My Anglican Journey: GenXers & Anglicanism | Daron Tienhaara

One early Monday morning, I awoke with images…

of a sacred congregation lingering in my drowsy consciousness. Worshippers were standing and singing, then bowing as a gleaming cross held high by white robed processors passed by. Thrust overhead of one participant was a large book encapsulating the Holy Word followed rearmost by the priest. On that autumn morning within the Ordinary Season, he was enrobed in brilliant green ornamented with a gold cross and symbols for the names of the God we had gathered there to honor and worship. These images were in fact a recollection from the morning before, when I had attended my first service at St. Charles Anglican Church. Apparently, it had left an impression upon me.  

As I lay in wonderment, I became aware that this residual recollection was perhaps a little more effervescent, majestic, and celestial than it had been in actual experience the day before. Perhaps, by design. I have since come to believe that the Holy Spirit was allowing me to reexperience the previous day’s service unveiled, to view it from the perspective of the company of Heaven, the coming together of Heaven and Earth. I believe He did so to provide confirmation that I was in the right place and time and that the Anglican Church was right where He wanted me to be.  

So how did I get here?

Looking back on my life, especially as it relates to my faith journey it is amazing and maybe even a little absurd that I have landed in liturgy and feel at home in a high church setting. I was born to parents that had found Jesus in the midst of the charismatic movement of the 1970’s, my dad was obsessed with end-times prophecy and “revival” of the television variety. The idea was formed at an early age that if I had a close relationship with Jesus then it would be evidenced through a prayer language or a spiritual experience like getting “slain-in-the-spirit”, I would have prophecy spoken over me or better yet be the bearer of prophecy to someone else. These were the measurements of how healthy my faith was.  

By the time I reached my late teens, I had begun questioning what I had grown up believing to be true; the questioning didn’t lead me away from God--just in a different direction. It was through reading the likes of C.S. Lewis, R.C Sproul, and J.I. Packer that I came to realize there was also a rational approach to knowing God.  

Over time, I understood why..

the chaotic, experience-centered worship of my childhood didn’t make sense to me.

Out of a desire for more order, less emotion, less of my own effort and a desire for more of God’s sovereign power and action (combined perhaps with a little bit of rebellion against my dad and what I had come to see as his “messed up faith”) I took a deep dive into Calvinism. All 5 points of the TULIP. It was the Institutes and pretending like I could understand John Owen. It was “you’re either chosen or you’re not and if you’re not well that’s what you deserve anyway.” It was the Puritans and the right revival of Jonathan Edwards. I camped here for a little while and this became my faith and theology when I married, my view of sovereign grace when my children were born, the way I understood justification when I was divorced, the way that the enduring love of God and pursuit of his children became real to me after years of living a double life and holding on to closeted sins and addictions…all of this I lived through the lens of a deeply reformed view of God. During this time of my life, I was a member of some great churches that I know God used to do good work in my life and in the lives of my children and I experienced some growth.  

But there were some things I’d believed that didn’t fit with where I was worshipping. I believed that Jesus was truly present in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist; I believed that infants could be and should be baptized; I believed that the Holy Spirit can work through the words of liturgy; I believed that we can ask the saints to pray for us. (Whoa, all of this seemed a little too Catholic.)  

And then my (now) ex-wife and children became Anglicans. At first I was not 100% on board, the deeply entrenched Calvinist in me bristling at the new language my kids were speaking, the talk of vestments, hosts and stoles. And suddenly my son was going to be an acolyte?! These were the words of papists! Little did I know then God was using my children and my ex-wife’s decision to become Anglicans to lead me in the direction of what I now feel is home.  

Eventually, I became curious about this new old way…

that my kids were worshipping and wondered what Anglicans believed that was different from what I believed. Turns out not a whole lot, they just believe it in a different way.  

And so I studied, I went back and read the Anglicans that I had read years ago; I read C.S. Lewis and J.I. Packer, then N.T. Wright and Thomas McKenzie. I started listening to podcasts by Anglicans like “The Sacramentalists” and “Word & Table”…and I fell in love. I began to fall in love not just with the Church but I fell deeper in love with theology, with the Bible, with the liturgy… and with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.   

At last, it became clear to me that I was being called into a new way of life with a new church family.

And so I had a talk with my pastor; I had been through a lot with him. Jesus used his teaching and friendship to save my life and help me grow over the 6+ years that he was my pastor and friend and I was nervous. Was he going to approve? Was this going to hurt his feelings? Was I going to have to defend this decision...before I was even sure I could? Turns out all of the fears I had were not even close to necessary because after I dropped the bomb (that I had been secretly praying the office twice a day for the last month and that I felt the pull to the land of bishops, pews, kneelers, incense and bells) -- he responded with “Man, I’m jealous.”  And that was that.  

So here I sit writing, almost 2 years since that first Holy Eucharist at Saint Charles Anglican Church. I am still an Anglican, I am still reading (now it’s Richard Hooker, Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Aquinas and The Fathers), and I am still falling ever deeper in love with Jesus and his people. Each week, I look forward to receiving his body and blood on Sunday. And the Holy Spirit continues to speak to me in new ways through the liturgy, the daily office, and the Word. Every Sunday I still anticipate and feel that Heaven is coming to us as the cross leads the procession down the aisle and we prepare our hearts to worship.  

And I know that I am home.

About the Author: Daron Tienhaara enjoys writing and attends St. Charles Anglican in Bremerton, WA.