Big Current Summer 2015
Tell us a bit about your family… Katie and I will have been married for 13 years this August. We have a full house with 2 biological children, 3 adopted children, currently 3 foster children, and a baby on the way. In a couple of months when the baby is born, our youngest will be a newborn and our oldest will be 17.
Where did you grow up, and how did you get here? I grew up near Cleveland, the third of four brothers. My family was a core family in our church growing up. We were there every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and then Wednesday evenings for Bible study. Church was always a part of my life, but it wasn’t until near the end of High School that I felt God calling me into full-time ministry. I attended Cincinnati Bible College (now Cincinnati Christian University) and majored in Bible and Ministry. After graduating in 2000, I moved to Grand Haven to be a worship pastor at a church here in town. While I was there, I met and married Katie. I served there in many different capacities over the years until 2006 when I left to pursue my master’s degree at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. I worked part-time as a worship leader at a church in Muskegon while I went to school and then joined their staff full-time in 2010 when I graduated.
For the last year, I have been taking a season out of full-time ministry, focusing on our growing family and our ministry as foster parents. It has been a wonderful season for us, but now we feel it is time to get back into ministry, and we are excited and grateful that God opened doors at Watermark for us to be a part of this community.
Do you have any hobbies? Nope. Did I mention I have 8 kids, soon to be 9?
Actually, we do enjoy camping as a family. We get out on the weekends as much as we can during the summer. I’m also a bit of a DIYer – I don’t know if you would consider home improvement a hobby, but I’ve pulled three building permits on our house since we’ve lived there, just about doubling the size of it from when we bought it, so that certainly takes a lot of time.
My children are also involved in sports. We have one in travel hockey, one in competitive gymnastics, and one on a swim team. A lot of our time is spent at the pool, gym, or ice rink.
I am a fan of… Hockey. As big a fan as Steve Deur is of the Tigers, I am a fan of the Red Wings. I try to make it to a few games every year, and hockey is pretty much the only reason we have cable TV. My son is a travel hockey goalie, so we spend of lot of time at the rink watching hockey games.
The perfect day off would include… A perfect day is one in which the kids are busily engaged in activities around the house and playing nicely together. That’s about all I need. Any day that involves family time, but not a lot of pressing deadlines or driving all over the place, I would consider to be perfect.
One thing that may surprise you about me is… I like to cook. That is one part of being the stay-at-home dad that I mostly enjoyed. If I have an afternoon at home and time to prepare for dinner, I really enjoy making things like breadsticks and dinner rolls. I don’t know why, but there is something about homemade dough and kneading it by hand. Maybe it goes along with my DIY vibe that I like to do things myself. Or it could go with my really cheap vibe, that I can make a lot of breadsticks or muffins for a lot cheaper than I can buy them at the store.
How did you become a follower of Jesus? My dad was always the example to me of what a Christ follower should be. I remember as a kid wrestling with questions about God and faith and life, because I was always a pretty introspective and analytical kid. I remember thinking that I wasn’t sure what faith was or what it meant to follow God, but I was confident that whatever it was, my dad had it. He was definitely a big influence in my life.
I could point to a lot of defining moments along the way, but it comes down to growing up confident that God is faithful, and trusting my life to him at a pretty young age. It was almost a simple decision at that point, knowing that giving my life to Jesus was what God wanted me to do, so why wouldn’t I?
Why did you want to be a part of Watermark in this new role? I’ve been familiar with Watermark for a long time. I have lived in Grand Haven for 15 years, and we have dropped in and visited from time to time. Watermark has always seemed to me like a community that focused on healthy relationships among the leadership and being a place that reached out to its community. These are both core values for our family.
When we left our church in Muskegon, I said that we were entering a season of stepping back from church ministry. I didn’t know how long it would be, but I felt like it was a season. I also said that it would take a pretty special church for us to go back to full-time ministry. We were just fine doing what we were doing with Katie working at the Y while I stayed home with the kids. But we believe in who Watermark is and what Watermark wants to become, and that’s the reason that we are here now.
What is your desire for Watermark as you lead our worship team and local missions? I would love to see our worship team grow and incorporate new talents from new people in our faith community. I believe there are a lot more hidden talents in our community that we don’t know about yet, and I’d love to invite them to be a part of what we are doing. I would love to challenge us to grow in our worship expression and creativity on Sunday mornings, and to embrace life as worship outside of our Sunday gatherings.
I want to help people in our faith family find their missions. I’d like to challenge us to try new things and introduce us to new partners who are on mission in our community already so that we can join them. I want us to have eyes for our community and the people around us, to see their needs, and to see our lives and gifts as things that come from God for the purpose of blessing those around us.
It’s a great time to get involved with the worship team at Watermark!
The opportunity to connect, and help other people connect, with God through music in our Sunday morning gatherings is really a privilege. We would love to include some new musicians, singers, and technically-minded people interested in joining our team. If you have a musical talent you would like to use to serve our faith family, or if you would like to help out behind the scenes, please connect Jeff Steele.
