An Anglo-Orthodox Journey

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)  

My journey starts with my father. My dad was raised in a broken home, the son of a Marine drill sergeant and an ex-Catholic nun who turned to Eastern philosophy and secular humanism to still her conscience for leaving the church of her childhood. My father was three when his parents divorced. He grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks”, involved in gangs and theft, and only really knew unconditional love and Christlikeness through the person of his elderly, German grandfather, a devoted Catholic who would pick my father up every Sunday for Mass - and after my father stopped going to church, for Sunday afternoon dinner. On his deathbed, when my father was 22, my great-grandfather told my dad to find God and be sure he made it to heaven, or he would regret it for eternity. My mother had been raised in a multi-generational Baptist family, but had personally fallen away from the Lord. It was a few weeks later that my mother’s childhood pastor came to visit the newlyweds and met my dad. My father converted, “like a match thrown on a haystack”, and later dedicated himself to full-time service in the Baptist ministry in the church where my mom grew up. 

It is at this point that I enter the story, the first-born of a youth minister, followed by five brothers and sisters. My dad continued his education, earned two doctorates, pastored several small churches, and later went on staff at First Baptist of Milford, near Cincinnati, Ohio, under Dr. Charles Keen. He was quickly placed in charge of the Bearing Precious Seed Press, a large Scripture-printing ministry, producing millions of bibles for free distribution every year. He subsequently led it to become a debt-free organization. He later became administrative head of the School of the Scriptures, a large Bible Institute in Cincinnati. He continued to pastor in Decaturville, Ohio, Savannah, Georgia, and eventually returned to Cincinnati to take care of my dying grandfather, who had been estranged from my father since his conversion. Since then, my father had 9 strokes and retired from ministry after 35 years of faithful service. He passed away on the morning of my consecration as an Anglican bishop, dying with a blessing to mother and all six of his children. I was there to witness his passing in faith of our coming resurrection in Christ Jesus. 

I grew up with a hard-core understanding of “Bible-believing Christianity” that focused the Bible as a practical manual for life, to be individually interpreted and applied by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and with church functioning as a place for “remembering what Christ has done”, “being encouraged by other Christians”, and “being fed” by the pastor’s sermons. Neither Baptism nor the Lord’s Supper were understood to be anything other than “remembrance”, empty symbols that were inferior to the text of the Bible itself, and a kind of reenactment. Guard was set against “sacramentality” by explaining the Lord’s Supper in terms of 1 Corinthians 11’s admonition, “This do in remembrance of me”, without an understanding that “remembrance” was a “entrance” into the realities they represented. The doctrine of the Southern Baptist Church was “easy-believe-ism” (a confession of faith in Christ and a sinner’s prayer brought about permanent salvation and eternal peace), and this eternal state of blessedness was then “symbolized” by making the “personal decision to be baptized” for “church membership” and as “an outward confession of faith”. While I still love and respect the Baptists who invested so much into my life, I now understand Christ’s Incarnation to mean something - It is where God’s grace meets human life, and neither side can be minimized or made unnecessary. 

I made a confession of faith at the age of three, after I heard my father explain the plan of salvation to a dying elderly woman while visiting with him from door to door. In my childlike faith, I prayed with my mother for Jesus to save me from my sins and to be my Lord and Savior. I still remember this moment, praying with her, even though I barely remember anything else from that time… all except for the fact that the first word I learned to spell was “PASTOR”. At seven, based upon this profession, I received Baptism from my father by full immersion, baptized in the Name of the Trinity. I made a confession of faith before our small church that “Jesus Christ is God! He came into the world, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, was crucified for our sin, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day. He ascended into heaven, and is seated on the right hand of God the Father, and will return to rule and reign.” I cannot remember making a statement about my belief in the Father, the Holy Spirit, or the nature of the Trinity, although I know that some Baptist Churches use the Apostles Creed for Baptism. At the time, I felt that my Baptism was an incredible experience, even though I was told that it was merely a symbol done for church membership. I felt new! I felt clean! I was ecstatic for weeks! My spiritual growth, however, did not start until much later. 

My father chose to home educate me and my siblings, and since he was a Bible Institute teacher at the time, he fed us intellectually on a steady diet of missionary stories, world culture, theology, church history and New Testament Greek flashcards. It was during this formative time that I learned to play piano from my mother, and then went on to formal lessons with other teachers. In time, I learned piano, flute, harp, harpsichord, organ, dulcimer, panpipes, oboe, clarinet, and many others without mastery. I loved being homeschooled and spent countless hours in the woods, watching birds, catching butterflies, raising tadpoles, and telling myself and my brothers and sisters long stories. I had a blessed and happy childhood. 

