Our little family – we have so much to be thankful for! As I sit and write, my three children are done with school for the day and are playing happily around me. Mary Beth is trying to steal a catnap. Like our life right now, it can all be a bit chaotic and frenzied, but the hustle and bustle is a tangible reminder for me nevertheless that God continues to be at work in our lives in ways and degrees that I could never have anticipated. And it’s my pleasure now to give you an update on these ways and degrees of grace, on how we are seeing the Lord moving even as we ourselves are being moved toward a new ministry as part of the faculty of Tyndale Theological Seminary in the Netherlands.
Indeed, so much has happened over the last few months, and it will be impossible to package everything into this little prayer update. But let me cover the basics of where we have been, and where we are at, as well as how we anticipate the coming months to go.
Goodbye Toronto, Hello Georgia
Saying goodbye to Toronto over the summer was so incredibly difficult. After four years there, we developed such a robust web of friendships and mentorships at Wycliffe College, on campus at the University of Toronto, that departing our basement apartment felt like being entirely uprooted from our place in the world. As we contemplated our move south of the border, we weren’t sure how the children were going to handle this transition, but, thanks be to God, they absorbed the shock very well. Some of the hardest parts of moving did have to do with navigating our own home by the end – the maze of book boxes and the disappearing toys and appliances grew increasingly intolerable – so by the end of August there was definitely a relief in seeking more livable spaces. But it is important to acknowledge our sense of loss, even as it intertwines with our excitement and anticipation of coming things.
From Toronto we traveled to process paperwork for our eldest son at the Belizean consulate in Chicago: he needed a new Belizean passport, and we needed to request an “apostille” on his birth certificate for immigration to the Netherlands. All in all, the visit was very smooth, and it was great to get a dose of Belizean culture – even if it was too brief! After this, we headed to Indiana for a week with my parents. The following week we continued our journey and arrived in north Georgia where we have established a temporary base from which to raise new financial support for our ministry in Europe.
Despite our efforts to hit the ground running, the shift to forging new partnerships with churches, family, and individual Christians in the southeast has taken us some time. Some of that has to do with the stresses of relocating a family and establishing new habits and rhythms in a new place. Some of it has had to do with the ins and outs of trying to schedule meetings with clergy and lay leaders, or Sunday visits to churches. And some of it has had to do with slowly building trust in ways that will prove fruitful for Gospel ministry in the long run. For all these reasons, we are happy to take this season on God’s timing and to allow him to guide our search for new financial partners in our ministry to Europe and the world.
Even with this slow start, we have been making visits all across the sunbelt. Some of these have been local – in Hiawassee, Blue Ridge, and Loganville (Georgia) – while others have been further afield: Asheville (North Carolina), Chattanooga (Tennessee), Huntsville (Alabama), and even Charleston (South Carolina). We are even looking forward to being as far away as Memphis next month, and everywhere in between. All that’s to say, we have been spending a lot of time in the car on weekends, and we have had the blessing of meeting so many new friends who have already begun praying and giving to our ministry as missionaries. Praise be to God!
And in between these weekends away, May Beth has started the children in their new school year, I have gone to men’s breakfasts and pastors’ breakfasts, and we have begun carving out a new life in the foothills of the Appalachians. It’s strange not being at the heart of one of the most vibrant cities in North America, but it is also amazing being surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation in ways that our city-slicker kids could barely imagine. And we have been blessed not only by our immediate family, but by so many who have come alongside us in this interim time, and newfound place. So, in the midst of all this transition, allow me to say thank you for your prayers, and please continue to pray for us as we adjust to our new, temporary life as missionaries on the road raising support.
Doctoral Defense and Degree Complete
Among all the things for which I am grateful to the Lord this November, one of the obvious is that last week I successfully defended my PhD dissertation before the examining committee, passing with no revisions. This was a long time coming: not only because I had been writing and editing the dissertation for nearly three years, but also because the examination period was just over four months (ordinarily the maximum period). But in the end, everything went well, and I am so grateful to have had an incredible committee of scholars going through my work and asking me the necessary questions about my claims. I found their questions and engagement to be very stimulating and helpful as I move ahead with my work as a scholar and teacher at Tyndale in the Netherlands.
