I am a pastor, teacher, author, clergy and church leadership coach, speaker and presenter, and blogger.

My passion is twofold yet simple: first, to help people know Jesus—not know about Jesus, but to know Jesus intimately, to abide in him which, after all, is what Jesus calls us to do and, second, to help people better love others as Jesus calls us to love them.

I write about this, teach and preach about this, coach about this, and do my best every day to live this.

Yet this was not always my life-defining ambition.

Growing up in Texas, my life-defining ambition included at the age of four wanting to be a garbage collector, followed in roughly chronological order over the next decade-and-a-half by wanting to be a letter carrier, geographer (I love maps and atlases), writer, zoologist, doctor, television writer/producer, and a biographer, none of which actually came to pass. I instead earned an MA and PhD and discovered I loved to teach, which led to a career in academia, spending the better part of 20 years at both large state universities and private liberal arts colleges teaching about mass media and culture. I published widely in my academic field and worked as a media consultant for both human service non-profits and broadcasting organizations like Yle (which is to Finland what the BBC is to the UK).

Ministry, in case you hadn’t noticed, was conspicuously absent from my vocational aspirations. I was raised in the Presbyterian church but left as soon as I could, not because I lost my faith but because I became indifferent to it. Years of trying to heal deep wounds in unhealthy ways led to a middle-of-the-night epiphany that Jesus Christ is the best hope for healing not only a broken human like me but a broken world. Jesus gathered up all the pieces that had once been me, put them together again, and set me on a path of transformation and wholeness which led, astonishingly, to a call to ministry. I left my tenured faculty position for seminary and, in the last 25 years, have served two congregations, one in Texas and the one I serve now, Central Presbyterian Church in Longmont, Colorado.

I love the mountains, cycling, reading, all kinds of music, and—as proof we live by faith and not by sight—the Chicago Cubs. I’m married and, with my wife Terry who is a gifted Interior Designer, have two adult children.