From Childhood to College
God’s faithfulness to me is linked with his faithfulness to my parents. They both grew up Roman Catholic. When I came along, they had recently left the Roman Catholic Church for conservative evangelicalism. And yet, their departure from the Roman Catholic Church was still recent enough that my grandmother persuaded them to have me baptized as a baby. This was when the first seeds of faith were sown into my life.
At age five, I prayed the “sinner’s prayer” after my dad shared the gospel with me. But after I read the first Left Behind book at age ten, I was terrified about my eternal destiny. After all, I could not directly remember my mindset at age five. Was I really sincere, or did I merely pray the prayer to make my dad happy? Searching for certainty, I lost many hours of sleep worrying that my family members were being raptured without me that very moment.
Although my views on the rapture have since changed, I look back upon this spiritual struggle with gratitude to God for providing me with guides, my pastor and parents, who pointed me to the Bible to prevent me from turning my faith inward on itself, from basing my salvation in my sincerity rather than on God’s faithfulness to redeem. Although I would not now advise this to my younger self (I view my Roman Catholic infant baptism as my valid baptism), I was baptized again at age ten, in a public declaration of my rededicated faith.
In junior high, God used a friendship with a missionary-kid and a trip to Brazil to revitalize my faith and give me a love for foreign languages and cultures. In high school, God used a committed youth pastor to encourage my development into a student leader and worship leader. As a missions bookend to my high school experience, I was given a glimpse of “how God could use me for his glory” when our youth group traveled to Mexico City and I led bilingual worship and translated for my peers.
After returning from Mexico, however, my first opportunity to preach wrecked my plans for the future (I wanted to be a mechanical engineer). As I prepared my first sermon, it bothered me that I knew much more about calculus, physics, and Spanish than I did about Scripture. Wanting to learn more about the gospel to preach that good news to others, I changed my major from Mechanical Engineering to Pre-seminary Bible just three weeks before my first semester of college.
College (Cedarville University)
I had a lot going for me as I entered college. Although I am the son of a bricklayer and a homemaker, I was able to go to a Christian university because God miraculously provided a full-ride scholarship. Furthermore, the conservative Baptist environment of my high school days had given me a love for the gospel, for prayer, and for studying Scripture.
In college, I fell in love with a nursing student from Pennsylvania (we got married during the summer before our senior year, August 4, 2012). I also fell in love with the gospel. My college theology professors were invaluable guides, first revealing the shallowness of my theology, and then pointing out the depths of the theological task. They demonstrated what it looked like to be in love with the God of the gospel and to be faithful with the intellectual gifts he provides. I emerged from their classrooms wanting to advance God’s kingdom by investing in the Church academically, pastorally, and globally as part- professor, pastor, and missionary.
Nevertheless, my college years ended on a painful note. In what I now refer to as the “Cedarville Purge,” the most conservative constituents of the university exacted revenge for a shift to moderate evangelicalism that had taken place in the years just before I arrived as a freshman. My professors were forced out because being a moderate evangelical was too liberal for the university’s new vision. I and others protested the shameful actions of the trustees and administrators—but we failed. Although God was gracious to provide other jobs for my professors, it was a very painful experience during a formative period in my life.
Seminary (Beeson Divinity School)
Given the unhappy ending to my college career, I am extremely thankful that God led me to Beeson Divinity School and St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Birmingham, AL. The theological tradition and breadth of Anglicanism, as well as the ecumenical spirit of Beeson, were breaths of fresh air and balms to my wounded spirit. In not throwing out the theological baby with the bathwater, it was healthy for me to step back from the prophetic fervor of my final days at Cedarville, and instead to devote myself to being faithful with the gifts and opportunities God gave me in Alabama.
I learned a lot as a seminarian. And I was also given the opportunity as a youth minister at St. Peter’s to teach others about the God of the gospel who has captured my thoughts. The joys and challenges of student ministry reinforced my identity as a student and a teacher. While I used to think I could be satisfied as a professor even without a pastoral role in the Church, my time as a youth minister in seminary changed that. If forced to choose between the Church and the academy, I would choose pastoral ministry every time. I was ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) in October 2016, shortly before completing my M.Div.
Ph.D. and The Priesthood (Wheaton College, 2017-2021)
Nevertheless, in the interests of becoming a pastor-theologian, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. I entered the Ph.D. program in theology at Wheaton College in 2017. During that time, God blessed me and my family in many ways. He provided fulfilling work as a Nurse Practitioner for my wife, Rachel. He provided me with a part-time job as the Managing Editor of Anglican Compass. And he also blessed us with two wonderful children (Eva in July 2018, Andrew in July 2020).
Another blessing was our church family at Church of the Savior in Wheaton. When we left Alabama, I was really anxious about finding a place to serve as clergy while a full-time doctoral student. Our rector, Kevin Miller, was incredibly supportive as a mentor. He gave me opportunities to serve and he sponsored my ordination to the priesthood in November 2019—all while allowing my roles in preaching, pastoral care, student ministry, worship, church website, and church administration to change over time as my Ph.D. commitments necessitated.
