Personal Side

Family

My family is one of the most important parts of my life.

I have been married for 27 years, and my wife and I have four children — one daughter and three sons.

I also come from a large family. Growing up with seven brothers and four sisters gave me an early education in relationships, personalities, conflict, forgiveness, loyalty, and community.

Family has taught me lessons leadership books never could.

Today, I don’t see being a husband and father as separate from leadership.

It is one of the most important places where leadership is tested.

Outside Ministry

Away from work and ministry, I enjoy:

I am naturally a reader, thinker, teacher, and builder.

I enjoy taking complicated ideas and making them understandable, and I enjoy taking ideas that exist only on paper and developing a strategy for turning them into something real.

One outlet for that instinct has been creative writing outside the theological space — developing long-form, serialized fiction for a young adult audience, written and produced as audio-narrated storytelling. It’s a different kind of “building” than consulting or ministry. Still, it draws on the same underlying skill: taking a world that exists only in imagination and giving it structure, characters, and momentum episode by episode.

A Personal Challenge and What It Taught Me

The most difficult season of my adult life also became one of the most formative. My departure from pastoral leadership forced me to confront failure in a way that education, leadership experience, and professional success could not solve. It taught me that repentance is more than regret, that accountability is more than having people around you, that character matters more than charisma. That restoration is a process, not an announcement.

Most importantly, it deepened my understanding of grace. Grace does not minimize sin or eliminate consequences. Grace meets us in the truth, and then refuses to leave us there.

My story today is therefore not a story about pretending failure never happened. It is a story about what happens after failure when a person chooses repentance, accountability, humility, faith, and the long road of restoration. That is a conversation I believe many men desperately need.

What Makes Me Human

I have experienced success.

I have also experienced failure.

I have led large organizations and sat in rooms where major decisions were made.

I have earned doctoral degrees and taught others.

But I have also had seasons where I had to reconsider what leadership, calling, success, identity, and grace actually mean.

I don’t have every answer.

I am still learning.

I am still growing.

I am still being shaped.

And increasingly, I believe some of the most important things we can give another person are truth, wisdom, presence, accountability, and the willingness to say:

“I have walked through difficult places too. Let me walk with you.”