first things...

where do i begin? this blogging thing has been on my mind for a while and yet it is a discipline of which i am not entirely sure. will i be consistent? will it be interesting? to these questions and many others i don't honestly know the answers. still, this nagging in my brain won't let me go to sleep, despite the late hour, until i get this experiment under way.

so hang with me. if you find my story compelling then share it and enjoin others on the journey that i have, with God and my family, begun. the crazy part is that many of you will know bits and pieces of my story and yet you might not have the grand scope. i write this as an attempt to consolidate my story and get all of you on board with where i have come from and where i am going.

so where do i begin? well let's jump in media res (in the middle of things). while attending the university of texas at austin, i had my crisis of faith, so to speak. for the first time, i was making my own decisions of who to hang out with, what to do, and whether or not to go to church. i had to choose to make my faith my own. during this time, i attended three churches in the austin area. the first church was too far to continue going regularly when i no longer had a ride. the second went through a hard change of senior and college pastors right around the same time many of my friends left and so did i. the final church was my church home until i left austin, first evangelical free church of austin, with whom i hope to partner in starting my church.

following college i ended up in dallas, where i married my wife reneé and tried to figure out what God had in store for me. i began to feel God’s tug on me toward going into full-time christian ministry, so i enrolled at dallas theological seminary, not knowing what i was going to do when i finished. during my time in seminary and as a result of a public shift toward being outwardly focused at our church, irving bible church, i began to develop a heart for the lost and spreading God’s kingdom.

reneé and i got involved with apartment life, an apartment ministry. i also got involved with the alpha program at our church and eventually interned with the externally focused ministries at irving bible. all the while i began to think about planting a church. at the same time, my heart was again drawn toward austin and particularly the downtown area. so there it is, an extremely short version of how I got here.

well i guess that is as good a place as any to begin and we'll see where this grand adventure takes us. Lord willing, it will take us to austin and through the foundation of a small expression of Christ's church.