Candidate 57 Profile

Section A. Background Information

10. Year of Ordination

2021

11. Denomination of Ordination

Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbytery of New York City

12. If not RCA, what classis or supervising body from the ordaining denomination recognizes your ordination?

Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbytery of New York City

13. Present denomination

Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbytery of New York City

14. Present classis or judicatory

Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbytery of New York City

15. If you are not now a member of the Reformed Church in America, can you, in good conscience, agree with the doctrine, discipline and government of the RCA?

Yes

16. Do you support the mission and division of the Reformed Church in America?

Yes.

17. Citizen of what country? If not USA, do you have permit to live and work in the USA?

USA

18. Previous Experience

19. Formal Education

20. Continuing Education

21. Languages (list any languages, other than English, in which you can preach or converse fluently)

Section B. Reflection

1. Describe your strengths, the best of who you are, and what you bring in service to the church.

I think the three greatest strengths I bring to the table in pastoral ministry are preaching, strategic thinking, and genuine tolerance for diversity of viewpoint among Christians. Each of these things draws on the core of who I am. My relationship with Christ, and my deeply felt love for him, are vital and fulfilling, and I feel a drive to share the good news with an urgent sense of what really matters. I'm a careful thinker and tend to pick apart the logic of a position I take or course of action I suggest, so I'm good at creating strategy and understanding systems. However, I'm also very intuitive. I can see and understand the various sides of a conflict, and am good at grasping issues or emotions that may lurk under the surface. I feel fulfilled helping a group discern a path forward together. In my preaching, I do my best to marry careful exegesis with the human needs in the pew, for which Jesus offers both eternal truth and unconditional love.

2. Name two or three mentors who have significantly contributed to your ministry, and explain why these people are important to you.

1. Josh, my pastor in college. Josh is the pastor I most want to emulate. He is naturally intellectual and theologically rigorous, while having an equally genuine concern for individuals in his congregation. He is disciplined in prayer, and when I go to him for advice, I always trust that he will quickly have an intuitive read on the situation and be well-attuned to God's guidance. I have always found him to be humble and wise.

2. Mimi, the Executive Director of Christians for Biblical Equality, where I interned for a summer. Mimi continually nourishes my hope for gender equality in the church, always offering encouragement and inviting me to think more deeply. I admire and want to imitate her exceptional spiritual awareness and the depth of her prayer life.

3. Jeff, my spiritual director. I sense Jeff's deep love for God and his confidence in God's love for himself, for me, and for the world. I want to learn from his quiet spirit and gentleness.

3. What caused you to enter ministry, and what are the core values that define your vision for ministry?

I was pre-med in college, and did not decide to go to seminary until my final semester. Looking back, I felt a calling as far back as early childhood, but growing up in a complementarian church, it was not something I considered to be possible until high school. Through a period of "church hurt," I experienced a deep emotional connection to Jesus and never wanted to walk away. In college, I became active in campus ministry leadership and developed relationships with the pastors in my church. Friends encouraged me to consider ministry, and I decided to make a seminary visit. The gut feeling that I was called there was immediate, and I have never looked back.

My own story informs the values that I hold most highly in ministry - theological integrity, grace, and union with Christ. It was key that I went through a truly rigorous process of examining my beliefs, and as a result I try to maintain an open hand of fellowship to those who disagree with me. I followed this call because my soul is knit to the Lord, and nothing else compels me like this does.

4. Explain the strategies or ideas that most excite you for helping a church to become and remain missional.

I think a church should have three ideas of mission: spreading the gospel, meeting physical needs, and ministering to its own. Some churches have large mission budgets and multiple programs, others don't. But we should have something to offer in each category. It might mean supporting a mssionary overseas, holding a food pantry, and rallying around a family in need. It might mean paying a campus minister, running coat drives, and faithfully visiting homebound members. It's important to engage and equip the congregation to respond, pray, and own the effort. I think this means discerning the felt needs of community and congregation by study, analysis, and prayer, maintaining contact with a missionary, and devoting church money to mission. We are the hands and feet of Christ, and it is eternally significant to live the reality of the kingdom Christ inaugurated before it is fully consummated. It is a way of life to be in the world and not of it, to seek its good, and to embed ourselves in a dying creation for the sake of its life.

5. Name three of your most passionate hopes for the Church at large, and why they are significant to you.

1. Faithfulness to the gospel. I have a strong appreciation for ecumenism and believe that the gospel can be heard in churches of every denomination. I hope for the church's witness and proclamation to be true and that the good news would be simply and authentically preached.

