Late Bloomer ...

I am a late bloomer.

I was born two minutes behind my twin sister.  I finished high school the summer following my graduation. I started college at age 29.  I finished my master's degree at age 37.  My wife and I began having children when I was 39.  Today we have three beautiful children ages 3, 5 and 7 and I am 46 years young.

Like I said, I'm a late bloomer!

Spiritually, I was brought up as a Roman Catholic.  I had some affection for God during my younger years but had not bowed the knee to Him- in other words, 'I did it my way.' Period. In middle school, my family joined a Protestant church. We were really involved and committed. I loved it!

Then, after the pastor's moral failure, the church disbanded and our family never settled again into a church.


With this experience, I began to rebel against Christianity, religion, and anything God-related.  Generally, I felt it was all a joke- irrelevant and hypocritical.  I carried that pain and hurt for years and in my mid-20s, it was clear it was killing me.  I had been medicating myself with impure relationships and various substances, trying to dull the pain of living with no meaning, no truth, no hope and no sense of God's presence.


Finally, when I was 25, I experienced a remarkable conversion  - not to a religion, a tradition, or a denomination - but to Jesus. It was a life-transforming experience!  At first, it was really weird.  I felt like my old self had melted away and a new self was beginning to emerge.  New desires, new longings, new sensitivities, new hope, new love, new faith.


Soon I will share more details of this season of my turning from darkness to light.  I call this part of my story "Stand in Man".  Keep posted.


With this new faith and new life, I felt God was calling me to serve him as a pastor/shepherd.  So, for several years I served and grew at Brookfield Church in Wisconsin.  After encouragement from my pastor, an incredibly loving and godly man, I went back to school for eight years at age 29 to study and grow, with the goal of serving as a pastor.   While in school, God creatively arranged my path to intersect with that of a beautiful young woman, Elizabeth, and we soon thereafter married.

Midway through my years of school, I had the privilege of studying four months on Israel's Mt Zion on the southwest corner of Jerusalem's Old City.  The school is called Jerusalem University College.  While there, our class toured at length the various locations around Israel and we also spent time in Jordan.  The meat and potatoes course there is called "Physical settings of the Bible".  If you dig geography, rock-types, killer hiking, visiting crazy, sometimes dangerous places, and are captivated by Biblical history, you'd love studying there.

We moved to Tucson, Arizona in the fall of 2003 to serve Bethel Church and during roughly five years there witnessed the joy and exuberance of the birth of three wonderful children.   We also served with The Village - an awesome community here in Tucson - for two-and-a-half years where we continue to see God doing quite remarkable things regularly. 

Today we are called by God to raise up a new ministry.  We are super excited about this adventure but frankly fairly freaked out about it too.  For us, part of our church planting experience will be to work bi-vocationally in order to stay connected with lots of different people.  I'll continue to teach as an adjunct instructor at Pima College.   Liz will continue serving at The Crisis Pregnancy Center. 

All this to say: we long to see others receive the same grace of God we ourselves have received!

Up next: "Stand In Man"

Rowing Out

Our newsletters have gone out and we're starting to gear up for August 1. I've been thinking about the passage in Luke 5 where Jesus called the disciples back to fishing after a night of not catching anything. As we head out its like we have left the shore and its getting deeper.  It reminds me of my old fishing days in Canada.  My friends and I used to paddle and portage for dozens of miles into the wilderness.  Starting this new church feels a lot like leaving the safety of solid ground and portaging out into that Canadian wilderness counting and depending on our faith in Jesus and all we know of Him so far in our journey.  All of a sudden we're out in the deep water.  We can't see the ground anymore and its a scary and exhilarating place to be.    

Part of the gathering of this new church is like Paul talks about in Ephesians. He says that Jesus fills all things in every way.   What He's asking each of us to do is complete His "body" here on earth.  We aren't just gathering people from other churches, but gathering those who are not yet part of Jesus body.  That's amazing!  Jesus body is not yet complete. Its exciting to think that we are paddling out to gather in parts and members of His body to give fuller expression of all that Jesus is.   We wonder who will Jesus gather through us?  What will their strengths and issues be? How will we see more of Jesus in and through them and what this might become?  

As part of gathering people freshly out of the world, I think of my own experience of being gathered in: skeptical, afraid, insecure, despertately lonely and without hope, suspicious, anxious.  I sat in the back of the chruch, hyper-ventliating, confused and looking for the exits.  I picked up the Bible not knowing what the Old and New Testaments were, who Paul was, or what grace was about. We long to create a safe place for people not yet part of God's Kingdom to come to learn and grow.   A place where its okay to struggle and not have everything figured out, but a place that will soon reflect more of the Jesus we long to know more.

Elvis' Harley

Check out my profile picture. Me and my two sons, Max and Luke, are standing by a Harley Elvis bought, rode, and then gave to a friend. It is on display at the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, WI.