What is your philosophy of ministry?

Jesus meets you where you’re at, but He’s not content to leave you where you’re at. And His mission is my mission.

With those outside the church, the goal is Jesus. With those inside the church, the goal is more Jesus. It’s relational, not transactional. It connects principle and practice in head, heart, and hands.

As one way that it touches down, consider how I approach the podcast… #ForTheHope. The truth is that you can go anywhere and hear a great voice. But what if ‘reading through the Bible together’ means doing it like we’re drinking coffee and commenting along the way, leaving in the “keepin’ it real” moments, and actually responding to real listener pastoral needs, questions, and prayer requests?

Because that’s what I do every single day.

We do it every single day because we need spiritual food daily (just like we need physical food daily).

So what does this have to do with pastoring a church?

Two words: curiosity and patience.

To me, that’s relational (versus transactional). It’s life described in relational, attitudinal, and biblical terms instead of programmatical, transactional terms.

Perhaps put another way, systems and programs should support relational development.

Preaching, teaching, small groups, gatherings for men or women or moms or seniors or students or food truck owners — to me, anyway — have the same objective: to encounter the living Christ. Don’t confuse the message and objective with the means/method. One is the goal, the other is the context.

In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.

What about your divorce(s)?

In my estimation, there are two compound questions here.

One, am I biblically divorced and free to remarry…and does anything here disqualify me from ministry? Two, is the person I marry biblically divorced and free to remarry?

To be fair, I’m shortening this a bit. I’ll blend both the story and the theology.

My first wife and I were not Christian when we married. On the contrary, I was a long-haired, pot-smoking musician who married someone with whom I had a one-night stand (and less than two months later, an abortion). Along the way (after she had an affair with the guy who was the best man at my wedding), I gave my life to Christ. 20 years and three children later, she decided she was done.

I was quite imperfect, of course. Along the way I processed all of this — pre-divorce (and there’s more to the story, during the divorce, and after the divorce — with a dear friend who’s also one of the references you’ll meet. At the time he was the head elder at a large Baptist church where we lived…and he was my accountability partner of many years. In other words, he knew — and still knows — the deepest levels of my failures and abilities.

In all of this, I realized that my temptation would be to self-justify and eisegete. So together we worked through — over months and years — whether or not I was a) biblically divorced and able to remarry and b) disqualified from ministry.

While I’ll happily share, I’ll spare you the theological argumentation. The “moment” came, tearfully, at a Denny’s breakfast a couple years later when he looked me in the eye and said, “You are not disqualified, you were abandoned.”

Fast forward many years.

Dating as a 50-something Christian is quite different. But the short version includes a way I learned to begin dates: to figure out if she’s biblically divorced and able to be remarried.

Along the way I meet, query, and marry, Kristine Szabo.

Besides early questions determining whether or not she was biblically divorced and in the clear to remarry, I asked another key question:

Are you willing to go wherever the Lord calls us?

I trust you can imagine how rare it is for a mid-;ive someone to say, “Yes, anywhere.”

She, even more than me, is a world traveler. In other words, she understands what it means to not be in the Pacific Northwest that we’ve both long called home.

But the heart of the issue is the issue of the heart. She, like I, will go to serve who and where the Lord calls us to serve.

Where are the links to your sermons?

Almost all of my preaching experience came in the five years I did pulpit supply for American Missionary Fellowship (now InReach). We served 13 small rural churches in my field.

The challenge is a) that was long before COVID forced everyone to stream online and b) these churches didn’t have A/V teams, webpages, or anything back then.

My most recent three as Ministry Resident at Journey Church Tacoma:

Living Faithfully in a Shaky World, Aug 17, 2025

Job Description of the Church (Acts 1:8), June 22, 2025

Wise Up to Shore Up (James 1:13-18), Feb 16, 2025

In the meantime, like I mentioned late in this intro story, I have demonstrable transferrable skills, solid theological education, and perhaps most importantly, a humble, willing-to-learn, pastor-elder qualified heart. It’s like I’ve got a lot of experience as a jazz musician, but if I join your rock band it’ll take a little time to adjust the chops. But it’s not my first rodeo.