It’s important, I think, that instructors in theological colleges and seminaries continue researching and writing, whenever possible, because the best teachers are those who continue to approach life and ministry as students themselves. A curiosity of mind and heart, a willingness to endure the crucible of putting ideas into written form, a desire for the critical input of peers: all of this helps an instructor become a pattern for students to imitate as they develop their own curiosities, craft their own communications, and engage in their own dialogue with others. My hope is that my long years working on this dissertation have given me a starting point for a life of research and writing, not so much as an end in itself, but also as a way of being the best theological educator that I can be.
Along these lines, in October I was pleased to fly out to Portland, Oregon to attend the Sixteenth Century Society Conference. I gave a paper for the Richard Hooker Society and led a panel for the Wittenberg Center for Reformation Studies. And while I also took the opportunity to visit a church in Portland that I had last attended fifteen years before on another tour raising missionary support, I believe that this kind of time presenting my work at academic conferences and engaging in the work of others is and will continue to be important for our ministry to Europe and the world. Given our missionary travels and the speed at which the Lord provides our support, I am not yet sure where we will be at different points in 2026, or which conferences it will be best for me to attend. However, I do hope to attend things like this regularly, and to have a stronger ministry as a result.
I should also add that while I was on the west coast, I also made a point to attend the annual synod of my own group of churches, the Diocese of Western Anglicans. It had been six years since we were in California at all, and nine since I attended our diocesan synod, and it was so good to reconnect with old friends and the newly elected bishop to whom I am responsible. The only downside to all this traveling on the west coast was that I was away from Mary Beth and the kids for two weeks, and I find that kind of distance to be incredibly wearisome. I was very glad to be back in Georgia with my family early in November, and to be taking on these kinds of travels all together.
Partnering for What’s Ahead
So, at this point what do we need from you, our curious friends and other interested readers, related to our missionary vocation and our new placement at Tyndale Theological Seminary in the Netherlands?
First, please pray that we reach the financial threshold of regular and one-time gifts that we need to be cleared for arrival and ministry at Tyndale. Though there are some SAMS-specific aspects of that funding threshold, much of it is determined by the salary numbers that Tyndale must certify before the Dutch government in order to sponsor our family’s visa application, among other things. We cannot begin our ministry partially funded: we have to be confident that we are at least at 100% of our monthly support, with some margin added for variations in currency exchange rates. And while the Lord has blessed us in these months with new pledged donors, it has been a much slower uptake than we had hoped, given our desire to be arriving in the Netherlands in late winter. So please pray that the Lord will bring new people, families, and churches to partner with us financially, and that we will arrange to move our family to Europe early in the spring.
Second, please prayerfully consider becoming a financial partner yourself in our mission to Europe and the world, or if you already give to our ministry, please consider increasing your pledge to meet the rising cost of living and serving there. We are more than happy to be in touch with you personally to answer any questions you may have, and starting in the next few weeks we are aiming to begin having virtual “town halls” on Zoom to field those questions more publicly and efficiently (stay tuned for more information about these very soon). But even before then, we would cordially invite you to join with us in new ways to get our ministry in Europe off the ground. We are so looking forward to seeing with our own eyes what the Lord is and will be doing at Tyndale, and we can’t wait to share these kinds of updates with you from the field. So please: pray about supporting our efforts to bring affordable theological education and training in ministry to emerging leaders from around the world!
But third and finally, we would want you to know just how thankful we are to each of you for being the hands and feet of the living God in our lives: for holding us up in prayer, for messaging us when we are down, and for giving so sacrificially to our family’s missionary life and calling. As we approach (American) holiday of Thanksgiving, and soon Christmas and the year’s end, please be assured that we are holding you up in our prayers as well. We hope to write an update again soon, and give you once again a window into how the Lord continues moving and working among us.