As Unto the King

Report Back from the Deeps on Vocation, Wonder, and Writing as Worship

This began as a letter to my niece. She’s an aspiring writer—curious, bright, standing at the edge of vocation and wondering if she has the courage to follow the line.

She sent me nine questions spanning my faith journey, how I became a writer, the ethics of my field, and advice for the path ahead. But my answers refused to stay small (are you surprised? 🐳). They opened into something mythic—about calling, clarity, and the deep waters that wait for us when we say yes.

This is the letter, formatted as an article for you to read at your leisure —a report on where the line has led me. Here’s your peek into my correspondence with my niece. I hope it stirs you to go … further out.

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Prologue – The Night I Split Wood with God

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I grew up in a house full of faith. Not just the kind you preach, but the kind you live—quietly, consistently, even when it costs you something. I’m the son of a pastor—one of five children. Three boys, two girls. Your mom is my youngest sister. We didn’t have a lot, at least not by the world’s standards.

When you’re a pastor, you don’t exactly rake it in. But I don’t remember what we lacked. I remember what we had: warmth, belonging, prayer in the kitchen, the soft hum of belief in the air.

I was born in Virginia, where my dad, Papa, served as a youth pastor. But we moved to Florida when I was still small. That’s where the real work began.

Papa planted a Home Missions church with the Brethren Fellowship—starting from scratch, gathering a small community, meeting in our living room. Then in an elementary school down the street. Then in an old Episcopal church under live oaks hung with Spanish moss. I can still see those tree beards swaying in the breeze.

Eventually, Papa and your great-grandfather built a church building from the ground up.

I remember one Sunday, sitting in a pew while Papa preached about heaven and hell—about eternity, about Jesus. About inviting him into your heart. I didn’t know what it meant to have a Jesus in your heart, but, that afternoon, I prayed the prayer on my own. And Jesus moved in. I told Dad, and he smiled, hugged me, and sent me outside to play. I was five.

That was the beginning of something I wouldn’t fully understand for years: that faith isn’t inherited, it’s discovered—and it always demands a response. That afternoon in Florida planted the seed. But it wasn’t until much later that I learned what it meant to carry that faith like a calling.

And even now, decades later, I find myself returning to that moment—not as something to preserve, but as something to report back from.

When I was eleven, the church split.

It was ugly and heartbreaking. People Papa had discipled—people we loved—turned on him. He didn’t fight back. He didn’t try to hold onto power. He took the high road.

Even though he had enough votes to stay, he stepped down. We left Florida. Left everything I knew and loved. And I didn’t understand why.

Why would God let it happen? Why were the people who claimed to follow Jesus the ones who hurt us most?

That fracture lodged in me.

I didn’t explode.

I smoldered.

Quiet rebellion turned loud.

I got suspended from high school.

Thrown out of volleyball games.

Kicked out of Liberty University after attending a party with alcohol. But my expulsion wasn’t due to being a partier. I wasn’t. The reason ran far deeper.

It was my attitude. My resistance. My anger and hatred for institutional Christianity.

That winter, I came home and got a job landscaping at Esbenshade’s Greenhouses. After work, I spent long hours alone in the woods loading logs into Papa’s old truck; firewood for Papa’s wood-burning stove. Sometimes, Esbenshades let me use the work truck.

And one night, cold, snow-covered, breath steaming in the dark, I found myself swinging an axe with tears in my eyes, full of confusion and rage.

I said out loud, God, if you’re real, show me.

And He did.

That was the night I gave my life to Him—not in a pew, not with a worship band playing, but splitting wood under the stars. That was the night this mysterious thing we call faith became personal. Not inherited. Not cultural. Not performative. Real.

That night, my life became His. And I often say that’s when I found Jesus—or maybe more truthfully, when I finally knew He had found me.

He was dressed up in stars and pain, but I recognized him. Not as an institution. But as the Winter King.

I didn’t know it then, not fully, but that snowy night marked more than just a surrender of self—it was the beginning of a vocation. The beginning of listening. Something had called to me in the cold—a presence beneath the presence. And it wouldn’t be the last time I heard it.

