Get to know me: Revive Our Hearts Edition

Posted 5 days ago

I prepared this specifically for Revive Our Hearts staff members to help them get to know me. I started a job with this ministry in April. I am being interviewed on July 22 for a chapel service. This is a supplement for those who might want more of the story. Please feel free to read and get to know me through this if you are not a Revive Our Hearts staff. I just wanted to set the context.

Tell us about yourself

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. I was a Royals fan during some very good years (won a championship in 1985). I was a Chiefs fan in some not so good years (2-12 in first year I went to games) and have enjoyed their recent success (3 Super Bowl Championships in 5 years). I became a Christian through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ (now called Cru) at the University of Kansas (KU) as a freshman.

I got involved in the ministry on campus and spent two summer on mission projects, one in San Diego and the second in Hungary, the summer after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As I grew in my faith and my involvement in Cru, God laid it on my heart to join the staff of Campus Crusade after graduation. Along the way, I met Anne, who I married a week after I graduated and then started staff training with Campus Crusade 2 weeks after our honeymoon.

We served on staff with Cru for 16 years. The first six years, we were campus field staff at Kansas State University and spent one year in Debrecen, Hungary with a small team pioneering a work in that city. We moved to Orlando in 1999 and served at the World Headquarters in the National Campus Office for 11 years. I was a pioneer in Internet ministry as I designed and built websites to support the Campus ministry’s mission to reach every student. One of my longest projects was GodSquad, a premier resource that equipped students and volunteers to launch and reach campuses that did not have a full-time staff presence.

In 2010, God moved us in a new direction. We left staff and I went to work in the marketplace. I spent the next 15 years working for a handful of agencies building out websites and expanding my skillset and serving clients in a variety of different domains. I spent almost 7 years with my last employer before getting laid off in March 2024.

After a very challenging year, God provided the opportunity to work with the Digital Team at Revive Our Hearts. My friend Doug told me that his friend (Bryan) was looking for someone with my skillset. Doug quickly connecting me with Bryan and the two of us had a conversation that afternoon. And two months later, I onboarded with Revive Our Hearts.

My wife and I celebrated our 32nd anniversary in May. We have 3 adult children, two of whom are still in college. We took care of my mother-in-law for six years. She recently passed away. We are moving into a new chapter of our life as our kids will soon be out of our home and we are no longer taking care of a parent.

What is your role on the Digital Team?

My title is “UX Developer.” It is just a fancy way of saying that I build websites. I take the content written the content team, videos made by the production team, and graphics made by our design team and make them into webpages. I write code to bring those pages to life. I have to consider how the pages will display on different devices and computers as well as think about the user experience and the accessibility of the content. If you are interested in knowing beyond this simple description, you can read this article that I wrote several years ago explaining some of the nuances of my job.

Share about your spiritual background

As I already mentioned, I came to faith as a college freshman. My family went to church for about 5 years while I was growing up but it was not a central part of our lives. I have some memories of reading my Children’s Bible and Sunday School classes. I would have said that I believed in Jesus Christ but I did not understand the gospel. Although we were not involved in a church, my parents helped me have a framework in my life that prepared me to respond to the gospel later.

I remember watching commercials that Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, mentioned a “relationship with God.” They offered a free book to anyone interested. I never did take them up on the offer but I remember that it was appealing to me and is a very positive memory. The book was The Power for Living and the campaign was funded by the DeMoss Foundation.

During my freshmen year, I went to a concert one night. I was not aware that they were a “Christian” group although the fact that I bought the tickets from my fraternity brother who was a Christian should have tipped me off. I also decided to go to an event at one of the sorority houses that was sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. The subject of the discussion was personality types and we took a quiz to determine if we were sanguine, choleric, melancholy, or phlegmatic. (I am a melancholy) The speaker mentioned another personality test that they would be glad to give and I expressed interest on a comment card.

A couple of days later, I met with Steve, a Cru staff member, along with one of my fraternity pledge brothers. After taking the test, he shared a booklet with us called The Four Spiritual Laws. I had never heard the gospel explained before. As Steve shared, I began to understand that what the Bible taught and what I believed about a person spending eternity with God were different. I thought I was good enough but as I heard the gospel, I realized my good works fell short. The Four Spiritual Laws uses the phrase “relationship with God” and that connecting me back to memories of those commercials with Tom Landry. I didn’t make a decision that day but the Holy Spirit was already at work as I processed what I had heard on the walk home.