I loved to read about Hudson Taylor and read every book about Chinese culture that I could find in the library. For some strange reason, my goal became to learn Chinese characters, which I started at 8-years-old on my own by copying characters from a book that I found about Confucius. Without proper instruction, I wasted time learning to write the characters without the proper stroke order and without knowing the correct grammar and structure. From this time, learning to read Classical Chinese became a life goal, and one that I am still struggling to completely master. It was also during this time that I met a pastor from South Korea, Rev. Ray Lee, who challenged me to pray for Asia every day, and was an encouragement and influence on my young life. 

My interest continued to grow during my teen years, and soon encompassed studies in Japan, Korea, China, Tibet, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and India. They were a consuming topic of conversation and the subject of most of the books that I read in my spare time. Because of early exposure to Buddhism through my grandmother’s New Age inclinations and my own reading, I became less certain about the absolute claims of Jesus Christ during my teen years, and I seriously began to doubt the truth of Christianity. My doubts were supported by the lack of compassion and truthful dialogue that I observed in my childhood churches, and by the hypocrisy that I often felt in Christians’ lives and homes. It was after several years of struggling with my faith that I finally rededicated my life to Christ on September 15th, 1996. Even though I remembered my initial conversion at three-years-of-age and baptism at seven, this felt life my real conversion, because I fully understood the meaning of my life. Christ gave me a vision for a life given over to His service. Even through much sin, struggle, confusion and false-starts since then, this has energized and molded my life. 

It was during this time that God began to open up many opportunities to pursue studies in music. I learned to play piano in church and my parents were extremely dedicated to helping and encouraging me to learn more about music, composition, hymn-writing, and apply these studies to practical ministry within the context of church worship. I began to study concert piano under Dr. William Beulow and Dr. M. Dean Kincaid, and attend Christian ministry and music workshops. I also started full-time residency in a series of Christian music programs called “The International Academy of Music” started by Institute in Basic Life Principle’s Dr. Bill Gothard, in Indianapolis, Indiana. I loved the study of music, but I never had peace that this was what I was supposed to do with my life. 

At the International Academy I found myself spending more and more time with Asian students, developing great friendships and feeling a part of their community. I loved to learn language from them, and devoted much of my time to memorizing Chinese characters and trying to converse in Chinese and Korean. I was angered when I saw whites treat my friends disrespectfully, and I took up for them on many occasion, trying to be their protector and friend as much as possible. They would ask me to make phone calls to pay bills because their English was not good, and most people were not patient enough to help them. I saw them as my family and deeply related with them in issues of culture, communication, food and personal preference. I understood and admired them for who they were, and realized what they had to sacrifice to live in America. The greatest complement was the nickname that several Chinese students gave me, calling me “Ji Dan” (which means “egg”, “white on the outside and yellow on the inside”)! 

When I finished the programs at the International Academy of Music at the age of 19, I worked for a short time as Mr. Gothard’s personal assistant in Chicago, and learned about running a conservative Christian organization and the importance of Christian Counseling. One day, Mr. Gothard laid hands on me and blessed me to continue his vision for education and discipleship. I never forgot his blessing. 

After I finished this sojourn at Oak Brook Headquarters, I was invited by my father’s friend, Dr. P.D. Cherian, to come to India to teach music and hymn-writing while studying at South India Baptist Bible College and Seminary. My father felt that it would be good to learn missions in a controlled environment and to study under the strict watch of a well-trusted friend. I transferred credits from both the School of the Scriptures and the International Academy of Music, and graduated after two years of intermittent study with a Masters of Sacred Music. My Master’s thesis became the textbook for SIBBC’s Christian Music 101-201 courses.

In India I met my first group of "non-Western Christians", the “Syro-Malabar” and Mar Thoma Christian, and their mere existence and calm, loving way of being shook me to my core. This helped me to see Christianity as universally true, not just an expression of Western Culture or history, and helped me to fully dedicate myself to the path of Christian Faith that my parents had so faithfully raised me to walk. I still have wistful memories of the Indian Christians who had so deeply impressed me, and who, to this moment, seem to inhabit an inner space within my thought. I still sing the Aramaic and Malayam hymns that I learned from my friends and roommates, an expression of an indigenous, Asian Christianity in the language of Christ Himself! My favorite is the ancient hymn that Indian Christians sing every liturgy to an ancient Hebrew melody - “We give you praise, O Lord of All, We give you thanks, O Jesus Christ; You raise our bodies into life, You are the Savior of our souls!”

