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I always wanted to work with teenagers.  In fact, I was a teenager when I got my first job with the Gra-Y program of the YMCA working at a summer camp and driving the bus on its daily route.  My collegiate studies at the University of Central Florida were to prepare me for a vocation in teaching in the secondary schools in Florida.  I graduated and did what every graduating senior does…send out resumes! I sent them to every county in Florida…there were no boundaries in my vocational calling as a teacher!  Wherever someone would give me an opportunity…I’d consider it God’s calling!  But, to no avail. No interviews, no response.

By the end of the summer in 1976, I was getting desperate.  I kept praying (daily) to God for direction, leading, confirmation but no answers.  I remember asking God, “why did you call me to be a teacher and not provide me with a context for living out that calling?”  Then I got a call from a man employed by the State of Florida who worked with teenagers in a pilot program at the DeSoto START Center.  START stood for Short Term Adolescent Rehabilitative Treatment.  So, how did he get my resume, I asked?  He was a graduate of UCF and he was reaching out to an alumni to fill a much needed position there.  He was looking for someone to fill a counseling (and eventually teaching) position that would work with juvenile offenders in Arcadia, Florida.

I was excited about a new journey and opportunity. I moved in August of 1976 and was living 2 ½ hours from home.  It was my first step into a life-calling of working with students.  I poured my life into the students over the course of the next two years, all the while allowing conversations about God to enter when the door seemed to crack open.  There were some who sought to engage in deeper conversations while others simply closed the door immediately.  I shared as the opportunities were made available.  I also poured my life into the ministry of First Baptist Church, Arcadia as a source of continued spiritual growth and personal discipleship.

Over the course of the two years at the START Center, as frustrations mounted and reasonable expectations for success waned, the seed for a new calling from God began to emerge in my life.  I began to consider and pray about a new seed of desire of working  with teenagers in a church setting as a youth minister.  My desire was to help students to understand God’s calling in their lives, to reach out and minister to others, and to share the love of Christ in ways so others could “see” and not just “hear” about God’s love for them.

But the thought of enrolling in seminary was a daunting experience for me.  I had never done “church” ministry before and I did not feel adequate our qualified or “Christian” enough to go to seminary. “I’ve got sin in my life that I’ve got to get rid of before I can go to seminary”, I said to myself.  I remember my brother helping me in this area.  He said, “Well, Ken, if you’re waiting until you’re perfect, you’ll never go!”  That’s the point in my life when I realized the truth of the old saying, “God doesn’t call the qualified, God qualifies the called.”

I enrolled in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in August of 1978 and have never looked back.  I graduated in June of 1980 and answered God’s new calling to serve as the first full-time youth minister at Carmel Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC.  It was five years filled with times of pure joy, immense challenges, subtle nudges to sharpen my ministerial skills and other life adjustments.  On top of learning about ministry, I was learning about marriage (and eventually about the unparalleled joy of being a father).  Through the years, I’ve also had the privilege of serving the students at First Baptist Church in Roanoke, Virginia before being asked by the late, Lawson Pankey and Reginald McDonough (the Executive Director of the Virginia Baptist General Board to consider coming to the Virginia Baptist Mission Board as the youth ministry consultant.  Again, I felt under-qualified and wondered (and even asked God) “why me”?  Again, it came back to me…“God doesn’t call the qualified, God qualifies the called.”  I simply trusted God and eventually said yes to this invitation.  It has been my privilege and honor to serve the churches of the Baptist General Association of Virginia for over 22 years.  The best part is I still get to work with students but I also get to work with some of the best youth ministers, youth workers and volunteer youth leaders in the country!

The context of God’s calling has moved our lives in several directions since seminary but the calling to work with teenagers has not changed.  I’m not saying it will never change, but at this point (over 31 years); I’m still answering that calling to affect change in the lives of students and the leaders who work with them in the local church.

The call of God, for me, was one of paid, church-related ministry.  While I realize not every calling will be in a “paid” ministry capacity, God’s calling is still a personal challenge for us all to bring change and point others to be followers of Christ.  We’re not perfect…just willing to answer the call of God in our lives and allowing God to qualify that calling through our faithful obedience.

