Accepting the call to serve as pastor with the people of Resurrection Lutheran in northeast Portland, has also been a call to return to the city and state that I grew up in after twenty years of journeying across the country. I grew up in southwest Portland, graduating from Ida B. Wells High School in 2002, as well as having been baptized and confirmed at St. Matthew Lutheran in Beaverton. I studied social work at the University of Oregon in Eugene from 2002-2006, while also living and serving as a part of Christus House and Central Lutheran’s campus ministry during those years. Post-college, I worked as a youth director at Faith Lutheran in Meadow Vista, California where my partner Angela and I were married in 2011. I attended seminary at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio and spent the last six and half years in Denver, Colorado where I served my internship and first-call as part of an anchor church renewal congregation, Christ the King, Denver. Angela and I are parents to Sam who is seven and Micah who is 18 months.

My call to rostered ministry as part of the ELCA has been as winding a path as the physical locations I’ve lived, and though I’ve been active and associated with ELCA congregations in every stop along the way, I’m deeply invested in the renewal and transformation of the church and our communities, through participating in the development and deepening of relationships with neighbors and community partners from varying walks of life and faith in the neighborhoods of our local congregations. I am deeply excited to meet our new neighbors in northeast Portland, learning from the diversity of the community and participating in the work of inclusion, equity, justice and peace already happening both inside and outside our congregations in this area. Resurrection has a long-history in this neighborhood, and we will be working together to ask how we can learn from our past and present, as the Spirit forms us from future visions of hope into the church becoming.

I look forward to connecting with all of you who make up our congregation, neighborhoods and extended communities, learning about your hopes and dreams for your families and the neighbors we are called to love. Please reach out to me anytime if you’d like to share in some conversation or if you need support.  May the peace of Christ be with you.