2. Joy in its calling to the world. I hope for the church to see itself as an outpost of God's kingdom and glimpse of God's plan for the renewal of all things. I hope that our worship forms us to be disciples and ambassadors of grace, mercy, and hope.

3. The mutuality of men and women in ministry. I am hopeful that church leadership will continue to open to women. I believe in a vision of equality that calls for mutual respect and responsibility, and that the Spirit is working in a new way to manifest the gifts of God's people and bear witness to Christ in the world.

6. Give an example of how you would theologically address an issue facing your contemporary world. Please be thorough enough to help the reader to understand your thought processes and your life commitments.

As American politics becomes more and more polarized, I've seen many Christians respond with intolerance toward one another. This is easy to do - things seem and in many cases are quite dire. Depending on one's commitments, there are things to worry about on both sides of the aisle, and the sense of moral imperative drives people to reject one another in outrage, worried for ideological contamination. God calls us to "accept one another, just as Christ accepted you" (Rom 15:7), and often in Scripture to agree with and welcome one another. This doesn't mean all diversity of viewpoint or opinion ceases - far from it! But because of Christ's sacrifice and grace for his expansive creation, we ought to ground our connection with one another in that deeper reality, living out his promise of renewal and reconciliation. Even in profound disagreement, we should seek to be people living toward a world without it, seeing each other and ourselves as eternal siblings who will each find we are wrong in many ways, right in some.

7. What theologians, pastors, authors or other leaders have had the greatest influence upon your life and thought? (List up to 3 and explain.)

1. Karl Barth - Barth is the systematic theologian I turn to the most. His dialectical theology has helped me to understand the judgment and mercy of God, and his relentlessly Trinitarian and Christocentric thinking keeps my preaching and exegesis honest. I have also turned to his doctrine of election many times to discuss the incarnation, atonement, and salvation.

2. James K. A. Smith - Smith has helped me think formationally about liturgy, love, spiritual growth, and sin. His existentialist picture of Augustine also deeply informs how I think about my personal journey in the Christian life.

3. N.T. Wright - When I first encountered Wright's writings on the resurrection and the new creation, they totally changed the way I think about eschatology and the mission of the church.

4. J. Louis Martyn - Martyn's landmark commentary on Galatians helped me understand Paul's presentation of the gospel and changed my thinking about Paul's "radicalism."

8. How do you hope someone influenced by your ministry would describe what s/he considers to be most important?

I would hope they would know they are loved, claimed, and justified by God apart from anything they can offer or do, and that God will never forsake them. I hope that they would understand themselves and the church as the beloved, equipped mission of God to a world he loves and for which he has an eternal plan of renewal. Finally, I hope they would know themselves to be a work in progress whom God is daily calling to repentance, shaping and creating them in unconditional love.

9. Name at least one challenge for a pastor who accepts a Call to lead a church whose culture is other than his/her own.

One challenge is understanding a culture's attitude toward personal relationships. I think this is a cultural "language" that is likely to be a little bit different everywhere, but I have seen it especially key in international settings, as well as in urban vs. rural America. People offer and seek loving friendship everywhere, but there are key differences such as privacy (to whom you might open your home, for example) and extent of emotional openness. It's important for a pastor to understand how this will play out in members' contact with the church - what they will want from pastoral care, how often and where they might be interested in meeting other members for Bible study, what kinds of fellowship they might want. It's also important as the pastor contextualizes and discusses love for one another in a way that is an authentic expression of a church's identity.

10. Describe your vision and hopes for the Church over the next 5-10 years.

My fervent hope and vision for the church is that every member would know the gospel - not only how to articulate it, but also why it is good news. This is not just an intellectual exercise, but an experiential understanding of salvation and transformation in one's own life. I hope also for a praying church, one that asks and believes boldly and lives out our prayer in action. Finally, I hope for reverent worship, that whatever aesthetics and liturgical preferences any one church may have, that each church would encounter the living God with joy and gravity, contemplating the beauty of God and being formed in his story.

11. If there is anything else you would like to add about yourself that you think would help a search team to better understand and consider you as their next pastor, please elaborate here.

My previous ministry experiences have allowed me to lean into my gifts as a builder, and I love the challenge of getting something off the ground or reenvisioning something that needs work. I would be bored with a perfect church! I am gifted with hope for the church and the world, and I think I am well-positioned to partner with a church that is grounded in its identity, but looking primarily forward. I value worship the highest of anything a church does, and approach it with a lot of seriousness. However, I enjoy many styles of worship and am primarily interested in a congregation's ability to enter into it happily, comfortably, and with authentic reverence.