Bulgaria

During the summer, before my sophomore year of college, I went on a mission trip to Bulgaria with Athletes in Action.  I was part of a basketball team that traveled around Bulgaria playing exhibition games against Bulgarian semi-pro club teams and holding basketball day camps for kids.  We would evangelize wherever we went and shared a gospel presentation during halftimes of the games.  

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Three Big Things

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1

This was a short term mission trip with long term goals. One of our teammates launched into full time ministry in Bulgaria from our trip. He is still a missionary to Bulgaria with Antioch Partners. 
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2

We worked in conjunction with a local church in Cincinnati which supported an evangelical church plant in Vidin, Bulgaria, where we were able to hold a camp, play games, evangelize and spread the presence of that local church in the community
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3

God gave me a vision and called me to pursue that vision during one of our meal times in Bulgaria.  We ate this Bulgarian salad of lettuce, goat cheese and tomatoes every meal. It was great at first but then you ended up looking for something different each meal.  However, one of our meal times was different and it wasn’t the food. We had a dinner with a missionary family from the states.  They had been in Bulgaria for 10 years and they hosted our basketball team for dinner while they shared about what God was doing in Bulgaria through their ministry.  He was a professor at an evangelical seminary in the capital city and his ministry was theological education.  God spoke to me during those moments telling me that I could be in his shoes someday.  ​

Early Life

I grew up in a pastor’s home and missions has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, even though my family didn’t go on any mission’s trips.  Instead, they brought missions into our home.  We did foster care and from the time I was a kid until I left for college we cared for hundreds of kids.  Most stayed for just a few weeks, but over the course of my childhood there would be dozens of kids that would stay in our home  for several years.  After the rest of my brothers were out of the house my parents decided to adopt two more children.  Living in a foster family deeply formed who I am today.  Although, I didn’t always appreciate my experiences. Living in a foster family is difficult and requires a very selfless attitude.  I had to learn to give up my family to these foster children, but in the end I received more than I ever hoped for as I experienced first hand the transforming self-giving love of God in the lives of my parents and the impact they made in the lives of children that were desperate for the kind of love only God can give.  I would say God was planting a missions mind in me during these years.  

God saved me when I was 7 years old and studying for the children’s bible program at church.  The simple and confounding gospel was presented through  series of questions, which my mom helped explain to me.  I learned of my need for a savior and transferred by trust from myself to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Since that time the Holy Spirit has been transforming my life through tests, trials, and temptations as I know that once I was dead and now I am alive — alive to serve the living God with a new life and a desire to love others as he has loved me.

My Studies

Growing up I developed a passion for the truth of the Bible and a desire for others to know what the Bible says.  I enjoy learning about the Bible and teaching others and so I pursued this further in my education at Cedarville University, Baptist Bible Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary.  Throughout these years of study, God blessed me with incredible experiences of learning, which, in my view, cost me nothing. It was a free gift that was a part of God’s grace.  I didn’t deserve the privilege of studying in the classes I took nor did I merit the knowledge I gained.  God was teaching me about himself. I did not teach myself about him.  During these years I was able to go on several mission trips from Jamaica to Mexico to Bulgaria to Indonesia and to India.  God used these mission trips to galvanize in me a desire to serve him in overseas missions and at the same time opened my eyes to a need in the mission field. 

During my internship in India teaching at Asian Baptist Bible college I experienced what every teacher dreams  of experiencing: engaged students eager to learn, attentive on the edge of their seat begging you to continue and teach more - all the while in run down classrooms with little light small room and a few pieces of paper to take notes on.  Students that were desperate for gospel truth and willing to give all they had to learn more.  In contrast to my education that I viewed as free, these students would give all they had just to take any one of the classes that I had received in my wonderful education experience.  A verse that I have continually applied to this perspective is from Jesus’ instruction to his disciples just before he sent them out on their first mission’s trip.  After giving them instruction on how to disciple other people he gave them this dictum “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8).  God began to transform my heart to see how I could apply this verse in my life by teaching in theological education overseas where I would seek to give freely to foreign students the kind of education and instruction that I received for free..

God began to confirm my heart for missions whenever I would learn of the great need for theological education overseas.  It is a pattern throughout the history of the church that whenever the gospel begins to take root and spread through evangelism and church planting the new churches and new believers are susceptible to errant theology and heretical doctrine.  It was just 100 years after Christ ascended into heaven and transferred his ministry to the disciples that the gnostic heresies began to teach that Christ was not fully God and existed in a super human form.  This phenomenon spurred the church to consider how to address these heresies through theological treatises and education.  In more recent times the Great Awakening in North America during the 1700’s brought on widespread conversion and church planting throughout America yet not everybody was being ‘saved’ to the orthodox Christian faith.  Believe it or not during this same time frame two cults sprang up that have persisted to this day - the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Mormons.  Likewise the Modern Mission movement began in the 1800’s with William Carry’s brave trek to India and has resulted in everything that we now bring to mind whenever we think of foreign missions and missionaries.  Yet this global outreach with multitudes coming to faith and new church plants have left many young in the faith Christians susceptible to the same kinds of heretical ideas that have plagued the church since its inception.  New believers need to be trained and brought up in the right doctrines of the faith so that they will be able to cling to what is true whenever false pretenses arise in the new faith community.

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My Mission  

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God has called me to provide theological education to address this very need.  Combining the heart transformation of my early years, my passion to learn and teach, my experiences in overseas missions, and the revelation of the need of the church - these together have led me to prepare for the mission field.

Josh and Jodie

For Jodie and I, our friendship grew after college and when we began to date we knew that God could call us to the mission field and so our hearts were being prepared for that.  We married in the summer of 2009 and moved to Dallas for my graduate studies and during that time we were able to go on two mission trips as a married couple, and God confirmed his call in our lives.  We are a team as we both share a passion for education and compliment each other in many ways.  Jodie helps with keeping things  organized as she is the real brains behind the operation, and she is a very good educator.  I lean on her for good methods in teaching. In God’s providence he led us to Perry Hall Christian School for two years to be a part of an education experience where we could serve others while God was preparing our way to Papua New Guinea.