Holy Cross REC in Alpine, TX

Holy Cross Anglican Church in Alpine, TX had just joined the REC before I arrived. Holy Cross was a small parish of about 20 people but they were an encouraging and enthusiastic bunch. They did not have a Sunday School program of any kind when I arrived so I started teaching the adults about basic Anglican theology from Fr. Louis Tarsitano's book An Outline of an Anglican Life. The study was well attended and grew as time went on. We went from an average attendance of 15-20 on Sunday to an average of 50-60 during the five years I was there because the parish was excited about what we were doing. Since the parish was small I had a lot of time to read various books on theology which was a real blessing for me. After about 3 years at Holy Cross, I started looking into various programs that we could use to introduce someone who knew nothing about Christianity to Anglican Christianity. There were programs like "The ALPHA Course" or "Christianity Explored" but none of them did a very good job of teaching the importance of the church and sacraments. I decided to put together my own introductory course that would include the importance of the church and sacraments called "Tov Meod" which is Hebrew for "very good". It was during my time of preparing this introductory course to Christianity that I started to read Fr. Alexander Schmemann's book For The Life of The World for a second time. This time what Fr. Alexander Schmemann was saying made a lot more sense. I was so impressed with his biblical worldview that it became the primary text that I used in preparing for this course. I also borrowed a lot from C.S. Lewis and a student of his, Harry Blamires, who wrote a little known book titled The Offering of Man. This book was saying some of the same things that Fr. Alexander Schmemann was saying in his book. "Tov Meod" basically became an introductory course in Orthodox Christianity in an Anglican context. Fr. Alexander Schmemann's book For the Life of the World impacted me so much that I decided that I needed to start looking a little deeper into Orthodox Christianity.