Director of community engagement, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
Redeemer Lutheran Church, Lansing, Mich.
Our family started worshiping at Redeemer three and a half years ago, after returning to the U.S. from Madagascar, where we had lived for some years. It’s an extremely welcoming congregation with great leadership. I grew up in an ELCA—and a predecessor church—congregation, so instantly felt at home there.
Both of our young children have been baptized at Redeemer. The church’s most prominent ministry is a much-needed child care center for dozens of area families. Our children attend that child care center; we love and are grateful for the staff. My wife is on the board of directors for the child care center portion of the ministry. We try to contribute to or serve during other church activities and events when we can, donating dollars or time.
For our family, it’s important for us that we’re renewed every week at church through faith, grace and Scripture. The excellent music at Redeemer sure is an attractive feature of worship too! We are greeted by smiling faces every time we walk through the doors, and the congregation is diverse and looks like the rich tapestry of cultures found in Michigan.
I started in my current role in January 2024, having previously served in a similar position in the office of Michigan’s governor. The job allows me to engage all types of department stakeholders and help state government listen, synthesize information, problem-solve and continually improve upon service delivery for people. At the end of the day, roles like the one I hold exist to try and help make government work better through improved responsiveness. It’s a charge I don’t take lightly, and I’m thrilled to be doing it.
What I like most about my vocation is crisscrossing Michigan, meeting the innovative people working to make the lives of their communities and customers better through ingenuity and effort in agriculture production, value-added transformation and food safety. The job effectively provides me an additional avenue to live out my faith and try and make the world a slightly better place.
I developed a set of principles over many years that has helped me think, work and act through most situations: honor people, take action, be flexible, achieve results. I’ve read a good deal from and about Martin Luther and have drawn lessons from the life he lived and through his expressed faith journey. Stuff can be hard—life can be hard—but you get up every day and do the best you can.
We can choose to wake up every day and do the best we can, but when we inevitably make a mistake or fall, faith allows us the opportunity to remember that God gives us grace; God’s got this.
I joke that these days I don’t have any free time, with two kids under 4 at home! Seriously, though, the bits of free time I do get are often spent in the backyard, pushing a swing, playing catch with my 3-1/2-year-old or picking tomatoes in late summer with my almost-1-1/2-year-old. Since being back in Michigan, I have gotten out in the trout streams of northern Michigan each spring. I try to get to one or two Michigan State University football games a year too!
I pray for lots of things. I think that’s a fortunate aspect of having a relationship with God. I can ask for personal strength or healing for a neighbor or world peace, or utilize prayer to express thanks to God for all the good that [is] happening. I learned a long time ago that turning to prayer is an exercise that strengthens one’s faith, so it’s a regular part of my life.
I’ve seen God working in glaring ways in places around the world, like in South Sudan, where people have carried out food security work, health care work, education work and more in his name. More recently, I’ve appreciated God’s presence in places I may not have looked for or seen him previously: in an aging parent’s elongated phone call, in the smiles and bright eyes—and yes, the screaming and crying—of my own toddlers, and even in tough conversations or negotiations at work. God’s here, doing his thing. We just have look for him, recognize him and appreciate him.
I think a more formal interpretation in our faith tradition might be that grace is the undeserved, freely given, unable-to-be-earned, abundant love of God—and it’s for everyone! In contemporary American vernacular, I’d say, “God’s got this,” no matter how wonderful or dire a situation or experience may be. We can choose to wake up every day and do the best we can, but when we inevitably make a mistake or fall, faith allows us the opportunity to remember that God gives us grace; God’s got this.
I’m a Lutheran because Martin Luther helped—and is still helping—those who ask, think through and understand central tenets of Christianity. And an important one of those is that by faith alone, through God’s grace, we achieve salvation. That’s a fundamental tenet. The intellectual writings of Luther and Lutherans throughout the centuries help interpret and apply God’s word to the world we live in.
