About Who I Am and What I Believe
“Jesus did not start a new religion or a new movement; Jesus restored the divine order of a merciful God.”
That conviction has shaped the way I have followed Jesus for more than fifty years.
My faith is grounded in Scripture and centered on the living Messiah. I believe the heart of the Christian life is relational rather than institutional—marked by obedience, fellowship, baptism, prayer, and the shared remembrance of Christ at the table. These practices are simple, but they are not shallow. They are the means by which God forms His people and sustains them in faith.
Over time, I have become increasingly concerned that layers of tradition, symbolism, and religious machinery often obscure rather than clarify this simplicity. When systems grow more complex than Scripture requires, they can quietly replace trust in God with trust in form. My aim is not to dismantle faith, but to call believers back to what is older, clearer, and more faithful to the witness of Scripture.
I believe the faith once delivered to the saints is marked by obedience, humility, and shared life within the body of Christ. Believers gather, pray, break bread, and strengthen one another, as the early church did (Acts 2:42, NASB95). Scripture speaks of saints not as a special class, but as all who belong to Christ (Rom. 1:7, NKJV). These convictions shape how I read Scripture and how I teach.
My concerns are not aimed at individuals, but at institutions that drift from the Spirit-led communities described in the New Testament. When Jesus is reshaped by culture, politics, or tradition, the result is distortion. Jesus has not failed; human systems often overshadow divine order.
My commitment remains simple: to point people back to Scripture, to the living Messiah, and to the divine order God intended from the beginning—free from the noise that religion accumulates over time.
Where This All Began
My journey began in the 1970s with a devotion to studying Scripture that has never left me. By the 1980s, I was deeply involved in teaching, writing, and street ministry in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Many lives were changed during those years. Some who came to faith went on to serve in churches and missions. Those seasons remain among the most formative of my life.
In the late 1980s, I founded a bulletin board system called Unconventional Thoughts, which distributed newsletters and essays globally through the Christian Distribution Network in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the early 1990s, this work moved online and became The Christian Underground Journal, where more than 600 essays were published—285 of them my own. One of those writings would later be used in prison ministry.
In 1998, I was ordained as a Minister of the Gospel through Shem Ministries International. Over the years, I have taught in multiple church contexts, including Methodist, Christian & Missionary Alliance, and Lutheran congregations, and have served as a member of a Board of Elders.
After decades of writing and teaching, I have gathered these reflections into a series of books and essays for the present generation. Their purpose is discipleship—to call believers back to the simplicity of the gospel and to the divine order established by God at creation.
Along the way, I have witnessed moments of provision, transformation, and grace that cannot be explained by human effort alone. Even when I fell short, the Lord remained faithful. He continued to teach, correct, and use my life in ways I never expected.