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.
No comments:
Post a Comment