My name is Nate Long. I’m married to an amazingly patient and persevering woman named Elisa. We’ve been married for 12 years and have 4 children. 
I’m a bi-vocational priest in the Apostles’ Anglican Church; I work in the internet security field and am also privileged to pastor King Messiah Fellowship. In May of 2008 I was installed as the Abbot of The Order of the Anam Cara, a religious order of Spiritual Directors vowed to Peace, Simplicity and Accountability.
We are believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and disciples of Yeshua. Why do we call him “Yeshua”? Well, we don’t always or people wouldn’t know who we’re talking about, but the name does have a special place in our hearts. Basically for the same reason that if you really know me, you don’t call me “Mr. Long” but “Nate” or “Nathan.”
At King Messiah Fellowship we are attempting to re-discover Jesus in his original, Hebraic milieu. The effort has revealed a lot about his words that would have otherwise remained obscured by the patina of centuries of mostly unintentional yet historically persistent a-contextual reading of the Gospels.
This blog is primarily a place for me to process the content of what is teaching me; to keep a record of the thoughts prompted by the books I read, the events that affect me, and the people who impact me. If you are blessed by peering in the window of my thought life, then the effort is twice a blessing.
I should point out that the word “disciple” holds great significance for our community. We understand it in the context of the Hebrew word for disciple, “talmid.” A talmid was the student par excellence of a 1st century rabbi or Torah Teacher. The significance, however, is in the distinction between our American understanding of the word “student” and the Hebraic concept of a disciple. A talmid wasn’t just looking to collect knowledge from his rabbi, but was zealously intent on apprehending his rabbi’s way of walking out the Scriptures, focused on becoming like his rabbi/teacher in every way.
It is our passion therefore to learn and imitate everything we possibly can about Yeshua. How did he pray, what did he read, how did he talk to those who were close to him, how did he talk to those who opposed him, how did he understand the Hebrew Scriptures, etc.? You will notice in this blog evidence of this passionate pursuit to know and imitate our Master. It shows up in the books I read, the history I’m interested in and sundry other ways, but hopefully most of all in the way I live.
