Converts are finding Eastern Orthodoxy online. The church wants to help them commune face

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Often when a potential convert walks through the doors of his church, one of the first things the Very Rev. Andreas Blom encourages them to do is give up the thing that brought them there.

“You discovered Orthodoxy online. You learned about it online. Now you’re here, the internet is done,” he tells inquirers at Holy Theophany Orthodox Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Now you have a priest. Now you have people. Now you need to wean yourself off that stuff and enter into this real community of faith.”