I should have known from an early age that God was calling me into the ministry. Looking back, I can see how God used many significant events and people to prepare me for a life of shepherding His people.

I was raised in the church and made the decision to accept Jesus as my Savior when I was about 8 years old. A few years later, when I was 11 and my family joined University Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, Texas, I shared my faith with the pastor and was baptized soon after. Things seemed great, but my world was about to be turned upside down. Just a few months later, my father announced he was leaving my mother and would be marrying another woman and would be raising her two kids. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I felt anger, betrayal, and faced spiritual struggles I had never imagined. However, this was the start of a process that taught to love the church, for it was in these days the church truly loved on me.

Many of our fellow church members provided and cared for my mother, my older brother, and I. God put some very special people in my path to help disciple and encourage me as I processed what was happening. One thing I learned early on was to offer forgiveness, for I had been forgiven through Christ, and to seek reconciliation with those who hurt me and with those who were hurting. I forgave my father, maintained a relationship with him, and became the person in our family that aimed to keep the peace as we struggled to adjust to a new normal. This strength could have only come from God! The Lord used this time to give me a heart of a peacemaker, something that has continued to be a main focus of my ministry.

Over the next few years, as my faith and knowledge of Scripture deepened, I was continually given opportunities to lead out in ministry settings. By the time I was a junior in high school, I had been selected to teach a weekly Bible study to middle school students (under the direction of our youth pastor), had formed a men’s prayer and accountability group that met every Sunday morning before church, and had even started preaching occasionally at a local nursing home. Each of these opportunities had been brought about by Godly men who saw in me what I had yet to see in myself. I knew by this time that I would always be involved in the things of the church, but I had other ideas for what career I might pursue.

During college at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, I received my first opportunity to work for a church. I had stayed active in church life, and had been having the first real thoughts about what a life in ministry would be like, so I jumped at the offer and served as the Youth & Music Minister at the First United Methodist Church of Electra, Texas. It was an awful experience!!! The church was sweet enough, but I was not prepared for the challenges ministry presented, hadn’t considered the theological differences between that church and what I believed, and served under a pastor that sought more to criticize than to teach. Also, during the time I served this church, I had gotten engaged to the very beautiful Penny Kennedy (she has been Penny Robinson for 23 years now and she’s just as beautiful as ever!) and tensions were building in my ministry position. Soon after getting married, I left that church and truly thought I was done working in vocational ministry. This was certainly a very low point in my life.

After working various odd jobs for nearly six months just to make ends meet, I realized that despite the bad experience I had come out of, I couldn’t stop thinking about working in ministry. I shared this with my father-in-law, who has been a pastor himself for over 40 years, and he prayed with me and encouraged me to step out in faith again and pursue another church opportunity. Soon after, I met Robert Morgan, who was the pastor at Sunnyside Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, and that church called me to serve as their Youth & Music Minister. This new setting was exactly what I needed! Robert quickly became a dear friend and mentor (he still is to this day) and taught me what it meant to serve as a shepherd for a local body of believers. He often let me preach for him and lead out in other ways. It was during this time that I realized this was my life’s calling, and I shared this with the church and was later ordained. When Pastor Robert left Sunnyside for a new position, the church quickly called me as their interim pastor and just a few months later voted me in as their official Lead Pastor. I was just 24 at the time and most members of that church could have easily been my grandparent, but I couldn’t have been more thrilled to be serving the church and preaching every week.

20 years have passed since that day when I truly stepped into my calling. I’ve now pastored 4 different churches (Sunnyside Baptist Church, Bluff Dale Baptist Church, Bono Baptist Church, and First Baptist Church of Farmington, Missouri) and couldn’t imagine doing anything else! My wife and boys have been by my side the entire way. Now, I’m excited to watch God’s calling for my sons. My oldest, Peyton, loves missionary work (the picture is of me praying over him before a recent missions trip to Cuba) and he is prayerfully considering if that is God’s call for his life.

I know now that God had always been preparing me for a call into ministry, and I’m glad there came a day when I realized that this was a call that couldn’t be ignored.