If I told you half of the stuff that is true about me you probably would not believe me!  The other half of the stuff that is true about me would bore you to tears.  But I think you knowing a little bit about the journey of my life so far is important, and in some ways it might explain some of the things I say or post about.

I am from a lower-middle class blended family that lived in the middle of no where in the mid-west.  I worked on a farm.  The owner of the farm died, so instead of cutting meat at the only factory that was hiring at the time, the same factory where my parents worked, I decided to join the Army.  Some how I joined Special Forces, and became for lack of better terminology a “Green Beret” (yes I saw Rambo). 

Before the Army I went to church because there were some goodlooking girls in the youth group.  I was baptized, not sure if I was saved.  The Army changed me, church was not important any more.  I got married (22yrs now) had a kid (in college) and somehow the family wondered into church.  Please understand that I went to church, I didn’t participate in church…or God or anything.  Fast forward a decade or so… I started hearing what the pastor was saying.  At that time we were stationed in Okinawa, Japan and attending a Korean Presbyterian church with an American AME pastor for the english speakers.  Somehow what he was saying was getting through.  About this time I woke up in Thailand in my bunk but didn’t know how I got there….  Something had to change!

A few years later, God arranged some amazing stuff and I was forced to medically retire from the Army.  I had become credentialed, served as an associate pastor in a Korean Church and felt God calling me to pastor a church somewhere, I had no aspirations of doing anything but following God, so a small church accepted me as their pastor.  My first Sunday was Easter, and our church was hosting the Community Easter Sunrise Service!  What a welcome!  That church had to be razed due to termites, we built a new one.  That church had eleven people counting my family when we got there… it grew thanks to God’s grace and the last Christmas service we had there were 80 people there out of a town of about 2600.

At one point we stopped playing worship cds and began playing live thanks to some remarkable musicians.  That is when the end began.  One lady that I considered a friend, felt it was a sin to play “contemporary” worship songs in church, cds were okay but live music was not.  Eight months later I resigned, began college ministry in a college town, which was awesome, our ministry was primarily geared towards international students and we met a lot. 

There were some issues, we left that church not to another church or ministry… we left church

It was a terrible mess, and life was not good, but thanks to these wonderfully, loving , honest, and CRAZY group of folks that dubbed themselves the Island of Misfit Toys, I survived, my faith in the form that it was didn’t.

So I was a pastor, a senior pastor at one time, was on staff in a good size church and walked away…Why?

I got tired of the lies, I got tired of using Jesus to build your own empire and legacy.  And I was dying inside

But this group called the Island of Misfit Toys challenged, and argued and showed me how much God loves us, and how the church as it is in the US right now is a broken tool…

and so here I am,