Because long before I ever called myself a writer, I was already chasing the rhythm of words.

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Frost, Language, and the First Pull on the Line

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It started in sixth grade, when I was forced to memorize Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I resisted at first. But somewhere along the line, the poem got under my skin. I still remember how it made me feel—like I was standing at the edge of something vast and still.

Even now, I can see those woods through my sixth-grade eyes. And when I do, I get goosebumps. Because that was the first time I felt the pull—the strange ache of beauty calling me inward.

That was the beginning. Not of a career. But of a life shaped by language.

In high school, I had a football coach who also taught my English class. Big guy. Booming voice. And he would stand at the front of the classroom and read Shakespeare aloud. It moved me deeply—this strange mingling of physical presence and poetic power. It struck me that someone like him could love literature. It gave me permission to do the same.

I started writing—poetry, songs, raps, short stories. I’d spend hours composing scenes in my head, building invisible worlds, narrating them under my breath. That creative spark never went out. It deepened.

During my twenties, I toured as a musician across the U.S. and Ireland. I lived on the road, but inside, I kept chasing language. Eventually, I laid the music down and turned back to writing.

That’s when I started publishing cultural essays—short pieces for Relevant Magazine and other outlets. I was hungry for more, so I began to read voraciously. First George MacDonald, then C.S. Lewis, then Chesterton, T.S. Eliot. I wasn’t in school. I spent years dipping in and out of various universities. But I was enrolled in what I called the University of the Holy Spirit—reading, listening, paying attention. {More on this below}

It wasn’t until I went back to finish my degree at Lancaster Bible College that a professor read one of my papers and said, “You should pursue writing full-time—and consider seminary.” That was the first time God wrote something to me, on paper, in red ink, through another person’s words. It felt unmistakably holy. So I followed it.

I left Lititz and moved to Atlanta, where I applied to Gordon-Conwell Seminary—and got rejected.

But I applied again. And again.

Eventually, I was accepted. I was the only writer in my cohort. Everyone else was training for the pastorate or chaplaincy. But I knew I was called to something different.

After seminary, my writing life split in two directions—academic and professional. I became a magazine editor (briefly—and painfully), then shifted to freelance writing. I’ve worked independently ever since. That was more than sixteen years ago.

These days, no two days look the same. When I have a book deal, I carve out space for deep, solitary work. Other times, I’m editing manuscripts, structuring proposals, or coaching authors and thinkers through the invisible scaffolding of a book.

Increasingly, I find myself teaching structure more than sentences. Because the deeper I go into the craft, the more I understand: writing isn’t just about inspiration. It’s about architecture.

Over the years, I’ve worn many hats: the editor, shaping what already exists; the collaborator {ghostwriter}, pulling stories from memory and silence; the proposal architect, distilling wild ideas into form and pitch. Some weeks I do all three. Some days I live in the tension between them. But underneath every role is the same heartbeat: to help someone bring their idea into the light.

Whether I’m helping someone speak, or simply listening long enough for them to remember what they were trying to say in the first place—my work is about form. About structure. About making meaning visible.

This isn’t just my job. It’s my vocation. And I’ve come to see that vocation is often less about choosing and more about recognizing what has always been true.

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The University of the Holy Spirit and the Call to Formation

People sometimes ask, What motivated you to become a writer? But that’s a strange way to frame it. Because I don’t think I was motivated—not in the usual sense. There was no awards shelf. No string of glowing comments from teachers urging me forward. No one ever pulled me aside when I was young and said, “You should do this for a living.” Not until that professor’s note. But by then, I was married and the stakes were high and the direction vague.

There was just the path.

And I was walking it.

That’s how it’s always felt. Less like ambition, more like response. Like something had been set in motion long before I knew to name it.

Now, when I coach writers, I often say this: What you’re drawn to as a child—the way you play, the stories you make up, the quiet obsessions—those things matter. They’re not distractions. They’re clues. They’re the early pulse of your vocation.

