A pastor from St. Louis now leads a church in London while keeping his love of baseball alive. He grew up in Missouri and developed a passion for the sport that has stayed with him through his move to England for ministry work.
We did interview you in a previous season. We'll link to that in the show notes, but let's bring our listeners up to speed just briefly on you. I mean, first of all, you were born and raised in St. Louis, a baseball fan from the center of the US, and now you're—
That's right.
Now you're pastoring in London, England. How did that transition from Here to There come about?
And still a baseball fan.
So great.
There's a long way to tell that story and a short way to tell the story. The medium way is that, uh, back in about late, uh, late '80s, early '90s, as Karen and I were praying about where God might call us in ministry, we both had a desire to be in a church that was genuinely multicultural, a church that really embraced the Bible as God's word, as well as the Holy Spirit, a church that was in the center of a city. And we kind of had a feeling it would be someplace outside the United States. And then God, as he does, called us to a small church in rural Missouri for a number of years. But then eventually we met some people from the church back in the late '90s, and the church was in vacancy, and we were part of a ministry over here in the in the United States that was working with churches like this to help bring renewal, and they invited us to come and visit. And then the congregation, after Karen and I had visited, the congregation held a meeting in December of 2000 without telling us and called us up and said, we want you to come. Will you come? We voted to call you as our minister. And so the whole process took another 9 months or so, but eventually we showed up here. We were supposed to fly on the 7th of September, 2001, which we didn't make, obviously, but miraculously we actually made it that, that weekend. Wow. And it was really quite extraordinary.
