Lead Pastor / Bethany Baptist Church, Philadelphia, PA
The five years that I have been the Lead Pastor of Bethany have been a time of intense Spiritual and professional growth for me. Bethany has been incredibly gracious to follow as I led them through big and sometimes difficult changes as God has directed us. One of the most rewarding parts of my time here has been my preaching ministry. Planning out sermon series and creatively communicating truth is a particular passion of mine. But even more, it’s been an exhilarating experience to monitor our congregation’s spiritual needs in order to make healthy decisions about which Scriptures we need to teach! I know that I have been a dramatic change from what Bethany has had in the past, but God has truly blessed the consistent teaching of his word in relevant and gospel-centered ways.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced here at Bethany has been the work of revitalizing the church’s ministries to better reflect a Biblical sense of our DNA. I’ve had the opportunity of training and installing the church’s first Elder Team of laymen and building a discipleship program for potential ministry leaders. We successfully led through a constitution change to an Elder-Led/Congregational-Rule form of church governance, and have worked to redevelop our church’s programing to better fit our mission and values. And as a result of all this work, our church has grown by every metric, but especially spiritually. It has been a life changing experience for me to do this work, especially alongside people we’ve grown to deeply love. I’m immensely grateful to God for the people he’s allowed me to shepherd at Bethany.
Adjunct Faculty / Clarks Summit University, Clarks Summit, PA
Five years ago I was invited to teach online as part of the faculty of my alma mater, Clarks Summit University (formerly Summit University). I currently continue to teach courses for the undergraduate programs in the Bible and Theology department. I’ve loved the extra opportunities to teach and to develop curriculum. Also, it’s been a great way for me to stay sharp in developing areas of theology and hermeneutics.
Lead Family Therapist / Family Based Counseling, Skippack, PA
For two years I worked as a family therapist with Family Based Counseling Services. I was responsible for assessing families’ mental health needs and developing and implementing treatment plans for helping their families to change their dynamics. I was also responsible for providing management and supervision for the work of a junior co-counselor who worked with me. Aside from growing in my abilities as a counselor, one of the best parts of working for FBC was developing relationships with service providers and other professionals from Juvenile Probation, Office of Children and Youth, and my supervisors in the Child and Family training Center of Philadelphia.
Pastor of Worship and Small Groups / Grace Fellowship Church,Warren, OH
When I began working at Grace Church it was a large church of roughly 1300 people and my first responsibility was as a Worship Pastor for two weekend services. I also lead through the development of an alternate style worship service, created, wrote, and directed a new drama ministry, and led the installation of lots of new technology updates for the sound and video teams. After a short time at Grace I was also asked to start a small group ministry and serve additionally as the Small Groups Pastor. This was a very busy season of ministry for me and my family!
Associate Pastor / New Life Baptist Church, Scranton PA
My first professional ministry experience came about because the Dean of my seminary, Dr. Mike Stallard, invited me to serve on the pastoral team of his church planting efforts in Scranton while I was a student. I was initially the Worship Pastor, but then over the years I took on various other roles, including youth pastor, small group pastor, outreach coordinator and many other roles. But the best part about being a Pastor at New Life was having the opportunity to learn from two of my seminary professors as they mentored me in ministry outside of the classroom, actually in a new and growing church! It was here that I learned about a team-based model of pastoral ministry and grew to love working in and building teams for ministry. It was truly the very best way to begin my ministry career and has become the standard for what I hope to create in the leadership of every ministry in which I serve.