I think of it as the eternity God plants in our hearts. Qoheleth, the Preacher, says that in Ecclesiastes 3. And while he meant it cosmically, I’ve always felt it personally, too. Eternity has a particular shape in each soul. And sadly, most people walk away from it.

I just happened to keep walking toward it.

My parents—Grammy and Papa—never forced me into a mold. They gave me room to explore, to imagine, to discover. That freedom shaped me. And it’s something I’ve tried to carry forward into my own parenting: to let my daughters discover who they already are. It’s not easy. But it’s essential.

So no, I wasn’t motivated into a profession. I was invited into a calling.

The word vocation comes from the Latin vocatio—a calling, a summons. That’s what this has always felt like. Not a job I perform, but a life I answer to. Whether I’m writing a book, coaching an author, or landscaping someone’s garden to pay the bills, I’m still a writer. It’s something I carry.

I remember hearing Professor Nigel Biggar say something to a group of scholars in Oxford:

“You’re a scholar. That won’t ever be taken from you—not even if one day you’re selling cars.”

That’s how I feel about writing. It’s who I am—even when no one sees it. Even when it doesn’t pay.

The closest concept I’ve found to describe that tension is ikigai—a Japanese term for the place where what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for all converge. Most people spend their lives chasing one or two of those. I’ve been fortunate—and stubborn—enough to live inside the tension of all four. And it hasn’t been easy. We made big sacrifices to stay on that path. At one point, Aunt Chris and I lived in a friend’s basement for a year in Atlanta. I made no money. I wrote for free. But I met people. Doors opened. The path kept revealing itself, one step at a time.

My education didn’t look traditional either. I was a terrible student in high school. Not because I was stupid but because I didn’t apply myself. Don’t believe people who tell you that some people are naturally smart while others aren’t too bright. Genius isn’t a matter of DNA. No one is born smart. Brilliance is a by-product of disciplined work. Same with art. The pursuit is the thing. I had a 1.5 GPA when I got kicked out of Liberty. I tell people that I wasn’t academically minded in any formal sense back then. Translation: I was lazy and selfish and blamed others for my misfortune.

But that all changed during my years on the road touring with the band. I was reading and thinking deeply, and spending long hours in solitude, reflecting, listening, arguing with the silence.

My real schooling at the University of the Holy Spirit wasn’t traditional but it was rigorous. Not in the way it might be at an institution, but in the way curiosity began to shape me.

That was where I learned to think. To read slowly. To tug on ideas and see where they led. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Eventually, I went back to finish my degree. Then I went to seminary. And years later, I earned a Ph.D. in theology.

You might think a doctorate would distance you from writing. But for me, it refined the intuition I already carried. Before the Ph.D., I wrote every day. I was disciplined. But that deep academic work gave me something more: clarity. It taught me to think in shape. To structure thought the way a stonemason shapes rock.

Because writing is thinking. And thinking demands form.

A lot of people fear that structure kills creativity. But the opposite is true. Structure, when rightly ordered, is beautiful. Liberating. Like the latticework in a cathedral, or the skeleton beneath a body. A well-shaped thesis is a diamond. And diamonds, as it turns out, are formed under pressure.

So no, I wasn’t motivated into a profession.

I was invited into a calling.

And every step of the way—through poverty, poetry, prayer, and pressure—that invitation has formed me.

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A Mythic Way to Be in the World

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What I love most about being a person of faith is how mythic it is.

Each morning, I step outside and look at the woods behind our home. I stare up at the sky. I listen to the wind in the trees. I watch the way the light breaks across the land. And every time, I find myself thinking, I can’t believe I get to live here. Not just in this house, or this town—but here, on this Earth, suspended between land and sky and water (chora). It never gets old.

Faith gives shape to that wonder. It binds the visible to the invisible. It teaches me to see the world not as raw material to be used, but as a sacred order to be stewarded.

For me, the spiritual life isn’t an abstract assent to a set of propositions. It’s an embodied way of being in the world. It’s participation in a larger reality—a kingdom reality. I live in a metaphysical tension, both physical and beyond physical. And that tension is where I work, write, parent, and create. That’s what I mean when I say faith is mythic.

