I am, you've heard of small churches, you've heard of small houses, you've heard of tiny houses? I don't have a small church, I have a tiny church. And that's where I belong. That's where God has chosen to put me. That's where I fit best. I'm not equipped to be a pastor of a large church. I'm with you today in much weakness. was weak to begin with, but my subject matter is too weak not to pray. And so I had a hunch that the Lord would weaken me further so that you might get something out of this. Because if I come to you in strength, it's worthless. As a little fish in a little pond, why am I up here? I don't know exactly. I know Stephen Lee. You've heard it said, it's not what you know, it's who you know. I know and love Stephen Lee. I'm supposed to give a testimony, aren't I? Yes, a testimony. I'll try to keep that to five minutes. I grew up in a church going home, and I once asked my mother if I could opt out, and she said no. So I made the best of it. I really wanted to stay home and watch cartoons. But she made me go. So I made the best of that by, you know, my friends were there and I could hang out with my friends. And we could goof around and those kinds of things. And as I became into the teenage years, you could go to youth group. goof around there and look at girls and those kinds of things. And I was a Pharisee. I had my own two great commandments. I had edited the Bible. I didn't even know what the two greatest were. But my two greatest were, do not get drunk and do not have sex before marriage. And I was like the rich young ruler. I've kept all these things from my youth, you know, completely ignorant of what the law requires. And at age 12, a visiting preacher came and preached on hell and terrified me. And I did what all that we knew to do, which was I came down the aisle and made a profession of faith. And I was baptized. I was a good boy for a couple of months. I straightened out my filthy mouth and quit cussing and tried to be very attentive during church. That did not last at all. My life did not change, really in the slightest. I went to college. I drifted away. I didn't go to church anywhere. I visited two different churches, and they bored me out of my mind, so I quit going. I was never in the habit of reading the Bible. I didn't understand it. I didn't know you were supposed to. I did not pray, really ever, except for maybe just a few, you know, little help requests here and there. I came under a, I guess an odd conviction that I should be reading the Bible and I should be praying. I still thought of myself as a Christian at that point, and I was going off to do an internship in Reno, Nevada at a newspaper and I decided to leave the television at home because I knew that I was addicted to television and that if I took that along I would never follow any resolution to start praying more or reading the Bible more. So I did and I started praying. I started writing out prayers. I started reading the Bible. I still didn't understand any of it. I started going to Christian bookstores and getting books that probably now I would consider horrible books. But there was a seeking process that had begun in me, and I did not know that I was really seeking salvation. I thought maybe I was seeking some sort of renewal. After graduation, I had concluded that journalism was not for me, and so I started thinking about ministry, strangely enough. Now, being unconverted and regenerate, that couldn't have been anything more than just a fleshly thought. And to this day, I can't explain why it was there. So following graduation, I went out with this Christian choir, and we would sing in churches every night and travel overseas some and sing. And I did that for about seven months. Then my home church was wanting to hire a youth pastor. They'd never had one before, and they wanted to know if I was interested, and I said yes. So I applied and they hired me for that part time. And I continued on the tradition that I had grown up on, you know, pizza parties and ski trips and mission trips and things like that. And I was going through classes, you know, some classes with the youth. You sprinkle a little bit of Bible here and there over the entertainment of the kids. That's what we were doing. And some material was sent by Ligonier Ministries to the church. I didn't have any idea who they were. But I was eager for anything, since I knew nothing, to teach myself, since I had nothing to give as far away as personal Bible knowledge. I was happy for any helps and materials I could get. So I went through a series with the youth by R.C. Sproul, and I was converted in the process. And didn't know that that's what had happened to me. All I knew is that I have a new God, a new Bible, And there's a new me, and I had a completely different idea of who man is and who God is and what salvation is and what grace means. And things started to, you know, get better, of course. I had a hunger for the Word of God that I never had before. I didn't need to self-flagellate in order to read it. I wanted to read it. I was drinking it up. Verses were burning themselves into my memory without me even trying to memorize them. There was a growing sense at the same time of a desire to preach, and I guess I would explain that as a burden, a sense that I must and that I can't not. And I always, not to compare myself with Jeremiah, but Jeremiah tried to keep it in and he couldn't. It was like fire inside of him. Well, some of that caused a little bit of problems in the church. in the relationship with the senior pastor. And so I started looking for seminary. And then I went off to seminary and have been serving in small churches ever since. So that's the Reader's Digest version of my salvation experience and my calling to the ministry.