👋 I’m Jonas Ellison. My spiritual journey started as a kid in the Roman Catholic Church, where the liturgy, incense, and rituals first drew me in. After a period of deconstruction (it happens), I started seeking a more expansive spiritual expression. For almost a decade, I wrote one of the most-read spirituality blogs on Medium, rooted in non-religious metaphysics and self-help. That work eventually led me into New Thought, where I studied, taught, and began training to become a minister within the Centers for Spiritual Living tradition. It was exciting and life-giving—until it wasn’t (long story). Over time, I began to feel the subtle (and not-so-subtle) creep of ego-driven theology. “Spiritual performance” was replacing spiritual presence. So I stepped away. I left the ministry track, deleted my blog, and started over.

That’s when something surprising happened: I found myself back in church. Not as a critic, but as a seeker. Not out of guilt, but grace. I returned through the back door of Catholic liturgy and ended up in the grace-saturated arms of the Lutheran Church (ELCA), where I was eventually ordained. Now I can blend the mystical and the expansive, all while rocking an alb and chasuble. I serve as a full-time pastor in Aptos, California, where I preach the gospel, preside at the Eucharist, and try to keep the coffee warm and the sermons short. When I’m not doing that, I’m either sipping coffee and fixing the world’s problems with my wife, Alex, on our porch; moonlighting as our daughter Rory’s personal Uber driver; or getting purposefully lost in the Forest of Nisene Marks—because nothing says 'spiritual practice' like questionable trail choices.

What This Space Is

Along the Way is where I write from the wild in-between. It’s for those of us who:

• Have left the church, but can’t quite leave Jesus

• Have mystical bones but theological minds

• Have loved books that weren’t in the church library

• Are trying to live with integrity, faith, and curiosity

Here, I explore:

• Lutheran theology with a mystical spine

• A Course in Miracles (and other texts so unconventional they make even the Enneagram look mainstream) through a grace-saturated, gospel-informed lens

• The spiritual life of pastors in a pluralistic world

• Affirmative prayer reimagined through trust, not control

• Real grace and the God who meets us in both

This isn’t a place for certainty. It’s a place for grace, tension, integration, and healthy doses of theological mischief.

What to Expect

This Substack is where I say the things I might not say from the pulpit. Some posts will be essays. Others might be modern liturgies, prayers, sermon reflections, or theological field notes from the edge of the map. I write for mystics, mainliners, recovering metaphysicians, and the theologically curious.

If you’re trying to live into a grounded faith without leaving your weird, mystical, beautifully spiritual self behind—welcome... You’re in good company.

Subscribe to Join Me

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No pressure. No guilt. No theological litmus test.
(Seriously—if I could fill my pews with curious spiritual weirdos like me, I’d be thrilled.)

Thanks for being here.

With you Along the Way,
Jonas