I was born in Gatesville, Texas in 1978 to a school teacher and an army sergeant. My mother knew most everyone in the town through teaching school and coaching girls sports. My older brother, was “Mr. Popular,” the class president, and had lots of friends. Dad was kind but shy. We also had a large circle of acquaintances through our church. Although our house was small, there were always friends and families coming and going through our home. As a teenager I gained a sister when my family took in a girl from a troubled situation in our neighborhood. We learned to stay busy with people and activities. I was fortunate to play sports in school, be part of the band, a choir, and make good grades.

After graduating high school I attended the University of Texas in Austin. There I encountered many things that shaped my life permanently. I had a crisis of faith very early on in college and floundered spiritually for a couple of years. Meanwhile, I majored in Linguistics and immersed myself into arcane languages like Biblical Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern Spanish. I joined a comedy group on campus and wrote for a humor magazine called the Texas Travesty, did sketch comedy each week on the student TV channel, and tried my hand at being a stand-up comedian. I once opened for Jimmy Fallon. Of course, I was part of the amateur student comedians and he was an up-and-coming guest from Saturday Night Live. Two of the greatest things of my life happened near the end of college. The first is that I found true faith in Jesus Christ and it transformed my life. The second is that I met my future wife through a Christian student group called Longhorn Life.

As graduation approached I scrapped plans to be a linguist and Bible translator for Wycliffe and instead decided to get married. A job with Wycliffe would require me to live and work in a remote area of the world with a people group who have an unwritten language. So I graduated in May, started work at my first job in June, and we married in August. My wife and I stayed in Austin where I worked for a publishing company. It was a boring and soul-sucking job. Eventually, she graduated and found a job working for a Bible software company. When a position opened up at her company I applied and “jumped ship.” Although the Bible software company was definitely more interesting than my previous job I was still restless after a few years. Since I had become a Christian I felt a strong internal push to become a pastor or missionary. In prayer I had commited to God to do anything with my life that He wanted me to. Early one morning while I was getting ready for work, the telephone rang and my mom, through heaving sobs, told me my dad was dead. He had died unexpectedly in his sleep on his 59th birthday.

I grieved deeply for my dad that year but his death was a catalyst for me to leave my job. I reasoned that God had been telling me to be in vocational ministry and that I had told him that I would but had not followed through. Since my father died young, I didn't want to die young too without obeying the Lord. I applied to a seminary (a graduate school for vocational ministry) and was accepted. In the summer of 2006 we sold our home in Austin and I, my wife, and 1-year-old baby moved to a tiny townhouse on the campus of the seminary in Fort Worth. To pay the bills I did contract work for my old company and we lived off savings. The contract work petered out so I did a lot of part-time (and minimum wage) jobs: working at the seminary warehouse, being a grading assistant to a professor, running the computer lab, and being an itinerant preacher. A typical week went like this: Monday through Friday I worked in the warehouse before and after attending classes; Saturday I checked people into the computer lab at the library; early Sunday morning I drove with my pregnant wife and baby to an out of town church to preach and then drove back. Somehow I graded papers in my spare time and completed my graduate level assignments. I've never been so busy or so poor as I was in seminary. My wonderful wife kept our kids and tiny home going while I was in class or working. In the three years of seminary we managed to have 2 more kids to bring our total to 3. Thankfully, one of the churches that I had been a guest preacher for hired me to be their pastor. I would still have to drive down each week while I finished the last year of school but they paid me $300 a week. Incredibly, this was more than I was making a week from 3 part-time jobs so I let them go. God is good!

