Sojourn: Becoming a Spiritual Pilgrim (Part One)

Recently, while watching some old video of me twenty years ago on tour with a friend’s band, I felt like I was watching someone else. The younger version of me was wild-eyed, searching, and restless, a person propelled by something I didn’t yet have words for. He was immature, skinny, and different. While watching that footage, I realized just how far I’ve come on this pilgrimage. There is still much road ahead, but I’m in a very different place than where I started.

Lately, I’ve been chewing on that journey, asking myself which aspects of who I was when I was born I’ve lost along the way, and where I’ve grown in ways that truly matter. I’ve decided to take this blog on a reflective journey through my spiritual search. I hope it inspires someone and invites others to join in conversation. However, at the very least, reminding myself of where I come from is essential.

This series, Sojourn, will explore that long journey, from my upbringing to a movement of churches called the Vineyard, then into the Anabaptist and missional movements, and eventually into a place of being post-everything, where I’ve learned to rest in Jesus more than in labels.

Each stage of my journey, or sojourn, has its story:

• Becoming a Spiritual Pilgrim – how disillusionment set me searching.
• Becoming Vineyard – rediscovering faith in a community of care.
• Becoming Anabaptist – learning simplicity, peace, and shared life.
• Becoming Missional – finding Jesus among the poor and the margins.
• Becoming Post-Everything – learning to hold faith loosely and love deeply.

But this sojourn begins much earlier than I realized, in a small-town childhood shaped by faith, family, and fracture. It involves many outfits I tried early on to find myself.

The Early Years: Faith, Family, and Fragile Beginnings

I grew up in a Christian family. Life was good. We moved from downtown to the country when I was three. I can still picture that first house and remember the small moments shared with my dad, walking outside, exploring the attic, and feeling safe. The country was new, I loved the outdoors, and I admittedly like to forget about this part of my life more times than not, and I am not totally sure why.

That was one era of my life, before things changed. By the time we moved to the suburbs in the mid-1980s, life, like it does for many families, had become more complicated. I loved the outdoors but missed the city’s hum. Then, in 1986, during my kindergarten year, my father was diagnosed with stage four cancer. The year that followed stained my memories with a traumatic awareness of mortality.

In that season, I leaned on the faith of my maternal grandparents. The church surrounded our family in ways that left a deep impression on me. I loved that church family; it felt genuine, relatable, and alive. A few years later, when my father miraculously recovered, we all breathed again. Though he carried (and still carries) the scars and health struggles for the rest of his life, we were grateful.

Yet, as my dad’s health improved, the church fell apart. Conflict split the community, and we found ourselves outsiders overnight. My parents eventually joined a new congregation, one that was more conservative and Reformed in nature. And at the end of the day, I was already on a sojourn, stepping into high school carrying both gratitude and suspicion toward the church. That stream of the Protestant faith did not connect with me, nor did the culture of this new community, which felt elitist theologically and culturally at times. Interestingly, just two years ago, I ran into some leaders from this church at a Farmres Fair, where we were getting ice cream with my daughters. These leaders approached me, asking about rumors they had heard years before, and were still trying to dismiss me about narratives they had fabricated in their minds, despite more than 25 years having passed.

A Church That Couldn’t Handle Questions

In that church, questions were frowned upon. The pastor, who would later burn out and fall into moral and personal failures, didn’t engage with young people or create space for their curiosity. This is why I think I love walking with people who have questions today. Truthfully, I didn’t handle rejection well and had my own immaturity in response. The youth pastor mocked us, dismissed our longing for depth, and labeled those I was bringing with me as a clique. There were obviously people who were the “in” crowd, and then there was us, and how we were treated was more than unfair. I genuinely believe what we experienced back then would now be called spiritual abuse.

That season and church left its mark. Many of us left the church for years, scarred by our experiences but bonded by a shared hurt. For me, it planted a deep distrust of leaders and institutions. I wondered how something so flawed could possibly be true.

It wasn’t all on them. I was immature, restless, and yearning for a sense of belonging. My father’s illness, the church’s exclusion, and my own insecurities all collided. I found myself sneaking out of church, attending adult Sunday school instead of youth group, and eventually skipping altogether. I’d spend weekends at Elk Neck State Park, renting boats, staring at the sky, and wondering what truth even meant. Truthfully, that is what I did for a good two years. There was a quiet simplicity there that I realize still connects with me as an individual in church contexts.

The First Disillusionment

This sojourn’s roots began in earnest around 1996, when I realized that through a series of experiences, I had become disillusioned with the church. Over the next few years, my interest in the church, both as a practice and an institution, waned. I stayed away as much as I could.

By 1998, I was working for a Christian theater company, where I served as a full-time animal trainer and animal actor. My faith was weak and immature. Though I hadn’t totally abandoned the evangelical theology of my upbringing, I was far from home. Working for that theater was about as much Christianity as I could handle. I was convinced working there, and after the church journey, that Christians were just weird people.

My sojourn was fueled by disappointment and discontent, as well as countless experiences that had left me distrustful of the church and its leaders. After graduating from high school, I moved out on my own shortly after graduation. The mix of disillusionment, doubt, immaturity, and pain became the engine of my pilgrimage.

Between the strange personalities at my job, the church, and the judgmental guy from my parents’ church who kept showing up at my door on Sunday mornings to “bring me to church,” I was done.

Searching for God in Strange Places

During that time, I devoured everything from the Qur’an to early church history, as well as theology and the thought of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. We didn’t have the internet resources we do now, so there were trips to libraries, limited ability to search on the internet, debates with atheists and Pentecostals together, and more. Gandhi became a significant influence. The film about his life moved me to tears; his writings awakened something in me.