I’ve been entrusted with much: this patch of Earth, this home, these daughters, this writing life, this life of art, this life as worship. And the care of those things—whether writing, speaking, building, painting, or simply listening—isn’t just practical. It’s priestly. It’s the work of a steward in the house of a King.

It is vocatio. And it is sacred. Not just a participation, but a commission.

When my daughters were younger, I used to kiss the tops of their heads before they left for homeschool co-op and whisper, “As unto the King.” Now that they’re older, they smile and say, “We know, Dad—as unto the king.” But the truth still holds. That small phrase has become a liturgy for my life.

As unto the King.

That changes everything.

It gives work a nobility. It gives ordinary days a sense of dignity. It gives shimmer to shadow.

When I talk about beauty, I don’t mean prettiness or polish. I mean order toward wholeness. I mean the deep structure of meaning made visible in form. That’s what faith gives me: a sense of beauty as telos—not mere aesthetics, but the harmony of things rightly ordered.

And through Christ—through the cross and resurrection—I’ve been invited into that harmony. I’ve been made a participant in the New Creation. Not a passive observer. Not a content generator. A messenger of the Kingdom of Beauty.

That’s how I see my work—not as a platform to be built, but as a field to be tended. A gift to be returned. A message to be delivered with care.

I am not just a writer. I am a steward. I carry the seal of the King.

And that never gets old. It makes every day new.

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Writing as Worship, Writing as Witness

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Writing has become one of the deepest ways I practice faith.

It’s not just thinking. It’s praying. It’s a form of participation—an act of tracing God’s presence in the everyday. Whether I’m writing theology, fiction, cultural reflections, or simply chasing an idea through my journal, the process often feels liturgical. I enter into something sacred.

Not every sentence names God. But if it’s written unto the King, even a novel—like The Tempest and the Bloom or The Misadventures of Leighton Figg—can become an offering. It’s not the subject that sanctifies the work. It’s the posture. The intention. The heart of the writer.

In that sense, writing is how I listen. It gives shape to what I’m noticing. It lets me follow the Spirit’s leading in real time—like tugging on a thread that disappears into silence and eventually leads into the kingdom.

This is why I often say I’m not just a writer. I’m a researcher. I follow beauty. I pursue mystery. I chase wonder. And those paths lead me back to God.

This is how faith is formed—not just through doctrine, but through discovery. Through the pages where I go looking for something beyond me.

And what begins in solitude doesn’t stay there.

Writing, at its best, invites others into the mystery. It opens a door. It says, Come see what I’ve found.

Whether it’s through essays, books, academic work, or informal notes, I offer what God is doing in me as a gift that might serve someone else. And some of my deepest encouragements have come from readers who write back and say they felt hope again. Or remembered beauty. Or sensed the presence of God.

And every time, I find myself saying: Yes. That’s what He’s doing in me, too.

The discoveries don’t end with the writer. They ripple outward. They stir others. And in that movement, I see God at work—not just in me, but through me.

And somehow, that feels like worship, too.

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Faithfulness in the Age of Speed

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In a world obsessed with speed, scale, and content without soul, one of the rarest virtues in the creative life is faithfulness.

Not productivity.

Not originality.

Not applause.

Faithfulness.

And like all sacred things, it’s tested in quiet ways.

In academia and in the world of trade publishing, faithfulness is tested by the chase for originality. But true originality is rare. We’re all building on what came before—remixing, reframing, responding. That’s how beauty works. That’s how theology works. That’s how culture lives.

Still, we live in what my doctoral supervisor once called an economy of ideas. And in that economy, ideas carry weight. I’ve shared things in good faith behind closed doors, only to see them reappear repackaged in someone else’s voice, in someone else’s book by someone else’s publisher.

It’s disheartening. But not surprising.

There’s always the temptation to mimic. To walk the popular path up the mountain instead of carving your own.

But shortcuts don’t give you a complete view. They don’t give you the miles in your boots. And they don’t help you see what matters on the way up.

That’s why I still believe in the slow path.