I hope my calling story helps you to “consider your call” as well.  In fact, if you have answered a calling from God in your life…we’d like to hear from you.  Share your story…who knows, you might be the inspiration for someone else to take God’s calling to the next level in their commitment to Christ.

Three and a half years ago, I was working as a fulltime consultant, and was asked to interview with a religious organization on a bottom-up revamp of their website. I dressed nicely and began the drive to the interview with the radio blaring to quash the pre-meeting butterflies. 

Well, I consider myself more spiritual than religious, and asked myself, "What can I really offer?" I know internet marketing, but not religion. A moment later I mused, "Won't this be weird? I mean, come on... I'm just an average guy who knows little about denominational life." And then I thought, "Let go, let God." 

To the empty car, I said out loud, "Lord give me a sign, and I will follow." 

As if on cue, the opening guitar licks from the song Spirit in the Sky came on the radio. With eyes moistening, I shook my head and smiled and said, "All right... Okay... Wow!"

I was truly overwhelmed with a sense of being touched by God.  

"Lord," I said, "if the position seems a good fit, an offer's made, and it's is within reason for our family finances... I'll do it!" Well, God must have been good with the conditions of my contract (I'm joking a bit here) as everything came together perfectly. I was offered the job, and more than willingly accepted it.

My job is a ministry, and at times one of great service, that I do gladly and willingly. I know that I'm part of something much bigger than just another workaday job. I'm a messenger of sorts, sharing the Gospel of our good deeds and desires for all to share. For that, I thank God each and every day. 

I hope and pray that you too will find a way to give voice to the whisper that calls to you as well.

Like many others, I grew up in a stable and loving church family that cared deeply for my spiritual formation. I knew God, His Son Jesus, and that the Holy Spirit was sent to us/me to help in my spiritual journey.  The problem was that it was in terms that a child couldn't not easily relate to.  Large words and phrases that are not typically used in common communication were always used while in church or when reference to the things of the Lord.  

As I grew, I wish I could say matured, it was this solid base that gave stability to my life as the "going got rough."  I can chart my years in high school by the challenges that each year provided me.  I am the youngest of three children and the only boy.  My freshman year I remember the family hastily packing up to go get the middle child from college.  She had started suffering from depression.  I might have been young, but I watched.  I learned.  I prayed.  I knew more than what my family was telling me.  That year was spent in a pattern resembling the movie "Groundhog Day."  I would wake up early to finish up my homework, go to school, head to soccer practice, choir or any other commitments in the afternoon, then go over to the psychiatric hospital to visit my sister each day until about 9:30pm.  This continued for about six months.  We spent my birthday, her birthday, Easter, and what seemed to be countless others holidays and events in a 12 x 12 beige cinder block room with no windows "celebrating," yeah right.  I watched as my overly medicated sister walked in a way resembling a robot and was told this was good for her when I wasn't quite sure it was.  All the while, my oldest sibling was on to her second of three failed marriages.  This one was violent.  This one had lawyers and private investigators involved.  This was not normal.  As we continued to live live as normal as possible amidst extreme anxiety laced with the hope of God providing us with answers and resolution, we had to take measures that would forever impact my memory.  Knowing the abuse that my sister was receiving at the hands of her then husband we made the choice to record phone calls for evidence admissible in that state's court of law.  As fate would have it the phone line in my bedroom had the clearest signal.  As a student my room was my respite, my castle, and now the safety of that fortress was breached by telephone arguments and conversation I didn't care to hear.

Moving ahead to my sophomore year in high school is when I began to press to issue of independence from my parents.  This is the year known as the year of bone-head decisions.  Make no mistake, I have made bone-headed decisions prior to that year and have somehow figured out a way to make them since, but this year stuck out in my then short lived history.  I remember one evening, after having faked the emptying of many a beer on other ocaissons, being at a home when faking just wouldn't suffice.  After spending a night kneeling at my bedside...no I wasn't praying...I began to feel the weight and gravity of the shame I had brought on my parents in light of everything else going on as well as the damage I had done on my character.

