What do you say about 28 years of anything?
I never wanted to attend Bible College because I never desired to be a pastor. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what a pastor’s life was like, but the opposite. Growing up in a pastor’s home, I understood the challenges and sacrifices that the call to ministry requires. We moved frequently growing up, sometimes out of a sense of call, others because of broken promises and damaged relationships. I wanted something different, so I fled to Tarshish.
I had planned on attending a school to learn radio and television broadcasting, or at least that is what I told the random adults in my life who would inevitably ask what I was doing. I was only a freshman in high school. My dad broke the news to me during my senior year. I was going to one year of Bible College, and I had no choice. I could do whatever I wanted after that. So I went…and stayed for four years.
The summer between my junior and senior year of Bible College. I spent doing ministry with my friend Mike. We restarted the youth group at his dad’s church. God moved powerfully. It seemed to me that God was up to something, and I wanted in on it.
During my senior year in Bible College, I met the woman who would become my wife, and Mike’s dad offered me a job that required me to move across the country. I graduated in May, moved in June, and got engaged to Sandra in August. I was in a whirlwind, like times of change usually are, but God was up to something, and I wanted in on it.
The first fourteen years, I served as our church’s first official Pastor of Child Discipleship, then six years as the campus pastor at our main campus, as well as the pastor of next-generation ministry. In the last eight years, I served as the Pastor of Next Generation Ministry and as the executive pastor of Ministries for all our campuses. There were many God moments. A lot of tears and laughter. Funerals and weddings. Baby dedications and baptisms.
I remember when I started doing kids ministry at the ripe age of twenty-two. I had no idea what I was doing. There was no internet or AI, no conferences or resources to help you. I had no choice but to ask God for help. I learned to invert the process of making God my first option rather than my last resort. During that time of prayer, I felt that God gave me specific direction on what to do as a pastor of child discipleship. I was off to the races, and God was gracious.
Ten years in, I had accomplished all I felt God asked me to do. So I wasn’t sure if I was done or what God was doing. So, I had another meeting with God, and I asked Him what He had for me to do. I had accomplished all he had put on my heart. Was I done? He spoke to my heart and impressed this idea. “Be to other people what you wish someone was for you.” I didn’t know what that meant or how to make that work. I started a blog that my mom read, and five other kids ministry leaders who would become some of my best ministry friends who would walk through a lot of life together.
Blogging for me has always been an exercise in trying to be to others what I wish someone was to me. To help encourage and strengthen pastors and parents to lead well, to love well, and to point to Jesus in everything. I started writing in 2007 and haven’t stopped since.
Writing for me started as an act of obedience and has become for me one of the greatest joys of my life. Frederick Buechner, one of my writing heroes, says:
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Frederick Buechner
In the daily discipline of writing, which I thought would be a gift to others, has been more of a gift to me than I ever dreamed. In the midst of COVID, I started to rethink some of my long-held assumptions about life and ministry. I wrote a blog post entitled “Why Our Kids Ministries Should Be More Like Mr. Rogers and Less Like Disney.“ It caught the attention of Matt Markins, who was in the process of becoming the CEO of Awana. That post led to my being invited to speak at the inaugural Child Discipleship Forum in 2021, which has become more of a blessing than I can clearly articulate. In 2023, Matt Markins and Mike Handler invited me to co-author Forming Faith, published by Moody Press.
Over the last five years, God has gone out of His way to shake me and form me in ways I would never have asked for and would never have expected. Still, I was writing. Those words for others were for me a whistling in the dark. In his powerful book The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction, Beuchner says this:
“Is that why we write, year after year, people like me— to keep our courage up? Are novels like mine a kind of whistling in the dark? I think so. To whistle in the dark is more than just to try to convince yourself that dark is not all there is. It’s also to remind yourself that dark is not all there is, or the end of all there is, because even in the dark there is hope. Even in the dark you have the power to whistle. And sometimes that seems more than just your own power because it’s powerful enough to hold the dark back a little. The tunes you whistle in the dark are the sound of that hope, that power. Like the books you write.”
Even in difficulty and sorrow, God brought me; He had taught me to whistle in the dark. In the dark, I wrote, and in the dark, I prayed. In the dark, God spoke. When we least expected it, God opened a door. Mike Handler asked me several weeks ago, “What would it look like for you to work at Awana?”
In the process, through my prayer times and scripture reading, and several words of encouragement from people who knew nothing of what was going on, it was clear God was leading us to a new season. This led to conversations with Awana and my church. The consensus was clear that God was at work.
To leave a staff I have been a part of for nearly three decades is no easy decision. Leaving a team led by my best friend and several others with whom I have served for decades is not something you do just because the offer is right. You need the wisdom of others and the clarity of God’s leading. Thankfully, my wife Sandra and I received both.
I am pleased to announce that, starting September 29th, I will serve as the Director of ChildDiscipleship.com, where I will work with Awana to develop resources for pastors and parents. To represent Awana and its mission to equip leaders to reach kids with the Gospel and to engage them in lifelong discipleship. This is no easy task, but it is of the utmost importance. I am honored and excited to join their team and engage in the Gospel work they are doing.
Like most things in life, this is bittersweet for us. Sweet because we see it as the opportunity and honor to serve a mission close to our hearts with people at Awana, we love already, and are sure to grow to love. It is bitter because, as Semisonic famously said, “Every new beginning comes from some others begining end.” The bitterness is definitely softened by the remote first culture of Awana, which will allow me to stay on as an elder at Redeemer, as well as serve on the teaching team at Redeemer. My family will continue to serve and cheer on the work that God has called us to in our local church.
Pastor Mike, the Redeemer staff, eldership, and membership have been nothing but supportive throughout this entire challenging season. I am so grateful and humbled by a community that has been to us what a home I never had, having moved from place to place.
Wedell Berry says that every person needs a place and a membership. I have found a place in the small town we live in with no Target and no Starbucks, but with people who know us. We have found our membership in a church community that has become like family to us over the past twenty-eight years, marked by joys and sorrows.
“Members of Port William aren’t members by their own choice, and they can’t be members alone. They are members of each other and of the place.”
Wedell Berry
I am looking forward to what God has next for our church, our family, and the ministry to which God has called us. It seems to me that God was up to something, and I wanted in on it.