I’m a fourth generation pentecostal (Assemblies of God) who was born and reared in Kansas. I rarely missed a kid’s or youth camp or convention while growing up and I was saved and filled with the Spirit repeatedly at early ages.

While attending Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, Texas (B.S., Cross Cultural Missions, 1993) I met the wonderful Deborah Bird (of Hawkins, Texas) and we were married in 1992.  We served as youth pastors at Faith A/G in Ennis, Texas while in college, spent a summer in Mexico planting a church, and then moved to Springfield, Missouri where I attended the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (M.Div., 1995).  While in Springfield we taught Peanut Butter and Jelly Preschool and attended Oak Grove A/G.

After returning to Southwestern to teach for a year (1995-96), I entered a Ph.D. program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (Religion/Theological Ethics, 2000). While there I day-traded stocks and invested in real estate to get filthy rich, lost my faith in God, became an atheist and worshipped mammon (not Baylor's fault), and then accidentally found conscientious objection to war and concern for social justice, of all things(!), in the history of pentecostalism. Yes, the Assemblies of God was officially a peace church for 50 years (1917-1967)!

Thinking this was about the dumbest thing I had ever heard, and encouraged by Baylor faculty, I devoted my dissertation to examining and telling the story of this pentecostal peace with justice witness.  Needless to say, by the time I was done I was convinced that those crazy first-generation pentecostals were on the right track-biblically, theologically, and realistically-and reading John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas helped me learn to follow Jesus and believe in God again (and try to abandon mammon).

This inspired me to look for other pentecostals and charismatics who wanted to talk about and live out in this real world the way and teachings of Jesus. So I wrote “Spirit Empowered Peacemaking: Toward a Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship” and presented it at the European Pentecostal Charismatic Research Association meeting in Leuven, Belgium in July 2001.  Several people at the conference agreed that this was a good idea and a network began to develop.  Following 9/11 both the need for and resistance toward a peace and justice fellowship was felt acutely and PCPJ has since been steadily becoming what the Spirit wants it to be.

I simply try to teach, write, preach, and live authentically and faithfully as a follower of Jesus, and I am passionate about the work that Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice is doing.

Deborah and I have two amazing children, Nathan Bird and Kharese Shalom.  I’m a minister with the Assemblies of God and serve as professor of theology and ethics and director of the D.Min. program in the Haggard Graduate School of Theology at Azusa Pacific University (Azusa, CA).