Wide reading. Deep listening. Hard writing.

The long obedience of craft.

The same tension surfaces in questions of authorship and voice. I’ve written about this before—how collaborative writing, when done with integrity, is not a compromise of authorship but an act of stewardship.

It’s not about ghosting someone else’s ideas. It’s about helping another soul shape their story into something that sings.

Even the biblical writers used amanuenses—scribes who helped capture and arrange what needed to be said. We don’t condemn that as dishonest. We call it Scripture.

So when I help someone clarify their voice, I don’t see that as unethical. I see it as service. As faithfulness. I’m not trying to make someone sound like me—I’m trying to help them sound more like themselves. And if that stewardship blesses others, then it’s done unto the King.

These days, I coach more than I collaborate. I sit with writers, thinkers, and artists and help them dig deep into the heart of one idea. I call it the diamond drill. When you hit the center, it fractures outward into radiance—one core truth giving birth to a constellation of meaning.

That kind of work takes trust. It takes honesty. It takes time.

And above all, it takes faithfulness.

To the craft.

To the call.

To the quiet work of bearing witness.

As unto the King.

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Joy Is Not a Threat

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I don’t work in an office. I don’t report to a boardroom. My workspace is wherever I am—whatever table I’m writing at, whatever trail I’m walking when a line of thought arrives like wind through trees.

But if you expand the idea of “workplace” to include the people I walk beside—clients, publishers, editors, scholars—then yes, I’ve felt friction.

I’ve worked with people who don’t see the world the way I do. Who hold different theologies, different moral visions, different assumptions about what is true. Sometimes I’ve had to ask: Can I work on this with integrity? Can I help tell this story in good conscience?

Those moments demand discernment. But more often than not, they’ve led me to deeper clarity about what it means to serve. I don’t have to agree with every word to help someone speak clearly. But when the line of conscience becomes blurred, I step away. Quietly. That, too, is faithfulness.

The only time I experienced open conflict was during the one year I worked in a formal office. Two supervisors accused me—out of nowhere—of gunning for their positions. One threw something I’d written back across the table and called it “crap.”

I bit my tongue. I didn’t retaliate.

Days later, both apologized. They said they felt threatened. Not by what I’d done, but by how I’d carried myself.

By my joy.

And that moment taught me something I’ve never forgotten: Sometimes joy itself is perceived as a threat.

In environments shaped by fear or ego, a spirit of delight can be unsettling. But I’ve never approached the work with ambition or edge. I love writing. I love collaboration. And that posture, I’ve learned, is rare—but worth protecting.

In academic spaces, the resistance is quieter. I’ve been told explicitly that I have no right to speak into certain conversations—because of who I am. Because I’m a white man with a Ph.D. The irony of being othered by the very institutions that preach inclusivity is not lost on me.

But I still believe in honest work. I believe that humility, curiosity, and courage belong together. And I believe that good thinking begins with listening, not dominance.

I’ve made peace with the fact that my faith, my joy, and my voice won’t always be welcomed. That’s not failure. That’s reality. And my task isn’t to win the room.

It’s to show up faithfully.

To do the work I’ve been given.

As unto the King.

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Culture Is Not a Lever—It’s a Life

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I don’t love the question, “How does your work impact culture?”

Not because it’s offensive—but because it’s framed through a lens I find limiting. Especially in certain Christian circles—evangelical, Reformed—the phrase impacting culture has become a kind of platitude. It implies we stand outside culture, reaching in to adjust it like a dial on a control panel.

But that’s not how I see it. That’s not how culture works.

My work doesn’t impact culture.

My work is culture.

Culture isn’t something external we aim to “influence.” It’s the shared life we inhabit. It’s the energy and meaning that move between us as we live in community. It’s not a product. It’s a presence. And every act of faithfulness—writing, parenting, teaching, tending—shapes that presence.

So a better question might be: How does my life affect the lives of others?

That’s the root of culture. Shared presence. Mutual shaping. Participatory meaning-making. Even collective or national cultures grow from these human-scale interactions.

