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 knowJesus intimately, to abidein 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.

My life-defining ambition, in roughly chronological order, involved being a garbage collector, letter carrier, geographer (I love maps and atlases), writer, zoologist, doctor, television writer/producer, and a biographer. I ended up a university professor instead, spending 15 years teaching about communication and mass media.

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. But 30 years of wrong turns (sometimes seriouslywrong turns) resulted in the realization that Jesus Christ is the best hope not only for a broken human like me but for a broken world. Jesus put me back together and, astonishingly, called me to ministry. I left a 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.