I was blessed to have been raised in a Christian family and supportive church in Jackson, MS, which God used to draw me to himself at the age of eight years old.
Unfortunately, my understanding of the Christian life was shaped by the belief that God’s love and acceptance was based on my obedience to him.  This proved to be a debilitating belief system as I lived teetering between spiritual superiority, because I believed that I was doing enough to please God, and spiritual inferiority, because I knew I wasn’t doing enough.  This mindset continued on through college until my first grace awakening in St. Louis, MO, in 1993.

I had left a promising but unfulfilling career in public accounting a year after college to pursue full-time vocational ministry in St. Louis with the college ministry at Central Presbyterian Church in St. Louis.  It was during a worship service in the fall of 1993 that God overwhelmed me by my sin and his grace through a sermon on Romans 3 preached by Dave Elliot, who was an associate pastor at Central.  I heard the Apostle Paul say, “There is no one who is righteous, no not one” and I was both convicted and comforted by these words.  I had felt this to be true, but now I knew it was true.  I was a sinner in need of God’s grace.

From there, God took me to another EPC church in St. Louis, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, where I began to receive informal ministry training through Dr. Phil Douglass, who was a Covenant Seminary professor and part-time pastor of Emmanuel.  It was at Emmanuel that I realized God was calling me in to pastoral ministry, which was verified by Dr. Douglass and the elders.  During my time at seminary, I also met and married my wife, Denise, who had been a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis.

After graduating seminary in 2002, I was called back to Central Pres. to be the Pastor over the College and Singles ministry.  In 2005, I experienced a second grace awakening when Denise and I attended a Sonship Conference in Nashville.  It was there that God showed me the idolatrous nature of my heart juxtaposed by his never-ending, never-failing, performance-free love of the father.

In the spring of 2009, God called our family, which now included our son and soon-to-be daughter, to leave Central and plant an EPC church in Springfield, MO, which was a city that was church rich and grace poor.  It was here that my vision statement for life and ministry was formed as I sought to help people come alive to the wonder of the gospel of God’s grace  because I had seen first hand that it is the gospel and only the gospel that provides the daily motivation and power for living the Christian life.

Little did we know that after three years, we would experience an even deeper grace as we suffered through the closing of that church plant after failing to become financially viable as well as the “untimely” death of my dad just three weeks later.  In the midst of our brokenness and grief, God has demonstrated his faithfulness to us through a caring church community, a supportive family and a deeper understanding of the gospel.

We now have the great joy of living in Lynchburg, VA, doing life with our church family, Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church, where I have served as the Pastor of Community and Outreach since 2013.