Barrel Aged Faith exists to share the beauty of the Ancient Faith in order to renew the World’s Future. Although many people may think of Christianity as ‘expired and outdated,’ we believe that the barrels of ancient, apostolic Christianity have ‘aged’ well and still refresh the world. This reality can be particularly seen as people encounter Christ in the Orthodox Church.
Our ministry focuses on many Christian writers and thinkers both ancient and new, but we have a particular focus on the ‘Fathers of the Christian Imagination’ such as the poetic hymns of St. Ephrem of Syria and or the flowery homilies of St. John Chrysostom.
The Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, captures the spirit of our mission well when he writes, “Beauty will save the world.”
St. Augustine does the same in his Confessions when he writes, “Late have I loved you, ancient beauty, ever new!”
C.S. Lewis once said, “We do not want merely to see beauty… We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to become part of it.”1
But why fiction? Some Christians view fiction and fantasy literature either as dangerous to the mind or as a unhealthy form of escapism from reality or simply a waste of time (read Scripture and the fathers instead!) But good fiction, such as The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien or The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis or Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky , has the ability to actually be an “escape into reality.”
As Stratford Caldecott says, “It is the world of the everyday—boring, banal, dull, meaningless—that is the prison from which this kind of fantasy seeks to liberate us, not by distracting us from the real but by showing us the deeper patterns and meanings that lie concealed within it.” (Caldecott, A Hidden Presence, pg. 2).
For example, the Orthodox Fathers and Saints will often speak of God’s uncreated light (Light of Tabor). In Middle Earth, we actually see the uncreated light (Light of Valinor) permeating all of Creation which originates in the Creator Himself.2
Short Bio of Founder: Kyle King
Kyle has degrees in Biblical Studies and Christian Educational Ministries from Taylor University. While in college, he became a part of church planting network through the Christian and Missionary Alliance where he was mentored to become a pastor and church planter who started new churches. After college, Kyle started a coffee shop and taproom as a way to fund ministry and launch a church. Kyle also taught theology classes for 6 years at a Catholic High School while being a Parish Youth Minister and Director of Catechesis. Kyle launched the ministry, Barrel Aged Faith, on December 1st, 2022 in order to introduce the wider world to the beauty of ancient, orthodox Christianity as witnessed by the lives of the church fathers, the early martyrs and saints. Today, Kyle is an Orthodox Christian.
From ‘Mere Christianity’ to the ‘Barrel Aged Faith’
(From Evangelicalism through Roman Catholicism to Holy Orthodoxy)
Kyle grew up in a devout Christian family that placed great emphasis on developing a personal relationship with Christ, studying Scripture, and sharing his faith with others through prayer and service. His parents and grandparents started a Southern Baptist Church in the early 1990s which was also greatly committed to these ‘3 pillars of evangelicalism.’
While in high school, Kyle began to have intellectual doubts about his faith which led him to study world religions and atheism online. Through his father’s bookshelf, Kyle discovered many great Christian thinkers and apologists who helped him find answers to his big questions. He enrolled at Taylor University in order to study his faith at a deeper level where he majored in Christian Educational Ministries and Biblical Studies with supplemental courses in World Missions. While attending this small evangelical and liberal-arts college, he joined a network that trained young men to preach, pastor, and start new churches.
Kyle and his wife, Sarah, returned to his hometown after graduating in 2008 order to start a church in collaboration with his parent’s church. During the preparation process, Kyle began studying the church fathers at a much deeper level and was surprised about how ‘Catholic’ and ‘Orthodox’ they sounded. He attended a conference at Wheaton College on the church fathers, and eventually his best friend joined the Catholic Church in 2010 through Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis’ secretary.
In 2011, he launched a church plant that he envisioned would be a place where the best of evangelicalism and the best of ancient Christianity could thrive. Kyle became more convinced that he could not live out apostolic Christianity on his own authority without a bishop in apostolic succession and the sacramental priesthood. He was certain that Protestantism was missing out on some important ingredients that Christ intended for his church and that many of the ancient apostolic churches had retained these ingredients. He then spent 12 years as a Roman Catholic (which was filled with many wonderful experiences!) until becoming an Orthodox Christian which he finds to be the best expression of Barrel Aged Christianity in the modern world.
C.S. Lewis, Transposition and Other Addresses
