Leadership Team | Sugar Grove

MY STORY

I was born on September 26, 1968. I grew up in the Detroit area attending a church that didn't clearly preach the gospel. When I was in middle school my parents felt that there was more to God and the Bible than we were being taught, so my parents took our family on a journey where we visited a variety of churches. It was during this period of time that I first clearly heard and understood that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead.

We ended up settling down at Highland Park Baptist Church (HPBC) in Southfield, Michigan, the summer before my freshman year of high school, because my parents heard that HPBC had a strong student ministry. However, I wasn't very involved in church my first 3 years of high school, except for attending Sunday school and the worship service. I never went to our mid-week youth group because I really didn't know much about it. In the summer before my senior year, a student invited me to Wednesday night youth group at HPBC. I tried it out and made some friends, and I saw that there was something different about these students, and I wanted what they had, which I discovered was an abiding relationship with Jesus. It was sometime then, at the beginning of my senior year that I decided to follow Jesus wholeheartedly.

In my senior year of high school, I faithfully went to youth group every Wednesday, participated in every student ministry event, and went to a campus life meeting on Thursdays in a neighboring school district. Because my life changed so radically during my last year of high school, I believe that is why I have a passion to see students' lives change, and why God has called me to be a student ministry pastor. Little did I know that my parents decision to attend Highland Park Baptist Church in my high school years was God's sovereign plan for me to eventually serve as the junior high student ministry director at HPBC for 3 years, from 1992-1995.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelors degree in 1991 and it was during my tenure as the junior high student ministry director at HPBC that I saw the need for more training in studying God's Word, so I attended Michigan Theological Seminary (now Moody Theological Seminary), and graduated with a Masters of Divinity in 1996. In 1996, I also accepted the position of the student ministry pastor at Riverpointe Christian Church (adopted by Northridge Church in 2014) in Grosse Ile, MI, where I led the middle school and high school ministries for 5 years. It was there that I met my wife, Beth. We were married on September 19, 1998. In March of 2002, the Lord led me to serve as the Lead Student Ministries Pastor at Village Bible Church in Sugar Grove, IL. God has graciously blessed Beth and me with 4 children since we started serving at Village.

MY HOPE FOR VILLAGE

My hope for the student ministry at Village Bible Church is to see our students grow deep in their relationship with Jesus, to the point where they are making disciples who make disciples (2 Timothy 2:2) and go wide in sharing the gospel with their peers so that every student in our surrounding communities hears a clear presentation of the gospel before graduation from high school (Acts 19:8-10).