I was raised in a Christian home. My family attended Southern Baptist churches. At the age of nine, God drew me to Himself and I began to follow Him. As God worked in my heart, I began to feel that He wanted me to do something special for Him. While a student at Georgia Tech, I served as a part-time youth director at a local church. Upon graduation, I moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and it was there that God really began to move me toward full-time ministry. God used my involvement in a large single adult ministry, especially as I began to teach Sunday School and lead discipleship groups, to convince me that He had given me gifts and abilities that He wanted me to use in full-time ministry.

During the summer of 1987, after my first full year at Dallas Seminary, God began a deep work of mercy in my soul from which thankfully I have yet to recover. Through the writings of Larry Crabb and R.C. Sproul, a study of the attributes of God, and the ministry of Christian counseling, God opened my eyes to the depth of my own personal depravity. He broke down barriers of faithlessness and caused me to see sins that I had never seen before. He showed me my inability to truly do and be good, and caused me to feel my deep need for Him as I had never felt it before. As my depravity became apparent, so did my need for a sovereign, yet loving God. Because of my sin, I, by necessity, live by the Doctrines of Grace and a continual application of the gospel.

I believe that the gospel should be the foundation of all of ministry efforts. The message of the gospel of grace is the only thing that can change a human heart, and heart change should be the focus of all ministry. The gospel is not about what we are supposed to do for God, but what he has done, and continues to do, for us through the perfect life and the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. This message is not for unbelievers only, but also for the people of God. We grow in Christ the same way that we are converted to Christ, not through Biblical principles, but by applying the gospel to every area of life. The Christian life is nothing more (or nothing less) than a lifetime of living out the implications of the cross.

After graduating from seminary, I served in several PCA churches in Montgomery, Alabama, as an intern, a stated supply, and then as associate pastor. It was also at that time that I went through the PCA’s Church Planting Assessment Center, and was given provisional approval to plant a church. I then served as pastor on staff at Perimeter Church in Johns Creek, Georgia, for almost six years. During that time, I did a variety of ministries—assimilation of newcomers, adult education, discipleship, small groups and leadership development. In May of 2000, I left Perimeter to plant a daughter church of Chestnut Mountain Presbyterian Church, Chestnut Mountain, Georgia. This was in conjunction with Perimeter Ministries, that church planting arm of Perimeter Church at that time. I served as organizing pastor and pastor of East Lanier Community Church until April 30, 2012.

I am now serving as Director of Church Planter Recruitment for the PCA’s Mission to North America (MNA). Since its beginning, East Lanier was heavily involved with church planting. In fact, as I was preparing to plant East Lanier, I prayed that God would use this new church as a place for young men to get trained and sent out into ministry, and God was pleased to do that in various ways. Three men who served on our staff have gone on to plant a church, and the current youth pastor was approved as a planter at a recent Assessment Center. I have served as a coach for four different church planters, was on the leadership team to help begin the North Georgia Church Planting Network, and served as a mentor for two additional church planters who did their church planting internship at East Lanier. Church planting is in my ministry blood, especially raising up new church planters. This new role will allow me to do that full-time and give me the privilege of making an impact on the next generation of church planters, and thus pastors, in the PCA.

As I told the elders at East Lanier of this new calling in ministry, they said, “Well, we don’t want you to leave, but we can’t imagine a better person for this position.”