My Testimony to God's Grace, Mercy and Faithfulness

Last week, the campus pastor asked me to give my testimony at the weekly faculty chapel service that was held this morning.  I thought it best to write out my story in order to keep the telling of it under the twenty-five minutes I had been allotted. Here is what I said:

My parents were devout Lutherans. So, shortly after my birth, they had me baptized in their home congregation, Immanuel Lutheran Church in Boonville, Missouri. I was confirmed in the Lutheran faith at age 13 and expressed an interest in studying for the ministry at that time. Although I had an “academic” understanding of the person of Christ through my upbringing in the church and even an inclination to pursue the ministry, it was not until my freshman year of high school that I came to personal faith in the Lord Jesus.

My algebra teacher spoke with me one day after class and asked me if I was saved. He also pointed me to a number of Bible passages that spoke about a personal relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. He encouraged me not only to read God’s Word, but also to study it seriously. I began to attend Bible studies at my teacher’s home on a weekly basis and also during my lunch break from school in the basement of a Baptist church across the street from the high school. I developed friendships with believers from a variety of evangelical and reformed churches. After about one year of study, I came to place my trust in Christ’s work alone for my salvation.

At this point in my life I began to study the Scriptures with an even greater intensity and seriousness. I attended St. Paul’s College High, a Lutheran school located in Concordia, Missouri, for my remaining two years of high school. My direction, though, changed from ministerial training to Christian education, and I made a decision to resign my membership in the Lutheran church in order to fellowship with a small group of believers who met as an assembly of Plymouth Brethren. My decision to leave the Lutheran church was extremely hard on my father whose family had been Lutheran for generations. I did not, however, realize the extent of his disappointment at the time.

Instead, I was being significantly influenced by my reading of the biographies of both George Mueller and Jim Elliot. In addition, while attending a church youth retreat in St. Louis at the South Side Bible Chapel, I met the young lady, Sandy White, who would later become my wife. Throughout this formative period in my life, my parents continued to support me and gave their blessing for both my upcoming marriage to Sandy and our decision to go into full-time ministry as a school teacher with Victory Christian School operated by South Side Bible Chapel, the Plymouth Brethren assembly where Sandy had grown-up and where we would be members.

In August of 1978, Sandy and I were married at South Side and in that same month, the church ordained me to full-time ministry as a teacher at Victory even though I had not yet completed my undergraduate education. I continued to take classes at local colleges during my two years of teaching middle school students at Victory. During these years of teaching, I developed a particular interest in the many legal issues facing Christian schools and ministries, as well as parents who were seeking to home school their children.

After consulting with a number of older brothers and my parents, my wife and I decided to move to South Carolina where I enrolled in Bob Jones University in order to pursue a pre-law course of studies. I believed that the Lord was now leading me to serve others through becoming a lawyer. So, Sandy and I and our 7-month old son, Caleb, traveled over 700 miles to a new place away from our families for the first time.

We spent three years in South Carolina. In addition to my studies at university and working a full-time job, we were actively involved in our local church another Plymouth Brethren assembly -- where I served in both the preaching and teaching of the Word. Upon graduation, and the growth of our family to three children, we returned to St. Louis in the summer of 1983.

We renewed our fellowship with the believers at South Side, and I entered law school at Saint Louis University. During my three years in law school, I continued to serve my church through preaching and teaching. My ministries also expanded to working with college-aged young people. At law school, I assisted with the establishment of a local chapter of the Christian Legal Society and led Bible studies on campus.

After graduating from law school in May 1986 and passing the bar later that summer, I joined a large firm in downtown St. Louis to provide for my wife and now family of four children – our youngest, Justin Mark, had been born in the middle of my second year at law school. I had started the professional stage of my life journey. Still believing that God has called me to use my profession to serve others, I attempted to develop a practice in the area of First Amendment law. I found, however, that the demands and restrictions of being an associate in one of the largest law firms in St. Louis did not complement my pursuits.

Instead, I became distracted by the wiles of “big firm” practice, and after about six years, I was nearly consumed by the world. All the while, though, I continued outwardly to serve in my local church. I was drawing near to God with my lips, but my heart was growing farther and farther away from him. Through a series of challenging circumstances over the next three years of my law practice, I began to experience deeper and deeper bouts of depression largely due to my leading a duplicitous life.

At one point, I remember distinctly driving my car into the parking garage of the office building where I was working, and as I drove down into the garage, I felt as if darkness itself was completely enveloping me. It was my Psalm 88:18 experience. Do you know that verse? I think it must be one of the saddest verses in the Bible. Heman the Erzahite sighs and says to God: “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” I turned my car around, drove straight back to the big two-story colonial house I had had built to show all my friends how successful a lawyer I had become, got out of my car, went into the house and went back to bed.

