Good Works, Inc.

I grew up in rural West Virginia with a dreamer’s longing to get out of Appalachia to pursue wealth and achievement.  My father pastored small churches and I was always involved, but it took many years for me to identify Christ’s heart for the poor and how that heart could be expressed through me.  In college I met my future wife, who modeled a love for Christ in a way that the Holy Spirit used to inspire and change me to lay down the pursuit of wealth and focus on the pursuit of God.  I graduated from Bible College, helped plant a church, but my heart still carried a longing that I could not fully identify.  I tried to solve this by changing careers nearly every three years.  Through several relational failures, prayer, grace, and words of counsel, God revealed how self-directed I had been.  Growing up in church I had learned the personal responsibility serving others, but not how to know others and be known by them.   When another change of career led me and my wife to Athens in 2012, we fell in love with its landscape and its people.  God in his grace directed my longing heart toward Good Works in late 2018, where I was graciously welcomed in.  Here I have been learning to apply myself to hospitality, promise-keeping, truth-telling and gratitude, as an interdependent part of Christ’s body rather than an individual giving to the body.  God has made good use of the knowledge gleaned from years of searching, variously applying me to technology, media, administrative roles, The Timothy House and Friday Night Life.

Now at Good Works I am growing to understand what it means to be part of a caring community that turns Kingdom principles outward.  I currently have the privilege to connect people from all walks of life with those facing poverty so the Kingdom of God may be experienced.  I now do this in partnership with staff, volunteers, participants.  I am grateful that God is redirecting me from achievement to obedience, and from self-direction to mutual trust.