Everything is borrowed.

Who I am

I'm a hopelessly broken sinner who has been radically saved by a hope-filled perfect Savior.  God has been so good to me.  I have been blessed with an amazing wife, Georgia, and two incredible children, Colby and Carly.  My family is my first and greatest responsibility.  I love them dearly and I am honored to serve as their shepherd first.  

 

I placed my faith and trust in Christ at the age of 4 years old. I grew up in a pastor’s home and the Lord called me to ministry at a very young age. I am humbled at that call and feel a great burden to do it faithfully, maximizing every moment to communicate the Word of God clearly and effectively and invest relationally in the lives of those around me. Watching people’s faith grow over the seasons of time is one of the most rewarding parts of my calling.  

 

Why I do this

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First, I want God to be glorified in His willingness to call me to the gospel ministry.  I want Him to be proud of that decision.  I want the Father to be honored as I serve faithfully in that calling.  I want those whom I touch to be overwhelmed with the glory and majesty of God.  

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Secondly, my heart is for people, both insiders and outsiders, and I love to see them impacted by the grace and mercy of our Lord.  No matter where we are on our journey, the grace of God can meet us there.  I want people to come face to face with their brokenness, but more importantly God's grace in the midst of their mess.  

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What do I believe

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I subscribe wholeheartedly to the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message which can be read in it's entirety here.

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What is my personal philosophy of ministry

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My philosophy of ministry is more of a journey than a statement.  There's a saying that says, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  While it may be true that leadership without accountability can lead eventually to corruption, it is better stated that power does not corrupt, it just reveals our corruption.  I credit gospel rapper and pastor Trip Lee for that revelation.  Such was the case with me in ministry.  

 

Like any zealous and naive novice in ministry, my early years were essentially fueled by my own ambition.  While God, by His grace, had gifted me with certain traits that serve the body well, I felt it was my job to bring the hustle to the gospel court and prove myself as a player on the King's team.  God somehow, in His mercy, blessed my pitiful efforts at ministry and the church I was serving in began to grow.  As the church grew, so did my ego, and the expectations I put on myself to manufacture growth on a systemic level.  The problem was that this was all very wrong, sinfully wrong, and it would hinder and eventually prohibit any potential for genuine ministry.  See what subconsciously happens when you began to take the organism that is the church and transform it into an organization is that you lose your grip on the supernatural nature of your ministry.  I took into my own hands the work that can only be done by the spirit of God, and sadly I began to view people as pawns on the giant chess board of the church.  I placed judgments on the value of people based solely on what they could do to move the church forward and I begin to "minister" to people on that weighted scale.  This approach to ministry was all rooted in my unhealthy view of the church, my own insecurities as a leader, and my own unrealistic expectations of success.  I began to tie my worth as a person to the success of the church and consequently my identity as a leader began to be defined by my performance; by what I could do and what others could do for me, rather than who I was in Christ and who God wanted those around me to become.  I would get email after email from one church growth organization after another telling me to try this, to utilize their system, to sign up for their coaching program, and I took the bait; hook, line, and sinker.  I could feel the pressure to perform mounting, the pace was almost unbearable, and the temptation to artificially manufacture what appeared to be success became stronger and stronger.  I needed to get off the wheel before I started to burn out, but I didn't know how.  

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Then by the sovereign hand of God, I was mercifully rescued from the rat race that can so often characterize vocational ministry.  I was directed to a book called Shrink: faithful ministry in a church growth culture by Tim Suttle.  Pardon the pun, but the book was a not-so-subtle jolt to my systemetized, well-coached cancerous mindset.  It sunk my church growth battleship and challenged me to think about ministry, and everything else in my life, through a completely new lens, the lens of faithfulness.  I talk more about this in a talk I gave entitled, "Everything is borrowed."  In the book, Suttle challenges us to remember that the first and greatest requirement of anyone who had been given a trust is that they be found faithful, according to 1 Corinthians 4:2.  That revelation radically changed everything about my life.  It altered my philosophy ministry in that it changed success as being something that was "way out there governed by the growth of a church" and placed it squarely into the hands of this present moment.  It released me from the pressure of expectation and diverted my energy to faithfulness on this day, in this moment, and, for the first time in my life, success seemed possible, even feasible.  So at the end of every day, I take an inventory of my day, asking myself was I faithful with this day? In other words, did I make God proud that He entrusted this moment, this conversation, this ministry opportunity, this counseling session, this sermon preparation, this sermon delivery, this leadership training; did I make God pleased that He entrusted these opportunities to me today?  

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This was a total gamechanger for me.  Suddenly, I wasn't so focused on growing the church as I was growing people.  There's an old adage that states that you can use people to grow the church, or you can use the church to grow people.  It made every conversation, every prayer, every sermon have purpose and meaning because I saw it as a chance to be faithful.  At once, I was perfectly present in every conversation, I looked people in the eye again, I was totally focused in the study, I was pouring myself into every counseling opportunity.  It is God's job to build His church, by the way, He promised He would in Matthew 16:18; and it's my job to be faithful.  This works in every area of life; every relationship, every dollar, every conversation, we should live to make God pleased that He entrusted us with "that," whatever "that" may be.  An added bonus to this philosophy of ministry is that God promises that if we are faithful over a few things, He will make us rulers over many.

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I don't have all the answers in ministry, I don't possess every skill necessary, I don't even claim to, at least not anymore.  I just want to be faithful because, in the end, everything is borrowed and we're accountable for it.  In the twilight of my ministry, I want to hear the Lord say, "Well done, good and FAITHFUL servant."