My faith in Jesus Christ is deeply beholden to the singing, laughter, prayers, tears, and cheers of my parents and extended family. My Great Grandpa Gilbert Otteson was the legend—a traveling “Ambassador at Large” for the Evangelical Covenant Church with strong roots in the tent revivals of the early 1920s. Meanwhile, both sets of my grandparents—all “Charter Members” of their respective ECC congregations—were avid supporters of Young Life. My parents would follow suit, hosting “club meetings” in our home and contributing significantly to the development of Young Life’s Washington Family Ranch in central Oregon. Of course, my late 1990s mom and dad also served as founding members of a vibrant church planted in the post-steeple frontiers of an industrial business park.

I was four years old (1991) when I both “invited Jesus into my heart” and decided that I wanted to tell people about Him for the rest of my life. I’d have much to learn, but the witness of my family and a personal experience of God's presence propelled me in my passion for encouraging people to know Him and the deep transforming power of His love. As a child, I began sharing the news about Jesus with my friends and their parents. At the age of ten, I started sharing the Gospel with total strangers. By middle school, I was formally mentored by my youth pastor for street evangelism.

In high school, I began mentoring younger students in my free time. By my junior year, I launched my first small group for high school and college students from different churches and schools in the west suburbs of Portland, Oregon. As the group grew, I began to preach with the joy and conviction of the conference speaker, Judah Smith, who had personally given me the most impactful ten-minute preaching lesson of my life. I soon took my passion for ministry to Southeastern University (Lakeland, FL) where I laid the groundwork for organizational leadership with a major in Business Management while supporting ministry commitments with a double minor in Bible and Worship Administration.

While at Southeastern, I traveled as a vocalist on two of the university’s “Ministry Arts Tour Teams,” performing contemporary worship and gospel music at conferences, churches, and youth camps spanning the Midwest and Southern United States. I even served a six-month contract as a vocalist with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (“TBN”), which was an unforgettable experience, to say the least. I’d soon add the leadership of a men’s small group, a university worship team, and a 4:00 AM (you read that right) high school youth bible study to my flourishing schedule as an academic and developing ministry leader.

After meeting the pastor (now author) John Mark Comer and staff while visiting the Portland area, I accepted an invitation to formally “shadow” what remains a flourishing church community despite its location in the most “religiously unaffiliated” city in the United States. After a season of mentorship in Portland, I began accepting interim worship pastoral invitations from various churches while finishing my degree in Florida. Over the course of the next four years, I’d lead the worship programs of a mega-church youth group, two small community churches, and two large churches. Towards the end of that season, I also helped Young Life launch a new “area” in Washougal, Washington.

At the age of twenty-five (2013), I transitioned into full-time pastoral ministry in the Portland area, where I founded a multi-church youth pastors network and hosted regional events that resulted in over 110 faith commitments and 80 baptisms in a one-year period. I would later accept the call to onboard as a youth and young adult pastor at a thriving church preparing to launch an aggressive multisite campaign. I would spearhead its fifth location.

As a campus pastor, I had some pretty big wins right out of the gates, such as securing our dream venue (It was not easy!), building a forty-strong launch team, and sustaining an extraordinary spirit through relentless in-service tech disruptions. During that time, I was elected Chair of a city-managed Neighborhood Advisor Counsel with oversight of the largest neighborhood development in the State of Oregon. Through the Chair, I engaged the community, coordinated with local government and developers, and staged community outreach events aligning with the vision of the city and of the Church. One such event was recognized as the second-largest city event in its history. A personal letter of recommendation from the mayor was very encouraging.

During the COVID lockdowns, I was relentless in my will to keep people engaged in the life of the church and community. We hosted “drive-in” services broadcasting audio from an AM radio transmitter. We participated in church-wide outreach events. And of course, we hosted our fair share of Zoom meetings back in the heyday of “You’re still muted,” “Can you hear me now?” and “Who’s dog is that barking in the background?” What a time of resilience for the Body of Christ!

God really began to do something in my heart in the summer of 2020. While pursuing a Master of Arts in Ministry Leadership at Northwest University (Kirkland, WA), I felt a strong call to engage at a deeper level with challenges facing the Church located in a secularizing society. This led me to apply for a program at the University of Oxford where I’d have access to some of the world’s foremost Bible scholars and missiologists. After receiving my acceptance letter, my church asked me to remain on staff for an extra year, serving as worship pastor to the central campus where I would support efforts of stabilization after some of the most stringent lockdown protocols in the U.S. had taken their toll on the church and staff. In the summer of 2022, I began fundraising for my season at one of the most rigorous academic institutions in the English-speaking world.

At Oxford, I had the honor of conducting research in good proximity to the theologian N. T. Wright, where I focused on the puzzle of evangelism and spiritual formation in contemporary Western contexts. I advanced the idea that, to date, Evangelicals have maintained a very abstract, theoretical approach to evangelism and spiritual formation which doesn’t work so well with secular audiences. Most importantly, I argue, it doesn’t work well with the Gospel. I propose a more concrete approach to everything, recentering the weight of the Christian claim, evangelism, and transformation on the nature of the resurrection event itself.

As I’ve had to crowdfund the bulk of my academic fees and living expenses, my development as a capital campaigner has resulted in well over $100k raised, not including the extraordinary blessing of a colleague's two-bedroom apartment (≈$5,000/mo. value) within walking distance of my college. I have said that the academic work at Oxford is extremely challenging, but the fundraising element has provided an equally enriching experience of long-term development and engagement with my community as we follow through with the calling at Oxford.

As I consider my overall journey to this point, I believe my deep family roots speak to a firm grounding in the Body of Christ—and at a highly integral level. I think my early preparation as an evangelist and mentor of youth (while in my youth!) also demonstrates a lifelong pastoral commitment transcending, albeit resulting in formal ministry assignments. Taking into consideration the full range of my pastoral experiences—whether as a worship pastor, youth pastor, campus pastor, and beyond—I am confident my preparation now offers a wide organizational intelligence that can address questions of Church leadership in complex ministry environments.

I am also confident my time at the University of Oxford has cultivated the theological depth necessary for leadership of a transformative community, specifically preparing to flourish the ministry of the Word in a secularizing society. No doubt, fundraising efforts have also prepared my experience for the rigor of long-term kingdom initiatives.

Over all, I believe the evangelistic volition demonstrated throughout the course of my life confirms a highly missional instinct set on mobilizing the Body of Christ—to fulfill its purpose of bearing witness to Jesus revealing the Father through the Spirit, and making disciples of all nations. As I anticipate what will be the most important, challenging work of my pastoral calling, it is with my deep faith, formative journey, and life-long preparation that I foresee the weighty responsibility of equipping the Church to faithfully engage a rapidly changing world with the unchanging truth of Christ.