God used many different people in my life over the next few weeks to help me better understand the gospel and come to a point of deciding how to respond. A fellow trumpet player in the marching band gave me a photocopied part of a book (I later found out it was from Basic Christianity by John Stott). My fraternity president, who had stood up at dinner to invite us to the Campus Crusade outreach, did his best to answer some of my questions. And finally, I met again with Steve. He helped me to overcome the last barriers I had. He helped me to understand that just as I trust Christ to come into my life, I also trust him to live the Christian life. It was not something I would produce on my own. I ended up praying with him and my fraternity president and another pledge brother.

It was about five months later that my faith became integrated into my everyday life. I had decided to go on a spring break trip to Daytona Beach as part of a Cru conference. The focus of the conference was to spend time during the afternoons and evenings sharing our faith with others on Spring Break. It was through that experience that my relationship with God became personal. Prayer became more than petition. I remember one night praying on the beach. It was more like a conversation with a friend. Prayer had felt more formal up to that point and God more distant. I had spiritual conversations with other believers from my campus. And I saw God work as we stepped out in faith and shared with others. I also began an important discipleship relationship on that trip.

Other significant spiritual markers during my college years were the two summer mission projects I was apart of. Raising support alone was a faith growing experience. I loved spending the summer in San Diego, which was one of my favorite places. I was born there and spent many summers there on vacation and had hoped to move there after college. I grew a lot that summer as I shared my faith and as my life intersected with other students who were passionate about serving God.

The next summer, I had the privilege of being in the country of Hungary. It had just emerged from the era of the Iron Curtain and it was an exciting time of being able to challenge Hungarian students with the gospel. It was also a life-changing experience to live in another culture for the summer. I met several of my most treasured friends that summer and deepened a friendship I had already started with a fellow Jayhawk. That summer was just the start of a partnership and investment in Hungary that I made over the next 17 years that included two more summer projects, a year in Eastern Hungary, and three short trips where I had the chance to go into Hungarian classrooms to engage both high school students and teachers with the gospel. And I have continued to invest in Hungary through my prayers and friendships with many Hungarian staff.

What is your connection to Revive Our Hearts?

My connection with Revive Our Hearts started 30 years ago in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I was attending the bi-annual Cru staff conference with about 3,000 others. Nancy spoke to our staff on a Monday morning. We had been anticipating a visit from God. There had been stirrings of revival on college campuses in the Spring and the leadership of Cru were convinced that God wanted to visit us in a special way during our gathering. We had been meeting for several days but up until that point, God had not chosen to move. It felt like it was trying to be forced but to no avail. That is not to say that God was not moving in people’s hearts but not in the corporate setting like had been expected.

But that all changed on that Monday morning. Nancy gave a very powerful message about brokenness. I think the most powerful part was when she compared proud versus broken people. It was one of the most practical applications I have ever encountered. The list was very convicting and spoke to people in a way that exposed the sin in their lives.

A small stream of people went forward after Nancy spoke. And then more came forward. The leadership made a wise decision to throw out the schedule and allow God to work. The confessions lasted into the evening when the leadership sensed a lull and decided to break for the day. There were more public times of confession over the next few days. There were also a lot of people getting right with God on their own or in smaller groups of people.

I remember what struck me most about Nancy was that she was delivering a message that was personal to her. It seemed clear to me that Nancy had been responding to God in her own life in preparing this message. I think that personal application is what spoke powerfully to most of the people that heard that message.

I had the pleasure of getting to meet Nancy a couple of days later when she gave a seminar about revival. I got to talk with her afterwards and appreciated her warm attention. I felt that same level of personal engagement when I met with her in Michigan in April before she started a recording session for The Wonder of the Word.

One of the books that Nancy mentioned in her seminar, The Calvary Road, played an important role as I left Ft. Collins and went back to “normal” life back on campus. The message of the book, of being a slave to Jesus Christ, is one that has been burned into my heart and I think about often. I reread the book five years ago and it continued to speak to me and help me to remember my place before God. I have also revisited that list of comparison between proud and broken people through the years and God has used it to renew my heart over and over again. Nancy’s book, Choosing Gratitude, has also been very impactful in my life.

We “kept up” with Nancy over the years after that first encounter in Colorado. I remember when she started doing radio programs with Family Life. We also found out later that she spent time in the home of some dear friends of ours in Little Rock, where my wife grew up. He was the pastor that married us and not only were they dear friends but also faithful partners in our ministry. I remember when I heard that Nancy was getting married and I rejoiced in that news. I enjoyed reading the book Nancy and Robert wrote together after it came out.

To be honest, I did not know a whole lot about Revive Our Hearts specifically. I had remembered that Nancy was part of Life Action Ministries when I first met her in Colorado. I knew that Revive Our Hearts was a ministry for women and that they had put on conferences but I did not know much about the overall ministry, how it grew out of Back to the Bible, and the expansion internationally until Martin told us the story over dinner last April.

