When I was young I served as an alter boy in a small church, it was an honor to be able to just serve and participate in the ceremony to worship God. It left a huge impression on me, later in my life I moved into a more western version of an evangelical faith. Through those years the form of worship seemed to be whatever felt right, most churches in this vein follow a fairly similar pattern, there are some variances but not by much. And to be honest Catholicism was always viewed as nothing more than a bunch of empty ceremonies, with too much focus on the virgin Mary. [More...]

n 1999 we moved to the SF bay area so I could take a dream job, that lasted until the end of 2006 by which time we had moved to Kuna, Idaho. The more we moved away from Michelle's family the better our relationship got, but at the same time I pulled away from everyone else in my life. I think it was an attempt to avoid the messy parts of life, I was struggling with my faith at the time (and still am to some extent). In fact while being so successful in my job, internally I was coming apart. It didn't happen overnight but took a long time, I had some deep and serious questions about life, faith, God and everything. And I couldn't find an answer, as I continued to pull away, all around me a whole generation was moving away from the evangelical church for the same reasons. But being isolated and trapped by religion I never knew to even look, I could have ended my isolation had I known where to reach out too. [More...]

For years while a member of the modern evangelical movement, I was caught in a trap of both works and trying to rely on my goodness to live my christian faith. It was a vicious cycle, because you can *never* be good enough, which then would lead to guilt, which would then lead to a re-committing of myself to God. But not long after this cycle was complete I would screw up and it would start over again, try living like this for years and you may start to understand the depth of my issues with the Evangelical church as it stands today. [More...]