About

I’m a second career Lutheran pastor, living in the Midwest, and struggling with questions of tradition and scripture.  Shouldn’t life inside religion be easier than this?  What does it mean to be the church?  Where is God in all this?

I’m blogging on issues of life, self-discovery, seeking guidance in scripture, and questioning what role the church should play in the world. I’m giving myself permission to question what the church has taught and I hope you are free to do the same. Neither Jesus nor Luther allowed his tradition to overpower what the Word said to them. The Gospels are filled with examples of Jesus showing the experts in Scripture how they interpreted the Scriptures improperly. I enjoy re-interpreting the Scriptures from Greek and Aramaic in my own way, informed by tradition but not bound by it.

I released my book of prayers based on Martin Luther’s sermons in March, 2012,  and have published a book that looks at the Lord’s Prayer through the lens of the Aramaic interpretation. I’m releasing a book in January, 2013, of meditations using a method of meditation on scripture that was promoted by  Ignatius of Loyola, a contemporary of Luther. It’s called O Taste and See: Discovering God Through Imaginative Meditations.

I’m on the board of directors for Trinity/HOPE, an organization feeding children in Christian schools in Haiti. I went to Haiti in March of 2011 where I saw the great need and efficiency of our feeding program in using every penny to feed children. I’m also heading up the ELCA Malaria Campaign for the Indiana-Kentucky Synod.

I taught high school biology, coached, and then owned a business before receiving my M.Div. from Vanderbilt Divinity School and an S.T.M. from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. I enjoy fishing, boating, centering prayer, and growing blackberries and blueberries.

I hope you’ll check back once in a while and add to the conversation.