About

About Jamie

⳩ I am a Follower of Christ, Mdiv Student @ Luther Rice College and Seminary, Husband to my high school sweetheart, & Dad to an amazing son and an awesome daughter. I am also the Discipleship Pastor @TBAchurch. I am a Byzantine, Baptist, Middle-Earth Narnian Walking in the Wood Between the Worlds where I jump in the pools of Classical Christian Thinking, Puritan Theology, Imaginative Literature, and Spiritual Formation. Standing on the Solid Rock- Solus Christus. ⳩

Mission

My mission in life is to equip the church with a firm foundation of knowing what they believe and why they believe it, how to define, defend, and think about it, and how to live life in response to it. This includes engaging neighbors and communities by being the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus Christ in response to the Great Commission and the Great Commandments. To help the Church live fully and gratefully as Kingdom participants living to this calling, his goal is to teach and lead others to follow the way as disciples of Jesus Christ: theologically, existentially, religiously, and relationally. Finally, his ultimate and chief end is to glorify God and to make the name of Jesus famous!

My Testimony

In regards to me being a Christian or coming to Christ- I must very clearly state that this is not some mental or emotional assent that I gave to become a Christian.

I did not feel like Jesus was a good character and I did not chose to follow him because he makes me feel a certain way. Neither did I look at an argument for God’s existence and come to the conclusion that He is there and that Jesus is my savior. While I can easily demonstrate God’s existence through valid and true proofs, my involvement in the apologetics community has found that arguments with atheists are largely fruitless because we are starting from two different places. This does not mean that I find no value in apologetics- I find immense value in that I am fulfilling the Lord’s command to have an answer; but I find the best value for apologetics is inside the church- having an answer for those who preach a false gospel and defending the faith that was once and all delivered to the saints by the Apostles. And while the knowledge of Christ certainly impacts my emotions, it was not an emotional quest that brought me to him.

All that was stated to go back to my first point. My coming to Christ wasn’t an intellectual pursuit alone (that came afterwards) nor was it because he makes me feel good. My coming to Christ was because I was fundamentally changed from one type of creature into another. It was a transformation- albeit one that I cannot lay out on a timeline. I can explain it in no other way than to say that once I was blind and now I see. This is why I confess that salvation in Christ Jesus came- not because of something that I have done, but because he moved first to convict me and call me to repentance and a life of following him. This is what being born again means. I pray that this transformation is proved out as I proceed through this life and pass into that moment when I will see him face to face.