Until Ordination, my membership was held at the church I was baptized and confirmed into, Westminster Presbyterian in Columbia, South Carolina. My family attended Westminster every Sunday. This family included my parents and my siblings: an older sister, Anna, and a younger brother, Thomas. My parents will celebrate thirty-five years of marriage in October and have modeled a healthy relationship for me and my siblings. Anna got married five years ago to Devin, whom she met while they were in college. Anna and Devin currently live in Jackson, Alabama and Thomas lives in Columbia, South Carolina. I talk to my siblings most days, and to my parents once or twice a week. All five are important parts of my community and are supportive of my Call even though my siblings are not religious anymore. Currently. My wife and I got married in October 2021 and she is an incredible support system as well.

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When I was 16, I moved away from Lexington to attend the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities (SCGSAH) for my final two years of high school. After graduating from SCGSAH in 2012, I attended Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. I studied fine art - General Studio, Sculpture, and Photography. I graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. During college, I was a collegiate member of the Chi Omega Fraternity and am currently a member of the Atlanta Alumni Chapter. That sisterhood was incredibly important to me as a student. The community of that Sisterhood specifically made my last two years of college more successful. I hope to continue to engage with Chi Omega as an alumna. 

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While in college, and growing up, I had significant connections to Bethelwoods Camp in York, South Carolina. While I attended church with my family every week, the camp is where I truly found my own faith. I continued to work at Bethelwoods through college and found it to be the community of faith that I was seeking while in school. 

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During my senior year of college, my paternal grandmother passed away. Our last conversation was about how I wanted to spend a year in an internship in Kansas City, doing camp ministry, then go to Seminary. Both she and my grandfather were instrumental in acknowledging my call and affirming it within myself through their support. My grandfather passed away just three days after I was able to tell him I got accepted to Columbia Theological Seminary. Being able to share the journey to seminary with them has helped me stay strong when times have gotten hard. 

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After my year in Kansas City, I moved to Decatur, Georgia to attend Columbia Theological Seminary. I graduated with a Master of Divinity along with a Master of Arts in Practical Theology in Christian Education. After completing my education and searching, my wife and I moved to Champaign, IL and I became the Associate Pastor at a church in town.

Several summers ago, I interned with a small congregation at First Presbyterian Church of Ware Shoals, South Carolina. I fell in love with the “small church” ministry and felt very connected to the congregation. I have continued contact with them and they have been very supportive of me and my call. The next summer, I lived and worshiped with that congregation while I completed Clinical Pastoral Education. That summer was particularly challenging and I learned a lot about myself and my call while working with a group that was very different from my typical context. Finally, last summer I worked as a Summer Camp Director in Georgia and led a camp through a COVID summer. We were successful at making it through and no one on our staff got sick. It was an incredible summer and I hope to continue working with camp or youth in some capacity. 

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Like many other people in ministry, my life changed dramatically when the pandemic hit. There were times when I didn’t know where I would be living the next week. There were times when I didn’t know when I would see my family again. So many big things happened during the year, and so much of it was shared over FaceTime rather than in person. One of these was my engagement with my fiancé, Sarah. Our families were so happy to be joining together, but there are notes of bittersweetness when we remember the majority of our engaged time.  It was a difficult year, but one that I know made my faith and my call stronger.

 

The first time I sat at a church after quarantine, and took communion in a parking lot where I could hear and see other people sitting 6 feet apart, taking communion together, I cried. It had been so long since I had been in a community with others sharing our faith in a physical space that I didn’t realize how much I had missed it. Since that day, I have fallen back in love with congregational ministry. I see how important a body of a church is, and how much people can grow in any way that they are living out their faith. 

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I believe God is calling me to a ministry that has a small, deeply connected staff working together for the good of the ministry. A staff structure that is mostly horizontal, and relies on conversation, connection, and relationships to make decisions together. Overall, I believe I am called to a space that believes in the work of the body for the good of the church. There are often difficult decisions to be made, and I look forward to discussing the options of those with the staff and elders in the process of making the decisions and supporting the leads of the organization. Strong communication and graceful decision-making are very important for a ministry, whether it is a church, a validated ministry, or a nonprofit setting. I believe my call is leading me toward a setting that has healthy decision making processes in place and respect for the large table needed to make those decisions.