By day, I was reading about peace and truth. By night, I wrote punk songs on my guitar about the evils of the church and began to promote concerts. I gathered friends in my small apartment for late-night conversations about God and philosophy. We partied, debated, dreamed, and searched together. There were midnight drives to sleep on the benches of Center City Philadelphia, or in the hatchback of my Ford Escort at the Beach, all to find something that mattered. God was always out there, and I needed to find him, or accept that God didn’t exist.

One of my favorite memories from that season: I dragged my couch out onto the porch of my old, un-air-conditioned house, cracked open a beer, and began reading the Qur’an under the open sky, determined to find God, or at least honesty. The contradictions frustrated me, but the search thrilled me. When the police drove by and saw me, beer in hand and less than welcome sacred text on my lap, they decided to question me. It was an early education in how religion and suspicion often go hand in hand.

Another memory: sitting in a 24-hour truck stop diner, eating fried chicken, dropping coins in a jukebox, and debating theology with truckers and travelers until dawn. Those were my real seminary days, loud, smoky from cigars, and holy in their own strange way.

Jesus, Always There

What stunned me, over time, was how I couldn’t get away from Jesus. In the Qur’an, Jesus was there. In Gandhi’s writings, Jesus was there. In Buddhist texts, the longing for peace and freedom from sin echoed in him. Even the Book of Mormon, though I didn’t get halfway through, pointed me back to Jesus.

Eventually, I began to experience what I could only call prophetic encounters, where strangers would call my home phone, or run into me on the streets, and share truths that I had whispered in prayer. Slowly, I began to believe again that Jesus was real, not as an inherited doctrine but as a person who had been pursuing me all along.

There was much I didn’t understand, but I knew one thing: Jesus was still alright with me. The church, however, was not something I trusted or desired to return to. Yet, I held a beauty in my heart for the early church. I found solace in these simple, quiet, and revolutionary house communities.

The Churches I Couldn’t Stay In

I visited a few churches during those years, but they all gave me reasons to stay away. There was the church where everyone wore cowboy hats, and the one that tried to get me into membership on the first Sunday. Even then, I struggled to want to try the big-box church; I realize now in hindsight.

One church I walked into invited me, on my first Sunday, to work with their youth group. Every person in the congregation was on a breathing machine, reminding me of a room of Darth Vaders, and I thought, I’m not even sure I want your faith, and you want me to teach it?

Another had six members; a woman asked me out before I left to head towards the door, and an elder handed me a tract declaring that those who drink beer will go to hell. The pastor of that same church used an Old Testament verse in his sermon, about leeches, to rant against doctors who were taking advantage of his sick mother. I remember sitting there thinking, You have lost me already.

So I walked away again, not from God, but from all the noise.

Jesus was still alright with me, but many of his church were a weird, disconnected, liminal place.

A Vagabond Soul

My second apartment had become something of a commune, or a church, I am not sure. People came and went. Some didn’t go fast enough. My landlord, patient and perpetually owed money, probably didn’t understand the journey I was on. Bless his soul.

We debated, partied, and searched together. It wasn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It was hunger disguised as chaos.

By the early 2000s, my sojourn became a lifestyle. I hitchhiked across states, traveled with friends, and followed the music scene. Adventure was my propulsion. Significance was my hunger. Community was my ache.

The open road gave me all three. Every spring, when the world came alive again, I felt the itch, that call to pack up and go. By 2004, I’d left my apartment, job, and friends behind, living on the road for eleven months straight. I would call that ache to be on the road, my “traveling bone,” and for years, that loneliness and ache would hit my soul. This was also a season of activism. I have protested for many causes and counter-protested for others. There were anti-war rallies, pro-life marches, and too many others to remember their purpose anymore. It was all a quest for meaning and purpose.

Sojourn and The Search for Truth

Looking back, I believe what’s missing in many lives today is the pursuit of truth. We chase comfort, belonging, or success, but few of us dare to wrestle with truth. I didn’t pursue relationships and worldly achievements because I wanted truth. In a conversation with someone the other day, I noticed the opposite; they told me that they would find faith and a church once life got sorted out. I knew I couldn’t see life ironing out until I had answers.

In those wandering years, I learned that if you truly seek truth, you’ll eventually find yourself face-to-face with Jesus. To this day, I am not scared to invite people on a journey towards truth. If they are willing to question their doubts as much as they question what they have grown up with, I believe truth leads back to Jesus every time. Jesus is asheclaimedtobe, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6)
and in knowing him, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

There is much I regret, and there were some sacred encounters I wish I hadn’t taken for granted and would like to relive. In hindsight, every path I explored, every philosophy, every question, pointed me back to Jesus. Even when I wasn’t looking, he was already looking for me. David says it well in Psalm 139; “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” (Psalm 139:9–10).

That’s where my sojourn truly began, in disillusionment, yet already being found. Believe it or not, disillusionment can be a good thing.

Coming Next in Sojourn: Becoming Vineyard

In the next part of this journey, I’ll share how the road eventually led me back toward a church — though not in the way I expected. It began with a dream, a dial-up connection, and a hesitant step through the doors of a small church plant in the Vineyard. What I found there was not perfection, but care.

Let’s Reflect Together

1. When have you found yourself disillusioned by faith or church, yet still drawn toward Jesus?

2. How have seasons of wandering shaped your understanding of truth or belonging?

3. What has helped you rediscover hope or community after disappointment?