But in our current moment—especially in the West—we’ve collapsed the meaning of culture into pop culture. Trends. Platforms. Metrics. We’ve lost the idea of a high culture—a culture rooted in the preservation and transmission of the best that has been thought, said, made, and sung.

Historically, that’s what universities were for: the cultivation of the sacred, the beautiful, and the true. Cultural stewardship through refinement and memory.

And if you trace it further back—to the garden of Genesis—you’ll find that first commission: to keep it. That charge wasn’t only agricultural. It was aesthetic. To preserve beauty as an act of worship.

So when I hear people say, “Go create culture,” I want to slow the moment down.

Culture isn’t a campaign. It’s not something we manufacture.

Culture is the byproduct of faithful presence.

When I write—whether it’s a novel like The Tempest and the Bloom, my research on C.S. Lewis and Northern Aesthetics, or even a Substack reflection—I’m not trying to “impact” culture from the outside. I’m simply trying to participate in it honestly. Beautifully. Faithfully.

If someone reads my words and feels the pull of wonder, or glimpses the presence of God, or finds clarity in a new idea—then culture has been shaped. Not because I set out to make an impact. But because I was present in the making.

C.S. Lewis didn’t “impact” culture. His work is culture. It expands the reader from the inside. It invites the soul outward. It opens the imagination to the presence of God. That’s the kind of writing I hope to offer. Writing that deepens interior life. Writing that widens the aperture of hope.

So yes—my work is cultural. But not in the bifurcated sense of Christian vs. secular, influencer vs. audience. I live in the world. I write in the world. And everything I make—if I do it unto the King—becomes part of the culture I inhabit.

That’s not strategy.

That’s stewardship.

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Go Further Out. Report Back.

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Not every path is chosen. Some paths choose you.

A vocation is not a career goal. It’s a summons. A gravity. Something you feel in your bones long before you know how to name it. You don’t always get to make your living at the thing that calls you. But you can always say yes to the call.

You won’t always find the perfect intersection—where passion, skill, need, and provision align—but you can still walk faithfully. You can still follow the thread.

You can still say, Here I am. I will go where the line leads.

I started walking that path in sixth grade, with a poem I barely understood. I didn’t know who Robert Frost was. But I’ve never forgotten his woods. Even now, I can feel the chill of them. Something opened inside me when I read those lines. Something rang true.

And I pulled on the line.

C.S. Lewis once wrote about this in The Problem of Pain. He called it the numinous—a hopeful dread. A trembling wonder at the edge of what we know. Like standing at the rim of eternity. Like fishing in the dark and feeling a tug so deep it bends your whole body toward something beyond comprehension.

There’s something on the line.

The question is: Will you be brave enough to pull it?

And that’s my advice to you, dear niece.

Be brave.

Pull the line.

Like Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea, sometimes you have to go further out. You have to row past the safe waters. Past the known and the manageable. That’s where the real discoveries live. Not on the surface—but in the deeps.

The ocean is vast.

But so is the soul.

Santiago didn’t just catch the fish. He fought to bring it home. He defended it from the sharks. And though the fish was devoured by the time he reached the shore, its skeleton bore witness. It told the story. It said: Something magnificent passed through these hands.

That’s the work. That’s the life.

To prepare for years.

To read widely.

To write in every genre.

To reflect.

To wrestle.

To become not just a writer of this or that—but a reader and writer of everything.

The best work draws from everywhere: theology, cosmology, aesthetics, literature, anthropology, quantum light. You learn to see connections across fields. You follow them into the dark. You go looking for the sacred in the shattered and the beautiful in the buried.

And then you report back.

That’s your calling: to go where others haven’t gone, and to come back with light in your hands.

But don’t report from the shallows.

Don’t skim the surface.

Go out into the cold, into the deep, into the dark.

Let the water rise around your ankles. Go beyond the wave sets.

Let it carry you.

And when you find something true—

Something luminous—

Something hard-won and heavy—

Bring it home.

Even if the world only sees the bones …

They’ll know …

Something alive once swam through you.

And you were faithful to carry it back.

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