Sandy was concerned that I was ill, but I told that I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t want to do anything; I didn’t want to talk to anyone; I just wanted to go back to bed. She left me there for several hours, but later she came back to the bedroom and said to me: “I don’t know what is wrong with you. I only know that you need to get back to doing what you used to do.” By that, she meant, I needed to get back to reading God’s Word on a daily basis and journaling my thoughts and ideas, my prayers and concerns. A few days later, by the grace of God, I started back to doing what I had been taught to do in the early years of my walk with Lord.

I was restored in my faith through meditation upon Scripture, prayer and the discipline of journaling. Within the next few months, I ended up leaving that large law firm I had been working for the past nine years, and  joining a small firm of Christian lawyers. In January, 1995, my family and I also decided to move our church fellowship to a small gathering of believers who met at place providentially called Grace Bible Chapel.

This transfer out of “law” and into “grace” was accompanied by my desire and interest to return to full-time ministry. The elders at Grace Bible Chapel invited me to spend a year praying with them about an opportunity for me to serve in a pastoral-teaching ministry within the church. That year turned into 18 months, after which the church ordained me in May 1996. Having now left behind the practice of law, yet another stage in my journey had begun. Over the next four years, I committed myself to ministry in the local church. My elders also encouraged me to start theological studies at Covenant Seminary, and I continued there as a part-time student for the next seven years.

During that same time period, I also started teaching on a part-time basis at Missouri Baptist University as a lecturer in law. In January, 2000, the University offered me a full-time appointment to its faculty as an assistant professor. This marked a new stage in my journey. The course of my life over 25 years to that point had been marked by my respective callings to teaching, law and ministry. These three strands were brought together in the opportunity to serve on the faculty of Missouri Baptist. I began teaching as an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies. Later, I was appointed Chair of the Division of Social & Behavioral Sciences and then, Associate Academic Dean of Undergraduate Studies.

The high-light of my years of teaching at Missouri Baptist was the opportunity I was given to develop a senior seminar focusing students on critical thinking and analytical writing skills. The course required the students to read broadly and to consider what it meant to live an examined, an integrated and an offered life according to one’s calling. The theme of this course became the challenge I would use to conclude every class session of every course I have taught from then until now: Question Everything! Hold on to the Good!

In the fall of 2003, I had the privilege of meeting two professors from Handong while presenting a paper at an academic conference in Florida. Those two were Professor Hee Eun Lee and Professor Guk Woon “Kuyper” Lee. They told me about a young university in Korea called Handong, and they invited me to apply for a summer visiting professorship.

The next summer, after completing my seminary studies at Covenant, I traveled here to Korea for the first time and taught a course on Antitrust Law at Handong International Law School. Upon my return to St. Louis that fall, I continued to serve on the faculty at Missouri Baptist until August, 2005 when I began teaching as a part-time lecturer at Fontbonne University and also started my PhD studies in Theology & Culture at Concordia Seminary.

For the next two years while teaching and studying, I also served as a chaplain to the legal community in St. Louis, Missouri through the Christian Legal Society’s Spirit of St. Louis Pilot Project in Marketplace Discipleship. In conjunction with this ministry, I was ordained as a pastor of discipleship by my current home church, West Hills Community Church.

After completing that project, I continued to teach part-time as a Senior Lecturer at Fontbonne University as well as study in the Theology & Culture PhD program at Concordia Seminary. Last summer, I received an invitation to come back here to Handong as a visiting professor of American Law in the undergraduate School of Law’s U.S. and International Law program.

God has led me on a long journey. It has taken many turns -- from my Lutheran family upbringing, through the Plymouth Brethren to now serving at a Baptist church. Along the way I have been a student at a Fundamentalist University – Bob Jones, a Jesuit Law School – Saint Louis University, both a Presbyterian and Lutheran Seminary – Covenant and Concordia. I’ve taught at a Southern Baptist and a Catholic University – Missouri Baptist and Fontbonne – and now, for this academic year – I teaching here at Handong.

All in all, as I look back over my nearly 51 years upon this earth, I realize anew that it has only been the grace, mercy and faithfulness of God through Christ Jesus that has brought me through. I continue to look forward to the opportunities for service that the Lord has yet ahead of me as I continue to seek, by His grace and strength, to fulfill both His calling to teach and His purpose through serving others in this my generation. I can confidently say, as I know you too will confess, that it is only: “By the grace of God [that] I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

If the LORD had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
Psalm 94: 17-19