For roughly 20 years now, I have been searching for purpose, meaning and healing in my own life. While I believe that this kind of search never really ends, I am now at a stage where I would like to support others on their way.
My own search led me through different stages of life and faith, starting with four years of service in the German Navy. Subsequently, I studied law and business administration at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Bielefeld, Germany, and the Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), South Africa. It was there in South Africa, a society where faith still plays a much more central role than in Western Europe today, that my quest for meaning became more focused and deliberate. In South Africa, I learned a great deal about the various branches of Christianity and experienced, for the first time, a sense of homecoming during an Eucharist service in an Anglican church.
After completing my degree in 2009, I worked for a few years in insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings in Southern Germany. During this time, I first tried to reconnect with the Lutheran Church, in which I was baptised as an infant. But after a few years of discernment, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church and entered the postulate of the Benedictine monastery of Münsterschwarzach. Even though I learned there that a celibate life as a monk was not my way, this formative experience had an immense impact on my life and spirituality. It also led me to study for a second degree in theology, philosophy, and religious studies at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Since around 2017, I knew that joining the Roman Catholic Church was probably not the final stage of my journey in this regard. So I allowed myself to be drawn further and further ‘back’ to the Anglican Church, where it had all somehow begun in South Africa.
At the end of my degree program, I lived for nearly two years in Birmingham, UK. During a placement with the Director of Interfaith Relations for the Bishop of Birmingham, I had the chance to delve into interfaith work with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, which was another very formative experience. Delayed by the pandemic, a long illness, and an acquired disability, I received my Magister Theologiae degree (a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s degree) in 2022. While I had to put my plans of an academic career at rest because of that illness and disability, I still have an enquiring mind with a deep interest in spirituality and mysticism, monasticism, religious pluralism, history, culture, and politics.
Today, I am married and live with my wife and our dog in Kiel, Germany, and worship at the Anglican Church of St. Thomas à Becket in Hamburg. I am working part-time at my local city council in Kiel and freelancing as a theologian and Spiritual Director. In 2025, I completed the Spiritual Direction training course at Sarum College, Salisbury, UK. I am a member in the network of spiritual directors of the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe and the London Centre for Spiritual Direction.
Stephan Jockheck 