My personal faith journey

[Denny]

I was born February 12, 1975 in Richmond, Virginia. Both of my parents were young medical professionals and eventually moved to Atlanta, Ga in 1978. They joined Shallowford Presbyterian Church where I was eventually baptized, confirmed and raised through high school. At the age of three, I had a severe head injury resulting from a car accident. Two parts of this story are remarkable in my life. First, I had a near death experience in which I had a conversation with God as vivid as any conversation I have had recently. I remember God telling me “it’s not your time.” This experience has always served as a centerpiece for understanding my call to ministry. Second, the doctors were certain that, given the severity of my injury, all my parents could hope for was a minimally functioning child. On the one hand is a deep personal experience with God, and on the other is the circumstance suggesting that my full recovery was nothing short of miraculous. Shallowford Presbyterian Church was instrumental in supporting my parents who grieved over potentially losing their middle child. But it became an integral part of my own faith journey , particularly when I attended Lakeside High School. With an exceptional congregation who nurtured my faith and listened to my constant questions about God, I came to understand how God calls people. In high school, I did not yet fully understand what God would do with my life. I simply knew that God was doing something.
Upon graduating from High School, I attended the Citadel with the thought that I might be headed into the military. As a junior, though, I knew that God was calling me elsewhere. I applied to Columbia Seminary and was accepted into the Master of Divinity Program. After my first year in seminary in 1998, I spent a summer in Kenya as part of Columbia’s Supervised Ministry Internship. Then, after my second year of seminary I worked as the Assistant Director for Camp Cherokee in the Cherokee Presbytery (1999). At the beginning of the summer ’99, I had applied to serve as a Chaplain Resident in a Clinical Pastoral Education program at St. Vincent’s in Indianapolis, IN while my then-fiance served a two year residency as a Resident in Parish Ministry at Second Presbyterian Church, also in Indianapolis, IN. At the conclusion of my CPE residency in 2000, I served one year as the College Outreach Ministry Intern at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis. In June 2000, my wife Noelle and I got married and returned to Atlanta for me to finish seminary. Not long after graduating from seminary, South Highland Presbyterian Church called Noelle and I to serve as co-associate pastors. In 2005, God blessed us with a precocious, loving boy named Ethan who is a total crack up and will be on the next leg of the journey in Natchez!