My journey began with a loving home environment where my mother and father showed me what a family based on God’s grace could look like. My heart was changed and awoken to the gospel at the age of five. After asking my mom some questions, she helped me to pray and ask for forgiveness for the bad I had done and to live a new life with Jesus. My parents are believers in the Christian faith and the community of faith that we were a part of was one of the local Southern Baptist Churches. This church is conservative with a firm belief in the scriptures as the Word of God and in the necessity of confessing one’s sins and believing in Jesus for forgiveness of sins and eternal life. This church also has a strong belief in missions. They allocate a tremendous amount of their budget to missions. This allowed me to participate in multiple short term mission trips. I was able to go on trips to Arizona, Idaho, Maryland, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and India. The majority of the US trips included “vacation Bible schools” for kids as well as some clean up and construction projects. The international trips were a bit different and found their primary focus on evangelism and building relationships with unbelievers. These trips, combined with the fundamentals of the church in which I was raised, formed within me a particular worldview and set of values. They also exposed me to cultures whose manifestation of the church looked different than the one I was part of. I’m thankful for this community of faith that allowed me these opportunities.
Throughout my adolescent years, I was one who enjoyed studying the Bible and often found myself leading discussions with friends and helping lead within our church youth group. When the decision for college came I felt a strong desire to throw myself into the path towards ministry. I didn’t quite know in what way I would serve the church through vocation, but I knew that I wanted to go in that direction. After a year at community college battling the decision of what to do, I decide to study theology at a Christian college. I had deduced from my experience in the church, and the mission trips that I had taken part in, that missionaries were the Christian “all-stars.” I wanted to serve God and his church to the fullest, so I majored in Missions at Boyce College, the undergraduate college of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.
After my first year at Boyce, I found that the elective classes of the Missions major were primarily teaching methodological principles and practices that were presupposing specific biblical and theological beliefs. It was my desire to first develop my own biblical and theological convictions, so I changed my major to “Biblical and Theological Studies.” I wanted my methodology and practice to be the outworking of the convictions that I had come to from studying the scriptures. I believe that this switch allowed me to better understand, through reading and discussion, the views of other denominations and faiths. It was the case however, that the most formative times of this stage of my journey came not through the classes but through discussions with my peers. It was in these discussions that the presuppositions and worldviews developed in me through my Southern Baptist upbringing were most acutely challenged. The questions and discussions of my peers forced me to test, tweak, and further develop my understanding of God, his church, and his world.
About three years into my studies at Boyce I was convicted of my lack of commitment to a local body of believers. I had often gone home to Tennessee during the summers of school and used that as an excuse to not serve within a local church. It was at this time that I visited Sojourn Community Church. I had visited Sojourn before, when I first arrived in Louisville, but was turned off by their predominately young congregation, loud music, candles, flannel shirts, beards, and weird liturgy (including a closing exchange between the leader and the congregation, “Peace be with you,” – “And also with you.”). Almost three years later, after my thinking about church methodology and mission had changed, I made my second visit to Sojourn. I jumped into their six-week “Gospel Classes” immediately so that I could learn more about them and fill the requirement for membership.
After attending all six of the Gospel Classes and hearing their vision and identities, I knew that Sojourn was the place where I wanted to be. After my membership interview with one of our elders, I was invited to his community group. To this day, my closest friends from Sojourn came from this group. It was through this community group and Sojourn at large that I learned what it meant to be a part of a family on mission.
Sojourn looks different than any other church I’ve been a part of. Other than the loud music, flannel shirts, beards, and predominately young congregation that I first mentioned, there are a few other particulars that stand out. I now understand these differences as the outworking of the theology of a church that sees itself deeply connected to God’s mission of redemption in this world. For one, they dig into a well of liturgical wealth by including various versions of scripture and confessions from church history and modern day in their gathered services. For another, they allow room for the creative side of the image of God to be expressed by using the space in which Sojourn meets an art gallery and venue for concerts. Another difference is the diversity of the church. At its beginning Sojourn was a gathering for those that felt burned or out of place within the “traditional” church. Their gathering location was in the neighborhood where many of these young, independent, artistic individuals lived and hung out. As Sojourn grew and moved their meeting space into a lower income neighborhood, the demographic of the gathering began to change. This change has been slow, but has started happening based on Sojourn’s commitment to living the gospel out as missionaries to the neighborhood where they gather. Their commitment to ministries of mercy and loving the city has become attractional to those in the neighborhood as they see Sojourn’s good works and begin to inquire about the God that they serve.
At Sojourn, the congregation articulates their beliefs primarily as identities that they believe are true of themselves as a community who believes in Jesus. There are five identities that Sojourn emphasizes: Worshipers, Family, Servants, Learners, and Missionaries. This last identity drastically shapes the “look” of Sojourn and has transformed my view of missions from something that happens “over there” to something that we are participants in here and now. Our missionary God has pursued and redeemed us. As his redeemed people, we are incorporated into this mission. Through our identity with Christ, we are part of his mission of redemption. This has brought an incredible amount of worth to my everyday life. I’m not preparing to “go on mission” and I don’t have to go to a foreign country to be a Christian all-star. I’m a missionary where I am, to my neighbors; to my city.
At Sojourn I met my wife, a woman whose godliness and heart for the needy challenges and changes me further. Through an internship and participation in a pastor’s school at Sojourn, God has helped clarify my vocational vision within the Church. My desire is to go where the gospel is not prevalent or easily accessible, an important conviction first driven home to me by the church I grew up in. The opportunity arose for us to move to Boston and be a part of a church plant in the city. My desire is to move to this city, raise my family there, and one day pastor in the city. I will further my theological studies at Boston University where I can continue to be exposed to theological views and perspectives that differ from my own. I’m humbled and eternally grateful to be a character in God’s story of redemption and am confident that God will use my family and the church plant to transform the hearts of the people and the city of Boston.
Mine and my wife’s journey continues, please pray for us to love Boston well.
