Back in '73, at the tender age of 6 weeks, I was taken by my newly graduated seminarian dad on a journey across the ocean from St. Louis, Missouri, to Ghana, West Africa. (I should mention mom was on that ride too!) He was called as a church planter and leadership trainer to a young Lutheran national church that needed pastors.
I grew up in Ghana, and my development as a man is rooted in two major themes:
1. I spent much of my time with my father, seeing the Holy Spirit doing His amazing work in people's lives as they worshipped under mango trees, in little huts, or gathered around a common bowl of rice and stew. I was trained as a disciple-maker long before I knew it. I've spent the last 12 years of my life figuring that out!
2. I am pretty much self-taught. My parents (with their kids' input) decided to not send us away to boarding school as was common for many "mish kids." Instead, I attended an international private school in Kumasi through grade 5, and then educated myself at home, in my parents' extensive library, and on the roads and paths and wild places of Ghana. My mother is, by training, a History and English teacher, and I gained her love for words and context. From my father I received a love for the Word, for obeying God, for the broken and helpless and marginalised people that others had forgotten.
These two roots have led me on a long and circuitous adventure with Jesus. Because He gave me so much at such a young age, it's been a long journey to be faithful and available with ALL the He's given.
My friends call me a singer-songwriter. I use a guitar and harmonicas and drums and my voice -- and write songs! I love singing for people, or leading them in music worship.
I don't do well unless I'm outside a lot--must have something to do with growing up in the bush. I believe there is something of God we can't access unless we leave the city. He woos us in the wild. I fly fish and hike, canoe, kayak, sleep under stars and cumulus, sail . . . .
I'm also a writer. . . . I love to create -- love the process of creation.
I find even my relationships are part of a creative endeavor, blessed by God and full of messiness, dirt, beauty and God's breath. Dusty & Golden!
I am called to serve Him in His body. I know He's given me a name and an identity, and I'm prepared to bear fruit--like a tree planted deep beside the water, grown to the exact point where the blossoms are beginning to turn into fruit.
This doesn't mean I haven't been fruit-bearing before now. It just means I've only recently received my name, my full name, from the Lord, and I know what He desires of me no matter where I am placed.
Skills are secondary to living missionally. But, I do have skills:
- I'm a certified Director of Christian Education,
- A former director of an outdoor camp with over 40 summer staff,
- A bachelors degree in education and literature,
- A whitewater raft guide,
- A soon-to-be completed master's degree in Outdoor Education from the University of Edinburgh, which includes certificates in community-building in the outdoors, environmental education, and "personal and social development,"
- A gifting as a leader and writer of music worship,
- Abilities in leading large and small groups in creative tasks,
- A writer of Bible Studies, Poems, Games, Plays, Skits, Stories. . . .
- Cross-cultural communication ability and sensitivity to language dynamics,
- I think I can still drive grain truck during wheat harvest (thanks uncles Phil and Ron who taught me this and many other skills at age 17 on the wheatfields of Montana!)
- Being a good dad (my daughter Lily just looked over my shoulder and told me to put this in here),
- A Love and Logic Parenting Class Facilitator. . . .
He's given me a vision too, a larger view of what His body is called to be. But this is not the place to describe that. It derives from the time my wife, Janette, and I were house parents for abused and neglected children. But that's a whole 'nother story -- best to sit down over the cuppa joe for that one!
I DO know this. No matter where I serve Him, my hope is to share His truth with His people wherever I go. He's at work among the messiest. He's at play with the most broken. Jesus gives His love to the dirtiest of all -- even me!
If you want to know why I go by "Dust"--there you go.
