Interests

Personal

My Christian Testimony and Call to Ministry

As do all testimonies of faith in Christ, mine begins long before my conversion. As a very young child I attended worship services with my family, but had no real instruction in the Christian faith. My impression of Christianity had, in fact, very little to do with faith. I was a little legalist, impressed with my own ability to improvise and keep rules that “pleased God.” I was also certain that I would make a good preacher some day, since I was more holy than anyone else and could tell them how to be and do better. Around my sophomore year at Abbeville High School, my impression of my own goodness was shattered, largely due to the fact that I led something of a double life: a model citizen around any authority figure who cared to take notice, but quite the rebel when no one who kept track of such things was looking.

Toward the end of that year, a family in Abbeville began to invite me to attend worship and youth functions at a non-denominational, charismatic church in Greenwood.  After about six weeks of hearing the gospel, I was more than convinced of my need to be saved from sin.  I can remember returning home after responding to an invitation to trust Christ and thinking, “Somehow, everything is different now.”  And it has been.  The impact of the gospel on my life was immediate, and Christian friends who had pleaded both with me and with God about my salvation rejoiced to see His work.  Of course, the transformation was not total, but never have I doubted that God powerfully turned my heart to himself over those few weeks.

While attending Clemson University, I became involved with the Presbyterian Church in America through the ministries of Reformed University Fellowship and Clemson Presbyterian Church.  This was my first exposure to the Reformed faith, and to a community of Christians who thought seriously about how the Scriptures applied to all of life.  While some friends had expressed concern that attending a secular university might hinder my spiritual growth, I found that God had provided just the soil in which my faith could blossom; I even found encouragement from pastors and elders to use my experiences in the University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion as a stimulus to seek more solid grounding in Biblical truth.

Involvement with youth ministry at Clemson Presbyterian and large group leadership at RUF led me to explore the possibility that God was calling me to a ministry of the Word. Encouragement from pastors, elders, professors, peers, and my new bride, Tricia, confirmed that he was indeed, and studies at Covenant Theological Seminary and an internship with RUF at Maryville University in St. Louis further confirmed this call. Having developed a heart for ministry to college students through our experiences with Clemson Presbyterian and RUF, and having been encouraged by seminary professors to pursue a doctoral degree, Tricia and I left seminary with what we hoped would be a workable vision for our future ministry: I would pursue a PhD in some area that would sharpen my skills for pastoral ministry; we would then seek to pastor a church in a college or university community, with a view to providing a solid church home for college students; and we would leave the pastorate only if we received a clear call to enter a teaching ministry.

Our Father’s timetable for us has looked somewhat different than we imagined, with several years of teaching ministry preceding my call as pastor of Clemson Presbyterian Church. However, during those years he provided just the right soil for us to grow—first, in our realization of our desperate need of His grace (years in Aberdeen and as an adjunct professor at Covenant Seminary); then in our love of people and of the church (years at Erskine); and finally in our passion for seeing the gospel of grace flourish in the lives of all his people, among all his churches, in every nation, culture, and generation (our years in Clemson). At the end of it all, I am beginning to sense what my fifth ordination vow meant when it referred to “a sincere desire to promote [God’s] glory in the Gospel of His Son.” This is the end to which I long to devote the gifts and years God with which God entrusts me: awakening worship of the triune God by magnifying the supremacy of Jesus Christ. This is why I sensed God’s call to return to teaching at Covenant Seminary. I desire to use my energies to promote his glory in the gospel of his Son, not only in the lives of seminarians and their families, but in the churches they will serve, and in the lives they will reach.