Who Am I?

I'm RJ and I love what I get to do.  

I'm a husband to my wonderful wife, Jessica, and dad to our son Elijah and our daughters Emaline and Alice.  I serve as Pastor at the church my wife and I have grown up at, Faith Lutheran Church in Troy, Michigan. I serve as the leader of our NextGen (birth-college-age) team and am attending seminary at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO.

My goal with this blog is to write.  I love to write about the things I'm passionate about.  I believe that theology shouldn't be something that is reserved for the academics and dead guys, but should be something flows into everyday life.  A good theology should shape the way we parent, the way we relate to our spouse, the way we do our work, and the way we interact with our neighbors.  In addition to blogging here, I also am a contributor for the Law/Gospel collective ChristHoldFast.

Some Posts To Get Started:

As I've been blogging, there have occasionally been posts that either have been significantly more popular than others or I simply enjoyed them more than the others.  If you haven't been following the blog for long, I would love for you to check out some of my favorite posts.

A few of my favorites:

• Why Christian T-Shirts, Music, and Movies Aren't Very Good
• The Emasculation of Vocation
• Ordinary Radicals
• Pouring Beer for the Glory of God
• The ME Generation

And some posts I've written for other great sites:

• To Those Beaten Up By the Church - ChristHoldFast
• The Sunday to Monday Gap - Ed Stetzer on ChristianityToday.com