About

I am the Lead Pastor at the Living Hope Church – Maryville Campus in Maryville, Missouri, a former staff member with the Northwest Missouri Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and a former chaplain and player for the Division 2 National Champion Northwest Missouri State Bearcat football team.

This is my personal blog.  It is focused on helping ordinary people, like you and I, connect with our extraordinary God. My aim is to help you lead and disciple with greater intentionality so that you can turn everyday life into an extraordinary legacy of influence and impact.

I write about doctrine, theology, leadership, discipleship, culture and the church. My goal is to create relevant content that you can put to practical use in your daily life as you devote yourself to Jesus and his mission.

To make sure you don’t miss my newest posts you can subscribe to my blog via RSS (at the top right hand corner of the home page) or via email (on the right hand side of the home page).

Top Posts

If you’re new to my site, you may find it helpful to start with the my most viewed posts.  Here are my top two per category.

Church

–Dear Christian Part 1: What you need to know about the world we live in.

–Dear Christian Part 2: What you need to know about the Christianity you grew up with.

Culture

–Justice for Daisy (A Biblical Response to the Daisy Coleman Rape Case)

–Jesus Is A Better Santa

Discipleship

–Always Be Prepared

–The 3 Kinds of Discipleship

Doctrine

–Jesus: Central & Supreme

–The Cross: God’s Wrath Satisfied or His Love Magnified?

Leadership

–Who’s In Your Bullpen?

–Growing in Gospel Fluency

Miscellaneous

–Where’s Waldo?

–Reflections from a National Champion: An Interview with Bearcat Quarterback Trevor Adams

Theology

–A Theology of Manhood

–Starting Spiritual Conversations Part 1

My Biography

I grew up in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska in a family of four.  My father was a hardworking computer salesman who was present, but not always there.  My mother was a work at home mom who spent her days laboring to raise my younger brother and I and her nights taking care of the house and the bills.

Our neighborhood was filled with boys our age. We spent most of our time running around with the neighbor kids.  Unfortunately, I was the black sheep on the block.  I wasn’t good at sports, wore thick glasses and nerdy clothes and always managed to be the one who got the group in trouble.  As a result, I got beat up and left out a lot.

Over time, I muscled up, developed some talent and got descent at football. By God’s grace, I started seeing success on the field and slowly gained the respect of my peers.  I quickly became the stereotypical jock.  By the time I was a high school junior, I became your typical insecure, troubled, arrogant, womanizing athlete.

At age 17, however, the Lord took hold of my life in a radical way.  Life changed quickly and I soon found myself desperate to make Jesus known to my peers at any cost.  I preached my first sermon to my high school youth group at age 18 and then left to play college football at Northwest Missouri State.

While at Northwest I, by God’s grace, helped revitalize a dying ministry on the Bearcat football team with two of my teammates.  Over the course of five years that ministry grew from three guys to over sixty on a team of one hundred, most of them unchurched.  I then had the privilege of co-founding another ministry in 2012 called EXCELeration Leadership to help athletes at Northwest start similar ministries on their teams.

In 2009, I joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the largest Christian sports ministry in the world, as a staff member and served six counties until July of 2014.  While serving with FCA, my supervisor, Wes Simmons and I had the privilege of spearheading the country’s first EXCELeration Leadership Camp, designed to empower coaches and their student-athlete leaders to impact their specific teams for Jesus Christ through team specific ministry.

I am now the lead pastor of the Living Hope Church Maryville Campus in Maryville, MO where I live and do ministry with my wife Tierney, whom I met in college.  I have preached more than 400 times in the last nine years, written more than 200 articles and am in the process of co-authoring my first book.  Most of my writing comes from the lessons I have learned as a chaplain for the Bearcat football team and a member at Living Hope Church.

In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my wife, reading, eating, sports and working out. My ambition is to glorify God by planting churches, preaching the Bible, making disciples, developing leaders and saving the lost. I have worked as a mechanics assistant at a tire shop, as a battery handler at Energizer/Everready and as a Youth Counselor at a juvenile delinquent facility. I am an ordinary dude helping ordinary people lead and disciple with greater intentionality.

Additional Content

You can view my sermons from Living Hope here.

View additional content related to Living Hope and FCA here.