I’m a pastor’s kid, so my spiritual beginnings were doomed from the start.😉 In truth, I had a great spiritual upbringing. My parents were not the oppressive type, so I had the freedom to think, believe and explore my faith as I grew up. At age 8 I was led by my Sunday School teacher to follow Jesus. It was as genuine as a decision by an 8 year old can be. I was baptized a few years later at age 12. Again, a genuine decision, but it soon became clear that I didn’t totally understand the implications of those decisions.
As I moved into my teen years I gave into some of the cultural and peer pressures that were rampant in the 1980’s. I wasn’t a total rebel. I went to church, I was involved in our youth ministry, but I was living a double life, one person at school, another at church. This carried over into my early years at Anderson University. Living as the good, Church of God pastor’s kid most of the time, but also dipping my toe into the wilder side of college life occasionally. Nothing too extreme, but just enough to keep God at a safe distance.
Late in my college years and continuing into the early years of my marriage to Michelle, I began to draw a little closer to God and wrestle with a sense of calling. To what I didn’t exactly know. I didn’t want to be a pastor, I knew that life and it didn’t appeal to me. So I launched into 10 years of work as a social worker and probation officer. It was during these years that God began to soften my heart and strengthen my convictions about what it meant to actually help people become the people that they wanted to be and, more importantly, that God created them to be.
A key step for both Michelle and I was when we were invited to help launch a new church plant in Noblesville, IN: New Life Community Church. It was exhilarating to be on the leading edge of a brand new work that God was birthing. During these years my faith solidified, became my own and began to point me clearly toward a ministry calling. I was given the opportunity to lead, teach and serve in ways that were preparing me for the years ahead.
At a key time of listening and responding to God I was led to 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. These verses began to crystallize some of my convictions about ministry:
[16] So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. [17] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! [18] All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: [19] that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. [20] We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. [21] God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I now knew that whatever ministry I would be involved with would be driven by the ministry of reconciliation that God has called His people to carry out across this world. I spent the next 10 years as an Associate Pastor followed by 10 years as a Lead Pastor leading, teaching, calling and challenging the people I served to become ambassadors of reconciliation wherever they lived and worked.
God has been so faithful to me and my family. He has seen us through high and low times of pastoral ministry. He has led me to people and ministries that have expanded my understanding of “Church” and exposed me to the ministry of reconciliation in new and powerful ways.
My life verse is John 3:30 – He must become greater, I must become less. I have experienced this verse happening in me spiritually, emotionally, even physically. I have literally felt the stretching and changing that must happen in me if Jesus is to be seen more than me. A humbling but ultimately satisfying process that I am deeply grateful for.
