It's In The Name

As it turns out, God showed me our new church a long time ago.

On October 22, 2019, a close friend of ours released a book. Twelve years earlier, when our friend—whom we had met in our first married couple’s small group—was just a college student, he and two Kenyan buddies founded a non-profit based in East Africa that supported people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. The organization had grown exponentially in the years since its founding, so they co-wrote a book to tell the story of their lives, their work, and the people on the ground who had helped make all they had accomplished possible.

I went to the book launch that October, which was hosted at a remodeled warehouse in the West End of Atlanta. It was actually a smallish church (compared to what I was used to, anyway): a contemporary, open-air sort of place, minimalist in design but lovely in its simplicity. It was the kind of place I half-expected to bear a name like Abide Church or some equally nondescript title reflecting its nondenominational status. Instead, I saw that it was an Anglican church.

Whatever that meant.

Inside, I noted that the spacious lobby was an otherwise neutral space decorated with a single large painting. Some of the apostles with Jesus, maybe? *shrug*¹ I was reminded of the Christianity in Europe class I took in college and the final paper on iconoclasm that had taken me all semester to research and write. I remembered that lots of people in medieval Europe had thought icons were bad once upon a time, and the painting in that warehouse church looked a lot like an icon. My Baptist-leaning red flags went up, but the painting was soon forgotten as I made my way into the chapel, found some delicious hors d’oeuvres and my friend’s wife, and took a seat to listen to the authors speak on their book.

Little did I know, I had just spent an entire evening in the church that would become our family’s home a little less than four years later.

Going back even further, a fellow writer I had once mentored and who had attended Buckhead Church with us mentioned that she was now a member of a local Anglican congregation just a half mile from our (former) house. I had seen it on our walks. It was an endcap to a small shopping plaza, almost invisible, situated right next to a brewery. (Anglicans love a good beer, I’m learning 🙌🏻 .)

“So what made you switch from Buckhead?” I asked my friend, silently stunned that anyone would want to leave the church our family loved so much.

She looked at me with a gentle seriousness and smiled. “There’s just more to it,” she replied, “and that’s what I need.”

More? I thought. More what? More than the beautiful music we have? More than Andy’s insightful, practical preaching? More than the small groups and volunteers and amazing community outreach?

“You should come visit one day,” she said, her eyes alight. “I have a feeling you’d really like it.”

I muttered something non-committal because I had zero intention of crossing the threshold of another church. I was happy and fulfilled. Content. My husband and I were high school small group leaders and regular givers, and my own women’s small group was like family. I was learning so much from Andy Stanley about the history of the early Church and why we could trust that Scripture’s testament to Jesus as Christ was, indeed, factual. My faith was growing. My family was thriving. I could see the evidence of God’s hand in our lives. What “more” could I want?

But after that conversation, I couldn’t help my curiosity about the former Dollar Tree-turned-church as we’d stroll past it on our family walks to the local coffee shop. I wondered what my friend found so appealing about it. I was a member of a mega-church, but I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that large buildings and impressive tech mean a congregation is healthy or fruitful. I wasn’t so wrapped up in my own love for Buckhead Church that I thought all others inferior. I simply loved it with my whole heart and couldn’t fathom what my friend had meant by “more.”

Fast forward to January of this year and my first viewing of Father Mike Schmitz’s YouTube videos with Ascension Presents, an organization that “seeks to present the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith through media.” I had heard of Father Mike many times through other Protestant Christian authors who hosted him on their podcasts or talked about his evangelistic work. He’s a gregarious and lively priest, fun to listen to—not to mention handsome—so it’s no wonder he’s a popular guy. And when someone or something keeps showing up in my life, I try to pay attention.

So I watched a video he’d made entitled “Why Be Catholic and Not Just Christian?” Having dated a Catholic guy in college and spent time at Mass with my two best friends in high school, it was a question I had asked myself a time or two. What made the Catholic faith so different than other churches in the Christian tradition?

I was struck by one thing most of all: historical precedent. For the first fifteen hundred years of the Church (except for that pesky Schism in 1028), everyone who called themselves a Christian…was Catholic.

As a lifelong Protestant, I wrestled with this new realization. What depth and richness of the faith had I missed out on in my Purpose Driven Life? In what ways had my body remained disconnected from my spirit without spiritual practices to tether them together over the years? How had I misunderstood the function—the telos—of the Church? I had never taken the time to actually listen to Catholics speak about their beliefs, despite the close relationships I’d had with so many at different seasons in my life. I’d only ever listened to what Protestants had to say about them, and getting information about a thing from those who actively oppose it is rarely a great starting point.

I began to lean into the historical precedent. I read parts of the Cathecism. (Which I loved.) I grew to revere what is so often referred to as the “truth, beauty, and goodness” within the tradition of the Catholic church and learned for myself that those attributes exist within its theology, too.

