My Christian Story
I became a Christian at twenty-eight years old, and my conversion was, in many ways, the decisive turning point of my life. I had been raised around Christianity and was adopted at seven into a Christian family, but the church environment in which I grew up was part of the independent fundamental Baptist, King James Only movement. Much of my early understanding of Christianity centered on right behavior, right actions, and meeting the expectations that came with being a Christian. There was certainly a concern for holiness, but in my experience there was far less emphasis on grace, the work of Christ, and the heart from which obedience ought to flow.
When I was twenty-eight, I walked into a church one person and, in a very real sense, walked out another. I heard a simple presentation of the gospel and placed my faith and trust in Christ. The experience was dramatic for me, but what followed has been just as important. I discovered a deep love for Christ, for His people, and for His Word. I began reading Scripture and theology voraciously, trying to understand the faith that had suddenly become more than something I had merely grown up around. Christianity was no longer a collection of rules to keep; it was the announcement of what God had done for sinners in Christ, and that changed the way I understood everything else.
The Path Toward Ministry
About two years after my conversion, I began seriously considering vocational ministry. Teaching had always come naturally to me, and I had long enjoyed learning something deeply and then helping other people understand it. As I became more immersed in Scripture and theology, that instinct took on a new direction. I found myself continually thinking,This is incredible. People need to know this. The more I learned, the more I wanted to teach, and the more I wanted to spend my life helping others know Christ, understand His Word, and grow in the faith.
My original academic plan was to pursue history and become a teacher. Through the encouragement of my pastor at the time, I changed course and began studying Christian studies instead. Later, a professor encouraged me to pursue pastoral ministry more directly, which eventually brought me to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and, through that path, to Christ Our Hope Church in Wake Forest. What began as a growing desire to teach the faith eventually developed into an opportunity to serve the local church directly, first through ministry preparation and then as Youth Ministry Lead at Christ Our Hope.
What I Want Ministry to Accomplish
The aim of my ministry is fairly simple: I want to present the people entrusted to my care mature in Christ. I want those I serve to know what they believe, understand why they believe it, be able to defend it, and know how to share it with others. More than that, I want them to become Christians whose faith is rooted deeply enough to endure beyond a particular program, teacher, season of life, or ministry environment. Especially in youth ministry, I do not want to build a separate little world that students eventually graduate out of. I want to help form Christians who know the Scriptures, love Christ, love His church, participate meaningfully in the life of the local congregation, and continue growing in grace throughout their lives.
That conviction is closely connected to my belief in the ordinary means of grace. I am not especially interested in building ministry around spectacle, novelty, or constant attempts to manufacture extraordinary experiences. God has given His church ordinary means through which He ordinarily works: the Word, prayer, the sacraments, worship, fellowship, discipline, and the patient work of Christian discipleship. Those things may not always appear impressive, but they are the ordinary instruments God has appointed for forming His people. My desire is to build ministry around those things and to trust God to use them.
Preparing for Pastoral Ministry
I am continuing to prepare formally for pastoral ministry as well. I came under the care of presbytery in 2025 and have been learning what it means to prepare for ordained ministry under the oversight of the church. I expect to complete my undergraduate degree in pastoral ministry in December 2026 and begin the Master of Divinity program at Reformed Theological Seminary in January 2027.
I am grateful that my preparation is happening alongside actual ministry in the local church, where theological study is constantly being tested and applied in the ordinary work of teaching, discipling, preaching, serving, and caring for people.
Why “Ordinary Faithfulness”?
The name Ordinary Faithfulness grows out of those same convictions. We often imagine the Christian life as a progression from one extraordinary spiritual experience to another. There certainly are seasons in which God works in striking and memorable ways, and my own conversion was one of them. But most of the Christian life is not lived in extraordinary moments. We work, raise children, worship with the church, care for our families, do our jobs, keep our commitments, repent of our sins, serve our neighbors, and get up the next morning to do it again.
That ordinary life is filled with opportunities for faithfulness. Honoring Christ while preaching a sermon matters, but so does honoring Him while changing a diaper. Faithfulness matters in theological study, but it also matters in the way we speak to our spouse, treat a coworker, manage our responsibilities, raise our children, serve our church, and conduct ourselves when no one is watching. Many of us may never do anything that the world would regard as extraordinary. Every one of us, however, is called to be faithful in the ordinary things God places before us. That is what Ordinary Faithfulness means to me.
The Things I Love to Study
Outside of my formal ministry work, much of my intellectual life revolves around philosophy, theology, and history. I have been interested in philosophy and worldview questions since before my conversion, and Christianity did not remove that interest so much as transform it. I am fascinated by questions about how we understand reality, knowledge, morality, human nature, and the life of the mind in light of Christ. Theology naturally occupies much of the same territory for me. I enjoy digging deeply into Scripture, understanding why Christians believe what they believe, and tracing how the truths of Scripture have been articulated and defended throughout the history of the church.
History is another enduring interest. I believe we are profoundly indebted to those who came before us, and that we do ourselves a disservice when we imagine that the important questions began with our generation. Christians have spent centuries thinking carefully about Scripture, doctrine, church, culture, philosophy, and the Christian life. We stand on their shoulders. At the same time, history offers a remarkable opportunity to observe the providence of God across generations. History is not merely a collection of disconnected events; it is moving toward an end determined by God, and studying where we have been helps us think more carefully about where we are and where we are going.
Family
Most importantly, I am a husband and father. My wife, Morgan, and I have been married for eleven years, and we have five children ranging in age from six to seventeen. Ministry, study, and preparation for pastoral service are important parts of my life, but they take place within the more fundamental calling to love and serve my family faithfully.
In many ways, that too is part of what Ordinary Faithfulness is about: learning to honor Christ in the responsibilities He has actually placed in front of us, trusting that a life of ordinary obedience offered to Him is never insignificant.