Biography

By way of introduction:

I currently serve as the minister of UUs of Mt. Airy in Philadephia, but have experience serving as a Chaplain Resident at St. Elizabeths Behavioral Health Hospital in Washington, DC, focusing on the intersection of mental illness, homelessness, and income inequality. I have loved every minute of being at the community formerly known as the UU Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia (renamed in 2021) since August 2018.

I was born in Lubbock, the capital city of West Texas and the proud home of Buddy Holly, the Dixie Chicks, and Mac Davis, but I grew up all around the Texas Panhandle’s Hansford County and the small town of Gruver, TX (pop. 1110).

I was honored and blessed to attend the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA as part of the Class of 2010. Go Tribe! I was equally honored and blessed to attend Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ as part of the Class of 2015. Go Tigers (and Presbyterians)!

Post graduation from William & Mary, I took a position teaching middle school in New Haven, Connecticut for a small independent education group. I lived in an abandoned convent with nine other teachers, taught sixty middle schoolers to be good teammates and civic servants, and functioned as a sort of mentor-in-chief to the young men of St. Martin de Porres Academy. My time in New England continues to inform my ministry, and I have a hard time staying out of “teaching” when I’m working with kids.

After two years of teaching, I moved to Philadelphia to be nearer my now-wife, and I applied to Princeton Seminary. I had no clue what I was doing, but they accepted me, and I began to put the pieces together as I journeyed towards ministry. I did not accept a position at Princeton for me because I wanted to be a minister more than anything else, as weird as that might sound. I accepted the position because it seemed like other people needed me to be a minister, like it was a call not just from God, but from humanity, too.

I assumed this meant a Christian educational position or a chaplaincy vocation, but Princeton makes all students serve in a church setting for a year. I was all set to intern at an Episcopalian church in downtown Philly, because I was comfortable with the ritual even if I was rebuilding some sense of Trinitarian theology. In a series of events that points towards some kind of providential arrangement, my internship was frozen due to paperwork errors and I had to scramble to find another church. I went to the closest church to my house that had minister contact information easily accessible, and I walked into the Unitarian Society of Germantown asking about internships. The arrangement could not have been more perfectly matched. The building had both traditional Christian and classic Unitarian stained-glass windows– a physical embodiment of my rebuilt theology. I was tasked with social justice outreach and building a semi-functioning homeless ministry, fulfilling my desire to be of service. Rev. Kent Matthies took a chance on me, and I fell in love with Unitarian-Universalism. I had a lot to learn, and I’m still doing my best to learn the ins and outs of the denomination, but I’ve never felt as confident about picking a team as I have in pursuing ministry within the UU framework. I still strongly identify as a Christian, but I love that UU churches challenge me to be a better minister and a better Christian by truly living out the seven principles and making sure my theological language is broad enough to be accessible to anyone who might walk through the doors or the church.