About
What does hope look like when life doesn't cooperate?
I've chased that question from the pulpit, the lectern, the camp stage, and the chair across from someone who just got the worst news of their life.
I'm a chaplain, theologian, and speaker. I was a lead pastor for more than twelve years, I've been an adjunct professor of theology since 2015, and I've spoken at churches, camps, retreats, and schools from Texas to Kenya. I founded Cruciform Hope Ministries because faith and mental health kept showing up in the same conversations, and almost nobody was willing to hold them together.
I've also lived with panic disorder and depression since high school. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. That honesty is what earns me the right to say anything about hope.
I live in Houston with my wife, Lindsey, and our daughter, Nora.
The arc
The pulpit
More than twelve years as a lead pastor in the Houston area, called at twenty while I was still an undergraduate. Weddings, funerals, hospital rooms, and more than six hundred Sundays. Along the way: a renamed church, a renovated building, a decades-old mortgage paid off, and giving that grew through COVID. The long apprenticeship in what people actually carry.
The classroom
Fifteen years in the classroom: ninth-grade Bible first, then adjunct professor of theology since 2015, teaching Old and New Testament, systematic theology, church history, Christian vocation, and Christian Theology and Tradition. Bible curricula written from scratch at two high schools. A master’s thesis on Cyril of Alexandria and the Adam-Christ typology of Romans 5. In 2010, a visiting professor at a theological college in Kenya.
The road
Twenty years of speaking, starting in my high school’s chapel, and seventeen on the road as an itinerant speaker at churches, camps, retreats, and school chapels across the U.S. and in Kenya, for audiences from middle schoolers to school faculty.
The work now
One of two chaplains at a high school of more than 600 students, where I mentor each year’s senior student chaplains. I helped build and lead Community Groups, a school-wide program, and I write curriculum for it: every one of those students, and the staff who lead them, meets in small groups to talk honestly about life and faith. Each summer my fellow chaplain and I take a team of high schoolers to Costa Rica. And I founded Cruciform Hope Ministries, because the Beatitudes are announcements, not assignments: the crucified and risen Jesus pronounces grace over the anxious and weary before they get better, not after.
In others’ words
Mike’s ministry is grounded in biblical foundations that have been tested over time through the church’s theologians. As such, he brings a depth of spirituality that is necessary to guide the church through its contemporary and changing setting.
Mike is a wonderful expositional preacher who incorporates historical context to scripture… I still tune in to podcasts after I moved away.
Details
Currently: Men's Chaplain at Houston Christian High School (since 2022) and adjunct professor at Houston Christian University (since 2015).
Previously: Lead Pastor, Sweetwater Christian Church, Sugar Land, Texas (2009–2021); Chair of Congregational Vitality for a 48-church region (2016–2018); Bible teacher at Fort Bend Christian Academy (9th grade, 2011–2015) and Northland Christian School (8th and 11th grade, 2021–2022); visiting professor in Limuru, Kenya (2010).
Education: M.A. in Theological Studies and B.A. in Biblical Languages and Christianity; reads Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek.
University courses taught include Introduction to the Bible, Old Testament Survey, New Testament Survey, New Testament Theology, Jesus and His Teachings, Church History, Systematic Theology, Christian Theology and Tradition, and The Christian Vocation.
Next
If you're planning an event, I'd be glad to hear about it.