I grew up in Ft. Collins, CO and began attending Plymouth Congregational Church UCC regularly during confirmation in 9th grade. While my previous church experience was mainly around attending Ladera United Church of Christ in Portola Valley, CA with my grandmother during the holidays, confirmation struck a unique chord in my heart. There was something about church that captured me. I began attending camps and retreats, attending church regularly, teaching Sunday school, and before long I became active in the wider church of the United Church of Christ. When I went to college in Colorado Springs, I stopped by First Congregational Church UCC and within a month was hired to be the Youth Director. During my four years at FCC, I found myself moving from a career in business or law to the ministry. In the fall of 1992, I began my studies at Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS). While seminary challenged me to my core, I found it to be an extremely enriching experience and couldn’t have asked for a better education. Through a full year internship at Wayside UCC in Washington state, Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in Chicago, and as a CUE intern in Colorado and South Dakota, I began to get a lot of pastoral experience as well as see different styles of ministry. During my last year at CTS, I began working at a large Congregational church outside of Chicago where I served as a youth director for two years. My first call as a minister came from Santa Cruz UCC where I stayed for about three and half years before I headed back to Illinois to serve as an associate pastor in Winnetka, IL (where I had served as a youth director). I served five years in Winnetka until I moved to Boulder to become the associate pastor at First Congregational UCC. After two plus years there, my ministry ended, and I began to work at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless where I worked as program staff and supervisor. Concurrently I served a director of youth ministries at First Congregational Church in Greeley, CO until January of 2012 when I became the Interim Minister of the Kirk of Bonnie Brae, UCC. During the interim time at the Kirk of Bonnie Brae, the church began the process of becoming an Open and Affirming church (which subsequently passed in the fall of 2013), combined two worship services into one, fostered the emergence of a new preschool for the neighborhood, and hired three new staff members. In August of 2014, I began my ministry as Senior Pastor of Sixth Avenue UCC.