Born in Chicago and living most often in states bordering the Great Lakes (Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana), my work has also taken me to both the east coast – Pennsylvania and New Jersey – and the west coast – California. (Come to think of it, Pennsylvania is also a Great Lakes state!) Interestingly, though my homes were spread 2,800 miles apart from east to west, they have all been about the same distance from the equator – all within one degree of the 40th parallel of latitude. Not that I planned it that way.
I graduated from high school in Racine, Wisconsin, and then from George Williams College (Downers Grove, Illinois) with a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Behavioral Science. After the first year working as Youth Director of the Marion, Ohio YMCA, I married Karen, the “Girl Next Door” from Racine, and moved her to Marion. After Marion, I worked at YMCAs in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and Princeton, New Jersey.
Later, we moved to Columbus, Indiana, where I was the Executive Director of two youth agencies, the Columbus Foundation for Youth and the Johnson County Youth Service Bureau. During that time Karen operated an in-home daycare business serving the children of school teachers. We lived in Columbus for about ten years, during which time I received God’s call to pastoral ministry and began taking seminary courses part-time from home.
In August of 1992 we quit our jobs, packed up the house and the cat, and went off to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where we lived for the next two years while I attended seminary full-time at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. I graduated in June of 1995 summa cum laude with a Master of Divinity degree, and received certification from the American Lutheran Theological Seminary (ALTS) of The American Association of Lutheran Churches (AALC).
As required both for my degree and for ordination in The AALC, I served a year of internship at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Elk Grove, California. That congregation called me as an associate pastor pending my graduation. Now that I graduated, I was ordained at St. Peter’s on July 2, 1995. I served as associate pastor until June 2003, when the congregation called me again (re-called me?) to be the senior pastor. I served in that role through December 31, 2016, when my call expired, and deciding not to request a new call, I retired and became a pastor emeritus.
I have been a baptized believer in Jesus Christ my entire life, and consider it the greatest privilege to have been allowed to serve Him as a pastor in His Church.