Our Northern Indian Choir at SIBBC, Practicing Handel's "Messiah" for Christmas

Me and my Manipuri and Burmese "Brothers" (roommates) in Tamil Nadu, India, 2001

When I returned from my time in India at the age of 21, a few days before 9-11, my father arranged to have me attend Baptist Bible Translator’s Institute to study the art of Bible Translation from some of Wycliff’s premier translators, who had started their own training program in light of the liberal and critical interpretive methods that were used by Mainline denominations. He wanted me to have both the cultural and the hermeneutical skills necessary to be an effective expositor, and I quickly caught the vision of becoming a missionary translator. Little did I know, but moving to Bowie, TX, and enrolling in a small translator’s school was the most important step of my life, because it was here that I met my wife, Victoria. 

I met my wife, Victoria, at Denton Korean Baptist Fellowship the week after 9-11, and then we saw each other twice on Sunday as we both attended Denton Chinese Baptist Church in the morning and the Korean Fellowship in the afternoon. Both pastors had us work on ministry projects together and we got to know each other while serving the Chinese and Korean communities. I left Texas in the Spring of 2002 with a lymphatic parasite that I caught in India. While I received treatment over the summer, I fasted and prayed for direction. One day, as I was praying on a hillside in rural Ohio, God gave me a vision of Victoria and I playing on the hillside with a huge family of kids. Some looked like me, others looked like her. I knew that they were our children. I had never had an experience like that before, so I asked my father what it could mean. He told me, “Maybe God is trying to show you your future?” After this, a friend offered to pay my plane ticket back to Bowie to play piano and flute for his wedding, and so I returned to Texas and asked Victoria what she thought in person. When I told her what I had experienced, she started to cry, and told me that from the first time we worked together, she prayed that God would bring us into a relationship. We were married five months later. We have been married for 21 years now, and have eight beautiful children! 

After serving in my father’s ministry for two years, I was ordained into the Baptist ministry. We spent another year pastoring at Fresno Chinese Gospel Church before being sent to China as missionaries, but quickly found that the Baptist "way" didn't work well in an Asian cultural context. Almost everything that I had learned could not be replicated in the Chinese context, and the Chinese had an irritating habit of asking questions about history, authority, continuity, interpretation, and my lack of the “master/disciple” relationship that has secured the survival of Chinese culture for the last five thousand years. I had come into contact with Oriental Orthodox in India, while I was finishing my training in the Baptist Church, but I had never seriously considered their claims. Upon examining Scripture with these new categories in mind, I found that these cultural assumptions were actually closer to the paradigms used by biblical authors. I started reading the Apostolic Fathers, the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and discovered the Nicene Fathers and the Cappadocians. It was as if I could suddenly see clearly for the first time, and I drank in the bubbling stream of the Early Church! I quickly changed many of my core assumptions, becoming far more Eucharistic, sacramental, and focused on interpreting the Bible through the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, rather than through the conjectures of men far removed in time and culture, reacting to the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. Victoria has always been a better Christian than I could ever be, even without a Christian upbringing, and she always manifested her faith in outward symbols, as well as in a sincere inner faith. Our home was filling up with crosses and sketches of Christ and Bible stories, as a way of "incarnating" our beliefs. I remember the raised eyebrows of visiting American Baptists. 

I started holding Eucharistic celebrations on the strength of my ordination for our little community in our little village in China, but still felt lost in a wash of heretical, self-proclaimed groups - many of which were already extreme and quite violent, under the heading of "Loving Jesus". I was increasingly convinced that something was deeply wrong with the reactionary and fundamentalist mentality of many of the groups around us, and that I needed to be a part of a group that shared my vision and that would support us on our spiritual journey. 

It was around this time, in 2006, that I went on a pilgrimage to the holy sites of the Ancient Church in China, to the Xi’An Stele and the Pagoda, and made friends with Chinese Christians from Quanzhou, where the Church of the East was based through the Song and Ming Dynasties. When I touched the Xi’An stele, I heard a voice declare “Ana kela” (“I speak” in Aramaic), and I felt like I had personally received a calling to something very important and very ancient, specific to the Chinese context. Over the years, I wrote many emails to various apostolic churches, seeking guidance, but never heard back from anyone, and out of desperation, I sent a letter to the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan in Hong Kong. I heard back from him in four minutes (literally), and he confirmed us into the Orthodox Church immediately.

