My name is John. I go by J. Elliott Lein when writing. Good to meet you.

Let’s see, here are some basics:

• My wife is Miriam.

• We have four children living, from kindergarten to high school.

• She’s from Arkansas; I’m from “all over.”

We both grew up in the conservative Christian church, but have been evolving into a new way of living and seeing the world for some time now.

Someday I’ll write about how becoming an evangelical missionary in Germany was the breaking point for my faith, and the beginning of the path that has led me to an Episcopal seminary in 2016 and ordination in 2019.

You can find my writing and preaching here, some of my design work on my Behance portfolio, momentary rantings on Twitter, and other things scattered around the web.

I’m a 5w4 Social on the Enneagram, INTP in Myers-Briggs, and in general a real nerd for books and thinking. I’m currently into radical theology (not “radical orthodoxy!”), theopoetics, philosophy of religion, and political theology along with continuing interests in higher Biblical criticism (especially the Hebrew Tanakh) and translation.

Here's a short story I wrote in 2016:

From homeschooled fundamentalist,
   to early twenties closet doubter,
      through the birth, pain, surgeries, and death of our second daughter at seven months,
         I grew to love the Bible through a group study and become a missionary in Europe.

Here I had to face myself and God for the first true time, and it broke me.
   Nothing made sense from my past, with the Bible I was learning.
      And I was rejected in the one area I thought was indefensible: as a designer.
         I lost all hope and gave up on life.

Here is where God found me.
   Here is where I discovered a living faith that celebrated doubt and a journey.
      Here is where my ego allowed God in.
         And here is where my new journey started: toward something new. Toward hope.

To share with all.

Send me a message.