I, like so many of us, am on a journey of constant discovery. I hope you’ll join me in seeking to find healing and wholeness through the redemptive beauty of God’s work in this world.

Though I’ve always been a writer, I am a new author just releasing my first book. I’ve written a lot and hope to publish a few more things in the coming years. Putting out a book has always been a dream of mine, and to me it’s an end in itself, yet I hope that it means something to someone else along the way.

You may have read the bio on my book cover that’s in the next column over. It’s a bit of a tongue in cheek riff on Robert Fulghum’s “about the author” page in It was on Fire When I Lay Down On it, and his answer to the question, “So what do you do?” that leads to stories about identity and business cards and a hilarious plane ride and a nun that make me laugh. I love this: “He is still working on what he wants to be when he grows up,” and “My job is being the most Robert Fulghum I can be.”

Right on.

I currently work as the Chief Operating Officer at an amazing place called Benjamin’s Hope. We are a live, learn, play, worship farmstead community where people of all abilities are transformed by the love of Christ.

We are so much more than the jobs we’ve had, the schools we’ve gone to, and the things we’ve done, and we’re all still growing up. I mean it, though, that the most important thing is being a child of our heavenly Father. But for the sake of giving a bio, I have been a speaker, writer, friend, father, brother, husband, and son. I’m a fly-fisherman, hammocker, hiker and backpacker, avid reader, musician, painter, baker, and former break-dancer. I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life, including being a blueberry picker, bike salesman, IT team member, coach, Resident Assistant, Youth Pastor, babysitter, Spiritual Formation Pastor, missionary, church planter, Senior Pastor, and Chief Operating Officer. But most of all, I am a child of my heavenly Father.

I grew up in a small town in West Michigan called Zeeland and headed a little bit east to attend Michigan State University’s James Madison College where I got my bachelor’s degree in Justice, Morality, and Constitutional Democracy. I later completed a Masters of Theological Studies at Calvin Theological Seminary, a Masters of Divinity at Western Theological Seminary, and most recently completed a Doctorate focusing on the Spiritual Theology of Henri Nouwen at Northwind Theological Seminary. My thesis was on the van Gogh era of Henri Nouwen’s life, specifically looking at the framework he used to encounter God through “living human documents,” and mystery of the unwritten book, unfinished movie of the priest and the painter,and much more. I look at the framework he began when studying Anton Boisen and applied to his spiritual life, van Gogh, Thomas Merton, Rembrandt, and others.