ORIGIN STORY

I like a good origin story. The kind of story that began it all. (cue superhero music here) It is usually the superheroes that have these dramatic origin stories. My origin story isn’t surrounded by climactic events. I am not a superhero. (as if I really needed to say that) By most people’s estimation, my origin story is quite tame. However, I wanted to share what God has been doing in my life that leads me to share my experience and writings with you.

Many years ago, I took a class in grad school called “Spiritual Formation.” It was all about how our story is formed by God. It starts before we are born as God chooses our family, our location, and our siblings without consulting us. I’ll pause here if you want to shake your fist at God for giving you that “special” family member.

God weaves together consistent themes in our lives as we continue our journey toward Him. My dad is a minister. My dad’s dad was a minister. Despite my best efforts to run away from ministry, I am a minister too. My mom overcame a rough family life to become a devout Christian. God clearly invested in me by giving me a family who could teach me to follow Jesus.

I was raised in small-town America but faced several significant challenges early in my life. I won’t get into those now. At 16, I moved to Miami. I went from living in a town of a few thousand people to a city of a few million people overnight. I learned how to follow God against the grain of a drastically different culture. I see now that God formed me in safety, and put me through the fire to grow me toward Him.

Like many others, I learned so much from mentors along the way. I became close to many of my professors in college. I somehow got the opportunity to pray with the president of my university every week for 2 years! I cannot begin to express the gratitude from the spiritual giants that gave their time to me along the way.

When I was 22, I started in full-time youth ministry. It makes me shudder to think about how young I was when I began. I thought I knew what I was doing. I overestimated my influence, and I believed that I could influence teens by my own charisma to follow Jesus. (I am currently shaking my head while I think about my arrogance and stupidity.)

After 5 years in youth ministry, I saw that so much of the effort teaching teens to follow Christ was being undone by parents at home. I realized that if teens were going to learn how to follow Christ, their own parents needed to sit in the driver’s seat of discipleship. After communicating this to parents, the overwhelming response from parents was, “we don’t know how to teach our teens to follow Christ, but we want to!”

I wrote a couple short books on how parents could pass down faith to the next generation. God was changing lives around me. It is always surprising to watch what God can do! I began to feel God shifting my focus away from teens toward adults.

I noticed that many parents were going through the motions of passing down faith. Many parents started with good intentions and then flamed out because they were not really following Jesus themselves. They thought Christianity was just about attending church. I began to feel the call to disciple adults, but what did I know? Who was I at the grand age of 30 to disciple people 10 - 30 years older than me.

What I failed to realize is that God had been preparing me for this already. This was part of the story he was writing from the beginning. I still wanted to learn as much as I could on discipleship. I read books on discipleship. I joined multiple discipleship groups. My wife and I had two children and I had to learn how to teach my own kids about God. I began leading discipleship groups. I started leading leaders to lead discipleship groups. (say that five times fast) 

In February of 2018, we moved to Jacksonville, FL, so that I could serve as the lead minister. I didn’t realize just how strong God’s calling was to discipleship until we began asking God to reveal His vision for the church in Jacksonville. The answer came after months of discernment… relational discipleship. I couldn’t believe how consistent his message had been. God not only revealed the mission of the church I was leading but He unfolded the purpose of my life…. again! I began this blog just to have a place to share my thoughts on discipleship, real-life, practical biblical topics, and current events, hoping they will prove helpful to your own journey.

WHAT IS YOUR
ORGIN STORY?

I ask you to forgive my spelling and grammatical errors, for there will likely be many. I ask you to forgive me as I may share some thoughts that are raw, personal, and under-developed. I also hope that the things I share will be challenging to you and that you will take the time to ask the tough questions that help you grow. My prayer is that something I share through this blog will help you become an uncommon follower of an extraordinary God.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:

In what ways can you see God writing your story?

What are the themes that are most prevalent in your life?

Do you think God might be trying to tell you something through those themes?

What is God saying to you? What are you going to do about it?