Me performing the Yueju Opera piece, "Song of the Kinsman Redeemer", in 2007 at the National Mid-Autumn Festival Gala in Nanjing

It was during this time that I learned to speak Mandarin and Shanghainese fluently, worked as a translator and television host in East Asia, began the process of studying a management PhD at Louisiana Baptist University, as we underwent a spiritual transformation. In Asia, I was the only foreigner awarded for traditional Chinese music by popular vote, and took 4th in the nation in a 2007 contest for foreigner speakers of Mandarin. We were amazed to see how the power of Ancient Christian family prayers and our attempts of continuity with the Holy Tradition led those around us to follow in our footsteps. We saw a transformation in our own family, resulting in the softening my wife's Buddhist family's prejudices against Christ, distribution of many Bibles and prayer books, the creation of Asian-style Icons and Crosses, and immense encouragement to underground Christian brothers and sisters. Ancient forms of Christianity allowed us to incarnate the Church into the Eastern culture and reach it more effectively with the message of Christ’s life-changing Gospel! 

After this, I spent four years in the Orthodox Church, functioning as a "Reader" and liaison, trying to mediate and reconcile the blatant political and canonical wars going on between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate over the Chinese “turf”, troubled to the core of my soul over how the political interests of the Churches had excluded so many from the Grace of God (not just in their lack of recognition of Grace within other communions, but how their fighting literally pushed East Asians away from Christ and proved that it was, indeed, a cultural and colonial tool used to establish foreign power on Asian soil). It was also during this time that I studied in Orthodox seminary, preparing for a future in apostolic priesthood, and I was exposed to Anglican luminaries for the first time. I discovered Lancelot Andrewes, James Ussher, the Scottish Non-Jurors, the Tractarians, the Oxford Movement, Hugh Wheybrew, Dom Gregory Dix, JND Kelly, NT Wright, and finally connected CS Lewis to the Anglican Patrimony. As I completed my initial studies, my bishop set the date for my ordination for May 18th, 2013. 

At Pascha (Easter) of 2013, in the midst of the Liturgy of St. Basil, things finally came to a head between the Greeks and the Russians, and it resulted in a political situation that showed me the depths of brokenness and unconfessed sin that are covered over and swept under the rugs of Orthodoxy. In just a few hours after the liturgy, international Orthodox news claimed that the Greek Church had refused the greetings of the Russian Church, and used this to justify the splitting up the Orthodox missions in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan, which had happened the year before under pretense and conflicting declaration of jurisdiction - effectively instating a schism between the Greeks and the Russians, prefiguring the schism that they would come to finally embrace in the Fall of 2018. I responded by telling the truth of the situation in both Mandarin and English, which resulted in official complaints being filed against my person and a concerted, foreign effort to have me leave Asia. 

Through this situation, it was as if the blinders were ripped from my eyes, and I saw how broken Orthodoxy truly was, culturally and inter-personally, and I realized that it could only be made effective on the mission field through deep repentance the re-evaluation of our assumptions of superiority. Thus, God showed me that I was not to be ordained in the Greek Church by His direct intervention. Later, when I asked why the Greeks and the Russians did not officially declare a schism over such blatant political sins and violations of ancient canon law, the response was offered, “The Russians give too much money and are too powerful for the Greeks to take on… even if we refuse to concelebrate with them, and doubt their true commitment to Orthodoxy, and refuse communion to Russians who show up in our liturgies, we can never declare a schism, because that would mean that Orthodoxy can divide without heresy, which would then make it impossible to declare the Catholics and the Anglicans separated from the one, true church.” Thus, I saw how the unity of Orthodoxy was maintained, not out of love or a commitment to the Gospel, but so that a claim to infallibility and doctrinal superiority could be made over those outside of their own cultural structures. The forms of Orthodoxy should be maintained for good order in the church, mutual submission and love, rather than for power and exclusion from God’s grace. 

That is when we left Asia, and when I started to make our way back into American life, but without the support of our previous friends and family. I searched for a way to continue our ministry, but after many meetings with American priests and bishops, we realized that we had nowhere to go, and our family spent an uncomfortable time “in between”. My new perspective on the importance of liturgy and apostolic succession made it impossible to find employment in Churches that knew and loved us. It was at this vital time that +Mar Awa Royel, Diocesan Bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East (now Patriarch), invited us to Modesto to work with Middle Eastern Christian refugees and represent the Assyrian Christian Emergency Relief Organization in fundraising and outreach. I will always be grateful for our pilgrimage amongst our Middle Eastern Christian brothers and sisters, and I intensely love their culture, history, and faithfulness. Through this wonderful experience of three years, God taught us many great and precious facets of His Gospel treasures that we would not otherwise know through this intense, cross-cultural experience! 

