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 Although many people may think of Christianity as ‘expired and outdated,’ we believe that the barrels of ancient, apostolic Christianity have ‘aged’ well and still refresh the world.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 St. Ephrem of Syria and St. John Chrysostom as well as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
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!”
Kyle King’s Bio
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. A few months into starting a church plant, Kyle resigned as the pastor in order to join the Catholic Church. Since then, he has served as a Catholic High School theology teacher, a parish Youth Minister, and parish 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 as well as the ancient apostolic churches which were spread from Spain to India.
Today, Kyle is an Orthodox Christian
From ‘Mere Christianity’ to the ‘Barrel Aged Faith’
(From Evangelicalism 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 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, Biblical Studies, and 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 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 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.
