Whether you are getting married, welcoming a new person into the world or into your family, renewing your vows, celebrating an important moment in your life, or saying a final good-bye to someone who has died, I will work with you to bring to your event a sense of God’s presence and blessing.
My Background
I am an ordained Christian minister in the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches (NACCC), located in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. I earned a Masters of Divinity from Bangor Theological Seminary, located in Bangor, Maine – one of the oldest seminaries in the United States – and I have engaged in extensive Doctorate-level studies at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut.
My ministry career includes teaching for 4 years in the Department of Religion at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, and leading congregations in Bound Brook, New Jersey and Farmington, Connecticut for 11 years. My active ministry career involved working with troubled congregations, and I served on my denomination’s national-level Congregational Church Development board, which was charged with identifying ways to help declining churches reverse course.
While a student at Hartford Seminary I founded a short-lived electronic journal called Leadership & Transformation. Funded by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, its purpose was to explore the broad range of American multi-faith perspectives on common issues of leading worship and encouraging spiritual growth and change.
The majority of the research conducted over the last 20 years on American faith communities has been funded by the Lilly Foundation. In 2009 I was contracted through Hartford Seminary and Union Seminary to annotate over 1000 research reports and scholarly articles posted on 25 websites funded by the Lilly Foundation. Those annotations are a central part of the new Lilly-sponsored website, Insights into American Religion, which was launched in April, 2010. Since the launch, my ongoing assignments are to annotate new research as it becomes available, and to write articles that guide readers to the best site-based resources on specific topics.
My “Calling”
Reading through the last 20 years of research on religious expression in America gave me a deeper understanding of American faith practices and trends. And that has led me to move my ministry in two directions.
I launched ChurchChange.org to help Christian church members and leaders understand the seismic shifts in American faith views, gain insight into harmful church practices, and develop an informed perspective on what kinds of Christian worship resonate with God-seeking Americans.
I launched this site to make spiritual resources available to the non-churched and to non-Christians. Here, I offer an opportunity for you to connect with an experienced pastor who has a grounding in Christian commitments and an openness to the variety of religious expression, and the diversity of spiritual practice found in the American people.
I have no interest in “converting” or “convincing” you in any fashion. I believe that God is at work in each one of us, and calls us each to a unique path. I am here to honor God’s leading and to help you find ways to express your heart-felt spiritual commitments through ceremonies that mark key moments of your life.