Still, there were doctrinal differences I couldn’t quite get behind, although I now had a much deeper understanding and respect for those positions and could see how they stemmed from a faithful reading of Scripture. While I knew that I wasn’t about to attend RCIA, a monumental shift had taken place within my heart.

Evangelicalism, as a tradition, had lost its hold on me.

Or, rather, I had finally let it go.

From there, I went down all the denominational rabbit trails I could find. I stayed focused on mainline churches and liturgical traditions because I sensed those spiritual practices were a part of what God was seeking to cultivate in our family. History, ritual, sacraments, common prayer…all of them were elements of the faith that had nourished the Body for millennia. They didn’t save, but they sanctified. They brought the head knowledge of God to the heart. They gave us roots, tethering us to the soil, when the storms of life threatened to blow us away.

They also offered beauty and goodness, which cannot be underestimated in the life of a faithful Christian. We cannot become so pragmatic that we risk forgetting our Father is first a Creator concerned with our experience of what is lovely and good. Take a step outside. Look to the flowers, the trees, the clouds. They were made for us, and us for them.

I studied. I read. I researched.

Anglicanism embodied both the tradition and sacramental beauty of Catholicism as well as the reformed (as opposed to Reformed) theology of Protestantism. Like so many other parts of my life, I felt like I didn’t fit anywhere…until I found the via media, the middle way. As one writer who spoke about the faith of theologian C.S. Lewis said, “[he] might have written about a broad Christian orthodoxy, but the spiritual experience that enabled him to do so was much narrower.” That narrow experience was Anglicanism. As I studied Anglican theology, I realized that over the last decade of de-and-reconstruction from the harmful messages of my youth, I had become Anglican already and didn’t even know it.

I hadn’t left anything after all.

I had just come home.

I searched for churches near our house, and at the top of the list was a place called Incarnation. Turns out, it was the north side campus of Trinity Anglican, the very same church I’d attended for my friend’s book release party and the same church my Buckhead acquaintance had invited me to all those years ago. I read through their entire website, eager to learn more about them. I wanted clarity on their beliefs, and they provided it. I was hungry for all the knowledge I could find because if we were going to leave the only church home our family had ever known, we’d better be ready to go all in.

Weeks passed, and I kept coming back to Trinity’s website. I familiarized myself with their pastor’s teaching and listened to his Sunday messages on Spotify. I watched the full services on YouTube, struck by the liturgy and the voices of the congregation lifted high: Thanks be to God.

I prayed.

Then prayed some more.

In April, Pierce and I went out of town for my cousin’s 5th anniversary reception. On the drive to North Carolina, we spent hours in discussion about what our family needed, and what we needed as parents, to be discipled and to disciple our children. We debated theology, the sacraments, teaching styles, apostolic succession, and everything in between. By the time we came home from that trip, we’d agreed that Trinity sounded like our best option. We decided to visit over Memorial Day weekend, while Decatur City Church was on a break for the holiday.

After the service, we went out to the car, took one look at each other, and knew.

I write this all down because it’s only when I look back on the past four years that I can see how God was weaving this story together. So many other things had to happen in order for us to be in a position where we could hear God’s voice on this. The pandemic was a big catalyst—my long-time women’s small group (what I’ve often called my Thursday Church) finally went our separate ways; we got a new campus pastor at Decatur City Church; Pierce and I were both only attending Sunday services after years of regular volunteering. There was a lot of open space—in our schedules and in our hearts—that the Lord spoke into. Because of that, we were able to hear Him and obey.

The seed of curiosity had already been planted for me back at my friend’s book launch, and then again at my other friend’s invitation to visit. God was patient with me as that seed took root because He already knew what I did not, and could not, until much later. I didn’t know how He would satisfy my deepest longing for connection by revealing Himself in the liturgy. I didn’t know how He would offer His very life to me in the bread and the wine. I didn’t know how He would cultivate deeper intimacy with others through our shared faith history.

I didn’t know…

But He did.

Back in the spring, on our cruise to Mexico, I was sitting on a lower deck where it was quiet, watching the waves as I journaled. It was Good Friday and I was unsettled. Pierce and I had already concluded that it was time to leave Decatur City, but we didn’t know when or where we would go from there.

I picked up a beautiful book about saints throughout history who had experienced depression, which a friend had gifted to me a few weeks prior. I wasn’t exactly in a dark night of the soul, but rather the dawn, just before the sun creeps over the horizon and lights up the sky. What was next for our family, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that it would be good, as my Father in Heaven is good, because goodness is all He can give us.

I prayed about our church transition and continued reading. Then I came to this passage from Julian of Norwich and stopped:

“For just as the blissful Trinity made all things out of nothing, so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.”

And so They have, thanks be to God.

So Trinity has.

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1. It’s actually a painting of the Trinity represented in three distinct figures, which you can see in the drawing pictured above. Obviously, Wendi. Geez.