Nevertheless, I also faced several challenges in these years. I ran into huge dissertation roadblocks right before the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, when I lost access to my library carrel for 5 months. These obstacles, plus employment uncertainty, the arrival of our second child, and increased isolation from the church due to virtual-only worship made 2020 one of the most difficult years of my life.
I made the decision to start medication and therapy for depression and anxiety in fall 2020. In early winter, after a lot of prayer, deliberation, and seeking counsel, I made the difficult decision to take a leave of absence from my Ph.D. program for the sake of my mental health and family.
The Unraveling (2021-2022)
What I didn’t know in early 2021 was that I was entering the most painful season of my life—one that would fundamentally change my relationship with the institutional church and with ministry itself.
Shortly after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the bishops of my denomination issued a “pastoral statement” on sexuality that, among other things, discouraged usage of the phrase “Gay Christian.” A celibate gay layman in the ACNA approached me about signing an open letter titled “Dear Gay Anglicans” that would reassure LGBTQ Christians they were loved and welcomed in the denomination. The letter didn’t disagree with the ACNA’s position on sexuality—it simply expressed pastoral concern for gay Christians who felt pushed away. I signed it.
The letter caused a mini international Anglican controversy. I was labeled “woke” and heretical by what I call the “Anglican Alt-Right”—a faction within the ACNA that was vocally supportive of Trump and opposed to women’s ordination. Combined with my support for women priests and my opposition to Christian nationalism, I had become toxic within significant portions of the denomination.
My part-time job at Anglican Compass ended due to disagreements about the ministry’s direction. I began searching for church positions but found nothing. Then I heard about a Director of Marketing position at Trinity School for Ministry near Pittsburgh. I applied, interviewed twice, and it went fantastically. The Dean told me they just needed to get the paperwork in order. I flew home elated—after years of struggle, I would finally have steady employment that kept me connected to both church and academy.
Within 48 hours, I received a job offer with a 48-hour response window. Before I could return the signed agreement, I received a brief email: the offer had been rescinded due to unexpected backlash from board members and donors.
This took the wind out of my sails. The message was clear: my theological positions and pastoral concerns had made me unemployable in the institutions I’d spent my adult life preparing to serve.
We still moved to Pittsburgh, where I completed a coding bootcamp and transitioned into software engineering. I asked Wheaton for another year’s leave but eventually decided to quit the Ph.D. program entirely. Wheaton granted me an MA in exchange for my completed doctoral coursework.
We still attended an ACNA church in Pittsburgh for a time, and in December 2022, we welcomed our third child, Eleanor. But when we decided to move back to the Toledo area in 2023 to be closer to family, I officially resigned from ordained ministry in the ACNA. The combination of the denomination’s increasingly anti-LGBTQ stance, the ACNAtoo sexual abuse scandal and inadequate response, and my loss of trust in most of the bishops made it clear I couldn’t remain in good conscience. I resigned in good standing and remain technically ordained, though I’m not licensed to serve anywhere.
Where I Am Now (2022-Present)
I went through a period when I seriously considered walking away from Christianity altogether. The institution had hurt me deeply. The people I’d trusted had shown me that my concern for the marginalized made me a liability. The theological certainties I’d been raised with had crumbled under closer examination of Scripture and church history.
But try as I might, I couldn’t walk away. There’s something about Jesus—his particular concern for the poor, the powerless, and the outsider—that I couldn’t abandon in intellectual honesty. And there’s something about the Resurrection that kept pulling me back, even when I wanted to leave.
So I’ve remained a Christian, though my theology has evolved significantly in more progressive directions. For example:
- I’ve become convinced of Christian universalism—that hell is real and judgment is real, but that God’s redemptive love is more patient and powerful than we’ve been taught, and that eventually even the most stubborn sinner will be won over.
- I’m still working through questions about sexuality and marriage, though I’ve become convinced that God doesn’t care about these issues nearly as much as the church has made them seem.
- I no longer hold to biblical inerrancy in the way I was taught, though I still value Scripture deeply.
- And I care more than ever about immigrants, the poor, and the powerless—which means I can no longer support the Republican Party or the Christian nationalism that has captured so much of American evangelicalism.
I don’t know if I’ll ever return to ministry. What I do know is that I’m trying to follow Jesus—the Jesus who had harsh words for religious leaders who placed heavy burdens on people’s shoulders, who welcomed the outcasts and ate with sinners, who proclaimed good news to the poor. That’s the Jesus I can’t walk away from, even when the institutional church has often failed to reflect his character.
My journey from conservative evangelicalism through Anglicanism to where I am now has been painful and disorienting. But it’s also been honest. And in that honesty, I’ve found that Jesus remains worth following—not the Jesus of American civil religion or culture-war Christianity, but the Jesus of the Gospels, the one who was resurrected and who promises that love is stronger than death, that redemption is more powerful than judgment, and that God’s kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit.
I’m a software engineer now, a father of three, a husband, a former priest trying to figure out what faithful Christian witness looks like outside the structures I once thought were essential. I’m still a student and still a teacher at heart. But mostly, I’m someone who has learned that following Jesus is messier, more painful, and more grace-filled than I ever imagined when I first changed my major from engineering to ministry all those years ago.