You might think from what I have described that I had an awful time at seminary but that is not true. It was hard, it was a Christian boot camp, but it was wonderful. God renewed me as I learned about him through his word. He surrounded me with other wonderful Christians from the students and professors, I also learned to rely on Him daily in prayer. After I graduated seminary, we left Fort Worth to move to my hometown of Gatesville. Yes, that’s right, the church I had been pastoring was in my hometown. By this time, our kids were 4, 2, and a newborn. With a growing family it would be hard to continue living on $300 a week. So I did what many a Baptist pastor had done before: I got another job and ministered as a bi-vocational pastor. Since my mom had been a school teacher in my hometown for many years, and I had graduated through the school system there, I still knew many teachers and some administrators. I reasoned that I could be a school teacher and a pastor at the same time. I just had to get the job first. I took my résumé, walked into the school administrative building, and talked with the assistant superintendent. She had been my 8th grade Science teacher many years before. I told her I was applying for the Spanish teacher position. She was enthused but cautioned me that they could only hire me if I had completed the alternative teaching certification program and passed the state competency tests for Spanish. I told her that it wouldn’t be a problem and they gave me a probationary contract. In the summer of 2009: 1) I graduated seminary, 2) completed a teaching certification program and passed the tests, 3) welcomed a new baby, 4) moved / bought a house, and 5) started a new job.

The stress of doing all these things left me in emotional shambles by October. There are probably many difficult and frustrating jobs in the world. Being a teacher and being a pastor are two of them. Being a first-year teacher is particularly challenging. Any job that involves instructing and persuading people to do things is difficult because people are complex. Being a pastor is a great responsibility because you care for people’s souls and you know their struggles. As a pastor it is also difficult to escape the feeling that any problem in the church is your fault somehow. I fell into a deep depression that I couldn’t shake. God was still good to me but sometimes God lets his people wander through the wilderness for testing. Eventually, the cloud lifted but I grew restless again. An opportunity arose for me to be a full-time pastor in Washington state. I was surprised when my résumé for the position was considered, then I was interviewed, and then flown to the church to be considered. As you might have guessed, we moved again. This time we moved 2,000 miles to a small community outside Spokane, Washington.

Washington state is beautiful. It is just like Texas except it has mountains, and trees, and seasons. The summers are short and tolerable in Washington. Texas is beautiful in its own way. But it is easy to see why the people who settled it tended to be tough and independent. It takes hard work sometimes to love Texas. Washington is certainly the prettier of the sisters. The people at the new church were kind to me and good to my family. The church was small and had many challenges. While we lived there child number four was born. Three winters passed and after much prayer I decided to move back to Texas. Isolation from family and money were factors in our return.

I took a job teaching Spanish again in a small town 50 miles south of Houston. I was hopeful that a ministry position in the area would open up for me but it never did. Starting over in Texas was difficult because I wondered if I had left the job God had given me too soon or when it got difficult. We discovered we were pregnant again but sadly this little one did not make it. We had never had a miscarriage before and it hit me hard. During this time I often had irrational thoughts that God was punishing me. Of course I know that all the punishment I rightly deserve was poured on Jesus on the cross (see Romans 3:21-26) but you think stupid things when you are grieving. In addition to teaching, I began coaching as part of my job. Yelling at football players affected my voice and my ability to sing. I had been singing in church for years as part of leading a worship team. Now, when I attended church all I did was sit on the pew and tried to sing with my strained voice. No longer did I pastor, nor preach, nor lead the singing. I realized eventually that I was still grieving but it was for a dream that had died. You see, once I went to seminary I thought I knew how the rest of my life would go. Going to seminary and becoming a pastor was part of that dream. But when that ends, then what?

Time moved on. Child number five and six were born. I’m still a teacher. But I have slowly returned to focusing on my identity in Christ. I realize that I am not what I do, but who I am, and more importantly whose I am. No dream, even a good one, should be placed above Jesus. I assumed that the Lord wanted to use me to be a pastor of a successful church for the rest of my life. There is nothing wrong with that desire or dream. However, God directs our lives and we are simply called to be faithful to trust him and obey him in whatever position we are in. Like my mom, I have now met hundreds of people in my small town through teaching and coaching them or their kids. I have tried to be a faithful witness of the transforming power of Jesus Christ in the way I speak and act and love. Many students have told me I am patient. I can attest that I am not naturally this but I do know that patience is a fruit of the Spirit. I praise God that they can see him through me at times.

I hope I have turned a corner and started giving back again. I began compiling resources and posting them for free on the internet to help Christians study the Bible and grow in their faith. I also began gathering and posting language related resources because if I can use what knowledge I have to help someone else then why wouldn’t I do it? The Christian life is certainly about giving. Jesus said to his disciples before sending them out to heal, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of heaven, “You received without paying; give without pay.” (Matthew 10:8).