Well, rather than have someone describe me, I thought I might just answer this one myself. It’s way too long and not that important, so just skip on the important stuff about CitySaver HERE.
Early Roots
I accepted Jesus when I was six years old. My dad was my pastor. I remember sitting with him and another pastor asking me a lot questions after church to make sure I really understood. They were satisfied that I knew I was a sinner in need of a savior. From that day on, I never touched crack again. Well, I mean, I wasn’t touching it before, but sometimes I sort of wish I had a cool testimony.
If the church was open, we were there. When I was six my folks moved us to be missionaries in Mexico for about 8 years. In 1980 we came back to the states because my brother got pleurisy (black lung) from the smog in Mexico City. We moved back to Excelsior Springs, Missouri. I did the end of middle school and three years of high school in Excelsior. My senior year my dad became the Director of Mission for the Clay Platte Association and we moved to Kansas City North. I finished my senior year at Oak Park High.
College
When I was sixteen years old I felt that the Lord was calling me to serve Him with my whole life. I committed to a life in ministry. I was licensed to the Gospel ministry when I was 18. I got a big scholarship for ministry students to go to William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. In summer of 1985 I went to represent college to the national Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Dallas, Texas. The Convention was in the midst of a fundamentalist take over and it was the most underhanded, political, twisted, nasty, manipulative thing I’d ever seen.
I remember sitting in a hotel room at night, with eyes wide, watching my dad, the editor of the Missouri Baptist newspaper and three or four other pastors that were friends of my dad. I’d never seen grown men on their knees weeping and crying out to God for how much they knew it was all grieving the Holy Spirit. OK, yeah, I saw girls crying at church camp – but not pastors weeping, and certainly not for the state of the Church. Something broke off of me that day and I stopped seeing how to get behind the idea of helping build “the system.”
Business World
In May of 1989 I graduated and moved out to Northern Virginia. At 21 years old I served as Vice President of Advertising for a new startup called Takeout Taxi that was doing multi-restaurant delivery twenty years before Door Dash and Uber Eats. After a year and a half I was sick of D.C. and wanted to come back to William Jewell to work with college kids.
Started a Masters in Education Administration at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. Still handing all the advertising and publishing design for Takeout Taxi. Met a guy with money that wanted to open a Takeout Taxi franchise in Kansas City if I would run it. I put Graduate School on hold, worked 120+ hours per week and built a multi-million dollar franchise. Then my mom died in May of 1993 and I realized life was short and I should get back to my passion. So I walked away from Takeout Taxi and went to finish my Master’s (by May 1994).
Higher Education
In August of 1994 I started as Co-Director of Residence Life and Director of Student Life at Saint Mary College in Leavenworth, Kansas. When then turned into Director of Residence Life, Student Life and Student Activities the following year, as well as coaching the new men’s tennis team. After three years there, and sitting on the inauguration committee for a new college president EACH year. I was ready to go back to being self-employed. But God knew what He was doing and all of it was good preparation for running a homeless shelter later.
Back in the Business World
I wanted to be back self-employed and doing something I enjoyed. I started a business doing antique restoration and refinishing. That turned into insurance moving appraisals and repair – and warranty repair on new furniture. I had an unlisted phone number and a six month waiting list. In 2001, because of a family emergency I was unable to do the work I had been doing, so I put up a website selling some of the furniture restoration products I was using and a small catalog of furniture from a great company in Boston. We started taking orders and drop shipping from the manufacturers at a time when most people didn’t have websites and furniture this good was sold through brick and mortar boutique shops.
The businesses grew about 20% month over month. Every month. For five years. Then in 2005 we were listed in the Kansas City business magazine, Ingram’s, as the number four fastest growing company in Kansas City. We were named “Top 25 Under 25 Employees” by Kansas City Small Business Magazine and were twice named ‘The Most Family Friendly Workplace in Kansas City” because half our staff were stay at home moms and grandmothers. As the business grew we moved locations twice and eventually had over 250,000 products on our website from table linens, lighting, gourmet foods, to wooden backyard playsets. All American-made and all built to last. At the peak we were doing about $225,000 per month.
Conviction Comes Calling
Even though I was going to a mega church and teaching Sunday School, I could see how corporate it was becoming. I knew that God had called me to ministry and that I was running from it. I was given a book called “Revolution in World Missions” by K.P. Yohannan of Gospel for Asia. (Get one free at https://www.gfa.org/offer/freebook/ ). It really showed me some of what was wrong with the church in America. Then I looked up some of his reference material. I ordered a copy of “World Christian Trends: AD 30 to AD 2200.” by David Barrett and Todd Johnson. Then I read “The Heavenly Man” by Yun and Hattaway – which I could not recommend more highly. The we started funneling money from the business to support native missionaries in India and China. The we built a website to sell Fair Trade products from around the world.
