[This is a series designed to bring you into the the unique A.P.E stories of each writer on this blog. We hope each one of you can find a little of your A.P.E story inside of one of us. Read the other stories]

I never thought of myself as a “frat boy, “ but I became one.  My roommate was invited to a fraternity rush party, and he wanted a friend to come with him, so I tagged along.  I met some cool guys there, and before I knew it, I was pledging a fraternity and eventually became a full-fledge brother.

Little did I know that it would be in the Fraternity that I would meet two brothers who would cause me to consider the claims of Christ. I was working my way through college and didn’t have the money to go to summer school and pay for an apartment at the same time.  Two of my fraternity brothers offered me a place to stay for free, and it was their hospitality and lives as Christ followers that provoked me to read the gospels.  Through reading the gospel I fell in love with and surrendered my life to Jesus.

I happened to be the Resident Assistant in my dormitory.  It was my responsibility to care for and help the sixty residents that lived on my hall.  I didn’t know very much scripture, but I did know that God loved the whole world.  I did know that God wanted everyone to be with Him so much so, that He put on flesh and bones, lived among us, died for us, and rose again.  I didn’t know much, but I knew that, and that was enough.

I figured since God loved everyone in the world that maybe He wanted to use me to help the whole world know Him.  So where could I start?  I thought, “God, since you have me living here in this dorm, what about if I do my best to let them know how much you love them?”  My dream was to share with everyone on my hall before the end of the school year.  I also wanted to share with each of the R.A.’s in my building so that if they came to understand, they could take responsibility for their own halls.  I knew I didn’t have time to reach the whole building.  God had called me to an adventure.  (So which of the five typologies in Ephesians 4 do you see starting to be revealed?)

An adventure it was.  I worked hard to get to know everyone on my hall.  I could see that people were going through many difficulties, but for the most part they didn’t seem to want to find a solution.  I would eat with them, swim with them, talk with them, pray for them, and simply enjoy my friendships with them.

Often we would get involved in spiritual conversations and I would do my best to explain God’s story to them the best I knew how.  Sometimes I felt like an alien from another world. Some people laughed at me, some people got upset with me, some people just mocked me, but almost everyone respected me.  They respected the fact that my life was congruent with my message.

Sometimes I would find myself talking to a guy on my hall and our conversation would turn and we would be talking about deeper things, spiritual things.  Many times what started as a conversation with one person became a room filled with over twenty people who would shoot questions at me from the left and from the right.  I thought to myself, “This is a good way to get better at sharing God’s story and understanding it for myself.”  I was able to grow deeper in my faith during these times.  I didn’t know much, but I shared what I did know and many times I sensed God’s power and presence with me.  I experienced a supernatural peace because He was my peace.

Let me fast forward this story.  My first year as a Christ follower, a number of people on my hall came to faith, as well as a number of other RA’s.  I would do my best to help the other RA’s reach their hall.  (Can you sense from the five typologies and callings in Ephesians 4, which ones I was starting to reflect at this stage of development?)

I was running hard for the Lord and within four years I entered full time ministry with GCM and found myself overseeing a group of 24 students at Virginia Tech.  The first five years were hell.  It didn’t seem like many of the students gave a rip about those outside of the faith.   Knowing example is everything, I devoted significant time to connecting with those outside of the faith.  Within a few years, when our congregation was about 100 people, I remember being with 50 of the people in the congregation when they came to faith.

Our congregation had been transformed, many were like me, new to the faith and we had started to develop a missional culture.  This made the next seven years quite heavenly.  Over 600 students would come to faith, our congregation had multiplied mid-sized groups and grew to be over a 1,000 disciples, and then we started to become a church planting church.  Here is a video that was made for our team before we departed to LA.

A few dozen people and I moved to LA to help start Kairos LA a network of neighborhood churches in LA, and [nlcf], the church at Va Tech, continued to help plant churches in Richmond, VA and other cities.

Six years ago I co-founded the Ecclesia Network, which is a relational network of missional leaders devoted to joining God in the renewal of all things by helping others plant disciple-making churches in cities and towns across the states.   We see about 5-7 new churches sprout up every year.

My passion in life is to make and multiple disciple of Christ who not only plant churches, but start new movements of churches. So when you consider the five fold vocational callings we see in Ephesians four, in particular the three that this site is devoted to, which two callings do you see most evidenced in my life?

As you look at your life and examine the five fold typologies in Ephesians four, which two do you most identify with and why?

[This is a series designed to bring you into the the unique A.P.E stories of each writer on this blog. We hope each one of you can find a little of your A.P.E story inside of one of us. Read the other stories]

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