I've served in pastoral ministry for 30 years, but only became a true Christian 16 years ago. Today, at 46, I walk in real accountability, vulnerability, and authenticity — pure evidence of God's grace.

My childhood "faith" was rooted in fear of Hell, not love for Jesus. Growing up in a pastor's home, I prayed whatever I had to in order to avoid judgment, not to know God. But in November 2008, during a church planter assessment in St. Louis, the gospel finally became good news to me. I learned that Jesus lived perfectly for me and died as my substitute, and that salvation is about gaining God Himself — not just escaping Hell.

For years I tried to believe without God-given faith. I preached for fourteen years, but with guilt and shame, not grace. My early decisions for Jesus at ages 5, 12, and 15 lacked repentance or actual discipleship. Real repentance, I came to see, isn't just turning from sin but turning to Jesus for what I'd been trying to find elsewhere — identity, worth, meaning, satisfaction. When God granted me saving faith in Jesus' performance and not my own, everything changed. My first words afterward to my wife were: "If what I just heard is true, it changes everything."

For most of my life, Jesus was simply my way out of Hell — not my way into the Father's arms. But through God's steadfast pursuit of me and His ongoing work of grace, I learned that I needed far more than moralism or effort. I needed God Himself.

My call to ministry goes back to age five, when I already knew I wanted to be a preacher. I am a fourth-generation church ministry leader, carrying forward my great-grandfather's prayer that his descendants would serve Jesus in His church. My specific call to plant a church in Nashville came in 2007, but my sense of calling to pastoral ministry has been there as long as I can remember.