My Spiritual Journey

    Growing up in Churches of Christ in Kentucky, I took deeply to heart the Cane Ridge premise that man-made Christian organizations should “die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.”  There I learned Barton Stone’s maxim: “Let Christian unity be our polar star.”  My conversion at age eleven involved all three major branches of the Stone-Campbell movement:  a Church of Christ preacher accepted my confession of faith in the chapel of a Disciples seminary, and then immersed me in the baptistry of an independent Christian Church.  At the time, the irony escaped me.

As a student I learned much about ministry, sacrifice, and cultural and congregational differences.  About a year after my baptism, an itinerate missionary who’d heard me lead singing asked me travel with him.  Over the next two summers I did, teaching and singing in struggling churches in several states and in two other countries.  Experiences while in college in Lexington, KY, Nashville, TN, and New York, NY, in graduate studies in Oxford, England, and in law school in Cambridge, MA, deepened my appreciation of the diversity, depth and sincerity of believers’ expressions of faith. 

My wife (a scientist and corporate executive from Texas) and I chose Arlington as our church home 20 years ago.  We did so for four reasons:  the sound preaching challenged us, the singing inspired us, the members showed their love for us, and the congregation needed us to serve.  Those factors have continued to apply so we (together with our three sons, of teenage vintage) are still here.  I became one of the Arlington’s deacons in 1988; in that role, at various points I had responsibility for our worship services, our Bible classes, and our small group ministry.  From 2002 to the present, I have served as one of the congregation’s shepherds.

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I believe God desires friendship with everyone.  Human disobedience has broken this relationship, but God has been working to restore it.  For despite our flaws, our heavenly Father loves us and has made renewed friendship possible through his son Jesus.  Nearly two millennia ago, to demonstrate God’s justice and care for people, Jesus became fully human, ministered to people, suffered, was executed, and raised to life.

I believe that God forgives and restores to friendship with Himself people who place their trust in Jesus.  Doing so involves turning away from a lifestyle at odds with God’s design and being immersed in water to identify with Jesus’ death and resurrection.  His completed work and God’s related empowering gifts give believers peace with God and joy in relationship with Him.

I believe that God also calls such believers to live in community to praise God, to understand and proclaim His will, and to share their joys, sorrows, struggles and triumphs.  That’s what “church” is all about.  I still hew to Stone’s maxim, not because he said it, but because Jesus himself desires that his disciples be unified.