MEET PASTOR RJ

A thespian before he became a theologian, RJ once knew more Shakespeare than Scripture, until the Author of all stories began claiming his imagination and eventually his life.

For fifteen years, RJ has served the Church as a writer, Bible teacher, pastor, and theological troublemaker of varying degrees. His formation has never looked especially tidy. He holds a Bachelor of Divinity and is working toward his Master's, though much of his education has come through the ramshackle schoolhouse of ministry itself: late-night questions, hospital rooms, sermons that would not behave, grief that needed language, and the stubborn mercy of Christ meeting people in places no syllabus could have anticipated.

RJ’s theological instincts carry Reformed bones and a Christocentric pulse. He has grown increasingly drawn to the sacramental imagination, historical depth, liturgical wisdom, and strange beauty of Anglicanism, while retaining a partly anarchic suspicion of every empire. 

At the center of it all is the Story of Christ, the story that rewrites all other stories. RJ’s writing and teaching are given to the hope of helping people find their lives reclaimed, re-narrated, and remade by the mercy of God in Jesus.

RJ and his wife, Laura, have been married for nine years. Together, they have wrestled with the political and cultural compromises of American evangelicalism, which eventually led them to pastor a house church in Denver for three years. RJ now serves as an apprentice at Wellspring Church, learning again how to breathe, listen, teach, write, and long for the Kingdom with steadier hands.