As if the previous two short stories encompassing my first two years in high school were not enough my junior year was what I would've considered the "death blow" to my life as a teenager if it weren't for the solid foundation I mentioned previously.  My Father, my hero, my best friend had been hospitalized in the same psychiatric hospital as my sister had been a couple years ago.  I felt as if I had been hit right in the gut as my stomach exchanged places in my body with my heart and I went numb.  For the first time in my life the man I considered near infallible had a very obvious and showing weakness.  I was crushed.  Dad's issues predominantly focused on job related stress, however did involve some depression as a complimentary factor.  This is when God began to make Himself and His presence in my life abundantly clear.

I remember one evening at my home church.  Our youth group bible study had ended.  The students all went to the library of the church where we would continue to hang out until our parents were finished with choir practice, but this night was different.  This night I stayed behind.  I sat in the dark youth room.  I sat alone, that is until, I felt the presence of God sit next to me.  I began to wail.  I started to cry.  I asked the questions any normal person would ask.  Questions like, "Why me?  Why my family?  What's going on here?"  I felt as if I had been traveling along this journey alone.  I knew that not to be so, however those were my feelings and my feelings were so deeply held for so long inside of me waiting, begging to be release, that these feelings had become in some sense my reality.  As I sat there with my God, crying, talking to Him in a way that I had never spoke to Him before I took comfort knowing that much like the poem "Footprints in the sand" that He had been carrying me through each trial.  His protection had been over me and my family throughout each ordeal and that my steps had been order and that God used each of these events in my life to call me into a life of service.  On a side note, as I spent time alone with my Creator that evening in a dark and empty room my youth leader walked by.  He spoke in a voice that was both loud, yet soft at the same time and asked if I was ok.  As I swallowed hard, I answered in a quivering voice, "Yes."  The best thing he did, the most carrying thing he did, one of the most memorable things of his ministry in my life was this...he told me where he would be if I needed him, but he left me alone in that room with God.

I mark that night as the night I received my call to salvation, baptism, and ministry.  The faces on the congregation when I came forward to make my decision public was priceless as they had all assumed that I was a long time, card carrying, Christian.  The weight that was lifted had immediate impact.  I can say with much relief that my senior year was nothing short of amazing as I began to work out my faith with "fear and trembling."

I didn't give God much to work with, but all God wanted was my heart.  God took my heart and has bestowed it with a love for students that runs deep.  Perhaps it was due to the struggles I experienced as a teenager, perhaps there was a certain gift set that seemed to match student ministry in some fashion, or perhaps it was God being God.

My elementary school teachers were important in early development; they were sources of encouragement, patience, and affirmation.  By age 8 I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, to be immulate them.  I also knew (somehow) that my parents wouldn't be able to afford the expenses of college education.  So, I worked hard to make above-average grades, hoping for a scholarship for college expenses.

I did my student teaching in 9th & 10th grades English, wanting to be a high school English teacher.  I took and passed the National Teachers' Exam and taught a self-contained 6th grade class. 

My younger sister married quite young and had 2 daughters, Denise and Lynn.  These nieces were (and are) an integral part of my life as I graduated college.  I saw their trusting of adults in their lives, the innocence, the dependence, the free-giving of love, the joy.

During the summers of my junior and senior years of college, I served as part of the staff for the WMU Camp in North Carolina, Camp Mundo Vista.  There I heard furloughing missionaries talk about finding God's will for one's life.  Love for children and teaching came together in calling to serve as Children's Minister.

I taught school for one year, knowing that I would go to Seminary the following year.  Having no money while in Seminary was a goooood thing---Texas was a different world!  I was ready to leave Seminary (TX) and return to Family (NC) after two weeks!

My journey has taken me from Jackson, TN to Marietta, GA to Richmond, VA to serve with Virginia Baptist to equip leaders and parents to help children know God and to make God known.