy was on my radar screen, as I thought it was "too foreign" for me, a Western Protestant. (At least I think that was where I attended my first Sunday morning Divine Liturgy - it's been too long to remember all of this accurately.) This time when I called the church, I talked briefly with the priest (Fr. Justin Frederick) and gave him my name, and asked him if he was a convert (both because of his last name and because he didn't sound Russian), and he said he was.

So I went to the service, expecting it to be quite similar to the Catholic masses/services I had attended. Boy, was I wrong! The Orthodox Divine Liturgy was nothing like what I had experienced in the Catholic churches. It was like stepping back in time 1,000 years, or what I thought it would be like to do so. I was intrigued, and I think I talked for awhile with Fr. Justin during the after-service coffee hour.

Sometime after that I visited some other Orthodox Churches - e.g., Sts. Constantine and Helen Antiochian Orthodox Church and St. Seraphim again. When I asked my wife if she wanted to attend with me some time (I think this was late Spring 2005, because were attending a non-denominational Charismatic church in Carrollton from January - June 2005, if I recall correctly), surprisingly she said she would. (I hadn't shared much about my search in Catholicism and Orthodoxy with her, because even I wasn't sure if either of them was the direction I wanted to go.) So we went to Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, partly because I wanted to attend a Greek-speaking Liturgy, since I could somewhat read and understand it. We got there early, and that's when we found out that the service would be about one-half in Greek. That would be fine with me, but with the very echo-y acoustics at the church, I knew my wife would not enjoy it at all. So we left before the service began, and drove to Sts. Constantine and Helen in time for their Divine Liturgy.

INCENSE! I was used to it, and expecting it, but my wife was not. It was so much for her that we left immediately after the service, without me being able to do any more than wave "hi" and "goodbye" to my acquaintance Joseph who had befriended me at the coffee hour at my first visit there. I figured he was wondering why I left without even talking with him.

Surprising to me, though, my wife said she kind of liked it. So at some point shortly after that, I asked if she wanted to visit the Orthodox church in Denton. And after a short while, we started going there, and we have been there ever since.

(A side note: I met and talked with Dr. Daniel Clendenin at the November 2005 Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The theme that year was "Christianity in the Early Centuries," and since I was already exploring Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the conference theme was just what I needed. I bought both his books, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Prespective and Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader (2nd Edition) (which he kindly autographed), and at one point in the conversation, I mentioned that my wife was already wanting to join the Orthodox Church (she had been going for only a few months, but she was already saying that she couldn’t go back to Protestantism - this, after nearly 30 years in non-denominational Charismatic and Evangelical churches), so I asked Dr. Clendenin his advice (since I still had doubts and questions and serious issues with Orthodoxy, and he himself has firmly decided not to become Orthodox for reasons he has explained in an essay that is on the Internet - http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1997/january6/7t1032.html). He said: "I think you ought to listen to your wife!" :^) So here we are, almost 1-1/2 years later, ready to enter the Church on Holy Saturday 2007!)

- - -

All this is written to say that you should not be surprised if your first visit (or visits) to an Orthodox Church is underwhelming and perhaps even a total turnoff. That was my initial reaction, yet look at us now ... eagerly awaiting our entrance into the Church!

And as for the services being "strange" or "boring" .. well, frankly, I don't think either of us can think of any other way that we would now prefer to worship God in a church setting.

So if you feel like you might be curious about Orthodoxy or find yourself wanting to explore it, if your first (and second and third!) impression isn't necessarily positive, don't give up. Take your time, read and pray, talk to Orthodox folks and priests (online or in person), and visit several Orthodox churches if you are able to (or even other churches if you are not sure you want to make the jump out of Protestantism or Catholicism or whatever you currently attend or came from). And then, if and when you are ready, wade in deeper. The Orthodox Church will still be there, as it has been for nearly 2,000 years.