It was during this time that our family started to attend Wellspring Anglican Church in Modesto, CA, and after six months of faithful attendance, I was asked to help the church musically, leading music and preparing offertories on piano and other instruments, and my four oldest boys were made acolytes, learning the rubrics and customs of the Book of Common Prayer. We quickly became close friends with Wellspring’s two priests, and I submitted to their pastoral leadership and counsel. Our family agrees that finding Conservative Anglicanism was one of the best things that ever happened to us. It centered us, grounded us, and gave us a feeling of truly being “home”, something that we lacked in our exposure to so many other local churches. We will always thank God for leading us to such a beautiful, healing, and sincerely loving church, even as we mourn the way that heresy and immorality have destroyed Anglicanism worldwide!

Serving as a Deacon in the Anglican Church

I found great clarity as a Christian in the Anglican liturgical tradition and the historically orthodox theological position over the last few years. I now am able to reconcile my deep love for Christian History, my desire for Biblical Faith, and my understanding of Apostolic Ministry with my personal experience as a Baptist child and an Orthodox adult. I am evangelical in faith, apostolic is practice, and charismatic in openness to God’s calling and work, all the while keeping within the boundaries handed down to us by the Ancient Church and the Seven Ecumenical Councils. I believe in a Biblical Faith in which God is both sovereign and allows for personal freedom and responsibility. Human rationality cannot comprehend how these two biblical truths are true at the same time, so I accept them by faith, knowing that God’s thoughts are above our thoughts and His ways above our ways, without demanding that they fit into a cohesive system. God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and how He works will always be a mystery to us.

I believe that Christ is the only way to eternal salvation. I believe that we accept Him in faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the worship of God the Father. I believe that man is created in a six day literal creation, made the image of God, with a free will that God requires be submitted to Him in faith and repentance. Because of this stance, I believe salvation to be a transformative work of the Holy Spirit, started in faith and repentance, and kept in faith, not completed in the flesh or the works of man, but evidenced in the work of the Holy Spirit in the “good works” that we are called and prepared to do by God. This is how God proclaims His Gospel to the world and transforms and renews His creation. I believe that the historic, local Churches or orthodox and catholic faith are the visible manifestation of the universal Body of Christ, and that true belief is sealed in Baptism in the Name of the Trinity, and that it is called to faithfully proclaim the Gospel through Word and Sacrament until Christ’s literal return to rule and reign forever.

Priestly Ordination in the Anglican Church of North America, 2017

I was ordained in 2017 to the Anglican diaconate and priesthood in the ACNA, after receiving promises that the bishop I submitted to did not ordain women. I was shocked to learn that the bishop affirmed "Dual Integrity" at the final meeting of the ACNA's Taskforce on Women's Orders just two weeks after my ordination. After this, I sought to be received in the Continuum, and I was consecrated by bishops from the Polish National Catholic/Continuing lineage from two different jurisdictions as a missionary bishop in 2018 to a new work, the Missionary Diocese of East and Southeast Asia. I immediately ordained priests and deacons for our mission in East Asia and helped to consecrate missionary bishops for North Asia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore over the course of the next six years. Since then, we have established our local Synod under the Archbishop of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in the Philippines, His Eminence, ++Rogelio, and in the United States under the name of the Ancient Church of the West. We are a Western Rite Church—doctrinally, traditionally, and conservatively Eastern Orthodox, but liturgically and culturally heirs of the Western Tradition in East Asia. We uphold the Apostolic Faith, the Nicene Creed, the Apostolic Canons, and the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Our ministry has been very well received, and we are currently in fruitful dialogue with both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, with a vital outreach to Anglicans in the 10/40 Window.

Receiving the Holy Scriptures with the Laying On of Hands and the Invocation of the Holy Spirit for the Office of Bishop, August 15th, 2018

As a Bishop with a long journey into the Ancient Church, I now fully understand my own limitations and problems, and know that anything we do must be rooted in much prayer, honest searching and self-doubt. The only thing I can do is try… try to put myself into situations where I can learn and grow, and bless our friends and neighbors with a ministry of Word and Sacrament, and try to do the calling that we have been empowered fulfill by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Our family wants to live in a truly Christian capacity. We want to be involved in the surrounding cultures in an authentic way, holding fast to the English liturgical tradition and restoring our commitments to Apostolic and Orthodox Christianity within the Anglosphere. We do not need financial support - everything we have done up to this point has been self-supported. We are not expecting our friends and family to give us anything, and we look to the church to provide for us only the riches of the 2000-year Apostolic Tradition! We do, however, request your prayers, community and accountability. We need friends who will support us in our missionary vision for the world, with whom we can celebrate the significance and beauty of the identities that God gave us as a family and a community. Please pray for us and consider visiting us. We would love to hear your story, and pray that, someday, we can tell both of our stories together!

Pray for the Work of the Missionary Diocese of East and Southeast Asia! May the Lord hear your prayers!