What is it about the ministry that you are most passionate about?

As I think about joining Revive Our Hearts, I am in awe of the God who is writing my story. I chuckle now when I think about what I wrote as part of my biographical information when I applied.

I am not sure I would categorize my pursuit of this job position at Revive Our Hearts as a calling. I continue to have an interest in using my gifts and talents for God’s service. I live my life open to where God would lead me and my family. I have been looking for a new opportunity since I was laid off last year and have pursued many different opportunities both in the marketplace and with Christian ministries. A friend of mine told me about this opportunity with Revive Our Hearts and I believe it was an answer to prayer as I asked God to bring an opportunity to me. So I am pursuing it.

In a lot of ways, I just saw it as another job. But that quickly changed after visiting the headquarters in April. A pivotal moment came on the second night when Martin and Helen hosted our team for dinner in their home. Martin shared the Revive Our Hearts story and his excitement for the things on the horizon with The Wonder of the Word and the international expansion. That night, I texted my wife:

This time is giving me a vision for this work. It is an exciting time in this ministry. I don’t know what’s ahead, but I feel more confident that God has called me here for such a time as this.

Wife: Wow!! Not just a job, huh?

Beginning to sense that

When I was at Revive Our Hearts headquarters, I had this familiar sense. I had come home. By that I mean that I had come back to ministry. I felt a connection with an earlier version of myself, the Jeff who was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. It was a different context. I was a supported staff member with Campus Crusade. And my calling into that ministry came over a six year process which included personal involvement and life changing experiences. The calling to Revive Our Hearts was very different. But I came to realize that it is a calling.

I never expected to be part of a ministry primarily focused on women. To be honest, I had much more of a heart for men’s ministry as I see so few men passionately walking with God, leading their families, and living out God’s purposes for their lives. I asked several of the men that I met in Niles why they were involved in a women’s ministry. Logan gave me the best answer, “because God put me here.” And that is really what I can say about myself.

I am excited about the mission of Revive Our Hearts. I have been deeply encouraged by the testimonies I read each week that we receive in our email. I am excited about the stories I have heard of how God has changed lives through this ministry.

In another way, I feel like I have come home or come full circle. I was a pioneer in Internet ministry at Campus Crusade. Very early on, I saw great potential in leveraging this medium to resource and equip believers. One of the things I enjoyed most about my time in Internet ministry with Campus Crusade was being able to connect the right resources to people to help them grow in their faith and to multiply their lives through evangelism and discipleship.

My wife once described me as a catalyst for resource release. I have always loved connecting people to great resources whether it was through sharing about a book I was reading during a conversation, sharing what I was learning through a blog post, or through my work building websites. Throughout my career, I have loved being able to use my gifts and talents to help serve other people, whether it was through ministry or through serving the variety of clients in my agency work.

I am excited that God has written my story and brought me to Revive Our Hearts as such a time as this. I look forward to leveraging my knowledge and skills to help women to experience freedom, fullness & fruitfulness in Christ as they interact with our different websites.

What are your interests?

• Reading books
• Journaling (I have writing for 39 years)
• Blogging (I have been writing online for 20 years)
• Walking
• Sports – I loved playing organized sports as a kid and when I get a chance as an adult. I also enjoy attending professional sporting events and root for my favorite teams (Royals, Rays, Chiefs, Jayhawks, Manchester City)
• Hungary – I have been on 8 separate trips to Hungary from as little as one week to as long as 9 months.
• Europe – I have enjoyed traveling to other places in Europe besides Hungary.
• History – Hungarian history, places I have visited or organizations I care about
• History of the Web and Web industry
• My own personal history
• Collecting memories
• LEGO – I spent many hours playing with LEGO as a kid and have bought several sets as an adult. I recently replaced a lost piece of my vintage Space Cruiser
• Star Wars – playing with figures and vehicles dominated my childhood. I have enjoyed the movies beyond the original trilogy that came out when I was an adult.
• Lord of the Rings – I didn’t discover this wonderful story and world until I was an adult. I saw FOTR in the theater and then read the books a couple months later. I saw all the movies in theaters and reread the books each year for about four years. I like the books more than the movies but appreciate the accomplishment of Peter Jackson’s films. The Lord of the Rings is my favorite story.
• Star Trek – I am one of those people that like both Star Wars and Star Trek
• Marvel Cinematic Universe – I have not liked much of what has happened after the Infinity Saga but have some hope after seeing Thunderbolts.
• Sports video games – I love sports and playing video games gives me some of the thrill. My favorite is MLB The Show followed closely by FIFA. I have also enjoyed playing Madden and NHL in the past. I have really enjoyed NBA2K25 this year. My son’s interest in the NBA has gotten me interested in it again.