LIKE MANY evangelical Christians, A. J. Zimmermann tells his conversion story with near-pointillistic detail. A 25-year-old recent divinity school graduate from Southern California, Zimmermann grew up in a non-religious household near Los Angeles with what he called “a lot of divorce” and an abusive stepfather. During his freshman year of high school,
there was this really cute girl in my Spanish 1 class. We started talking and she invited me to go to youth group. I had no idea what that was, but I thought, “She’s cute, maybe this will work out.” I’d never been in that context before — guitars and music and teaching about the Bible. I just kind of sat there and I was like, “Okay, I’m open to whatever’s here.” And I had this sense of love and peace come out of nowhere, and I was crying and crying, and I was just really curious about what this was.
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