I got more and more hungry for Jesus. I knew I was a lukewarm hypocrite playing at church and not living it. I knew I was called by God, but I wasn’t serving – not really. I began writing online about what I had learned about the waste and fraud and division in “churchianity.” Someone emailed me and mentioned that there was a revivalist guy from New Zealand that was in Kansas City that sounded a lot like me. I looked him up and he was coming out of the excesses of the Charismatic and calling them to repent – while I was coming out of the finances and corporateness of the Baptists and calling them to repent.
We had lunch and he said, “I like what you’re saying but I think what you’re missing is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Insulted, I retorted, “I’ve had the Holy Spirit since I was six years old, thank you very much!” He explained that there was a difference between the redemption of the Holy Spirit and empowering of the Holy Spirit – that thing that made fishermen bold as lion when an inquisitive maid had made them slink away ashamed just a few days before. Something happened in the Upper Room in Acts 2 – and I realized that I had missed it. And if it was real, I wanted it!
The Holy Spirit Flips Me Upside Down and All the Baptist Falls Out
On November 23, 2004, at a home group meeting in Blue Springs, Missouri, I knelt in the middle of the room as folks laid hands on me. I had this picture in my head of a giant national debt clock or lottery status board – with numbers spinning wildly. I knew that I had committed to God when I was 16 that I would serve him – and I hadn’t done it. That was 20+ years of people I could have reached, and they could have reached and they could have reached. I just saw them all as jewels that I had stolen from the crown of Jesus and I desperately wanted that odometer to slow down and start going backwards. Maybe, just maybe, if I tried really hard, I could get it to zero before He called me home. I was broken and desperate. I knew “churchianity” was broken, but I had no idea what to do about it. I knew I had run from Him and that there was a lot of blood on my head.
In the midst of my desperation, I prayed the stupidest prayer I’ve ever heard of anyone praying. I prayed with all my heart, “Lord, I don’t care what the cost – my business, my reputation, my life, my wife, my kids, prison, torture – I just want to be the most dangerous person on the planet to satan.” I had read about Brother Yun in China and Richard Wurmbrand from Voice of the Martyrs and Brother Andrew smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. I didn’t pray that in a competitive way, like I wanted to out do anyone. I just meant, “Lord, I have a pop gun. If you give me a nuke, I promise not to shoot my eye out. But I have to do something big to make up for lost time.”
I asked Him to show me anything in the way between me and Him – and like machine gun fire He started showing me things to repent for. Now, I’m a preacher’s kid that’s never done a drug or been drunk. I don’t have the fancy resume of fancy “big sins” that all my friends now seem to have. But I still had unforgiveness and resentment and stuff He wanted to clean up. After about twenty minutes of repenting for stuff, God answered my prayer to see through His eyes and a vision started.
It’s here: The Vision That Started This Crazy Ride – LINK HERE
Yeah, that was me – a long time ago. Sorry for how dark it is. I’ve retold the story a bunch of times in other videos, but that was the earliest one. Since then I’ve spent 20+ years caring for my neighbors, opening homeless shelters, food pantries, thrift stores, a community storehouse, a farm and more. And soon after that vision in 2004, God made it clear that the internet works backwards from how He wants – it’s global and He wants it to be local. He said to take everything the internet could do – classified ads, discussion boards, coupons, and more to build up the local community as a gift from the Church for what we haven’t done this whole time – and one click away a place for the Church to gather daily and from house to house, fellowshipping, sharing, learning, teaching and more. Then I met a guy that was already working on the exact same thing. And he had met like three other people that tried before him. Then that guy failed – and I’m met like three other people after that who had tried to build the exact same thing. And we tried for years and could never get any traction on it.
But in January of 2026 God said that it would happen this year and it had to happen from Liberty. I sent emails, got quotes, talked to geeks – nothing went anywhere. Then in May a young man emailed me and offered to build it. I have the vision, he has the updated, most modern programming skills – and we got done in weeks what would have taken millions of dollars and programming team of dozens a year or more to build! All of a sudden, the dream I’ve been holding onto and crying out for over 20 years now – is right here in front of us. And it’s terrifying in it’s bigness. God is going to have to send a LOT of folks to help.
There’s a lot more to the story. My personal ministry site is FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com where all my books, articles, music and like 2600+ videos are hosted. (Or YouTube.com/FOTM1) This is many years of hard fought, tears and scar tissue earned, wisdom and revelation about how “church” needs to change. Some is linked here, but that’s the main site for all that stuff.
I still hear a scream in my chest that never stops. A deep down, blood curdling, desperate wail for Jesus to come fix all this mess. It motivates everything that I do and go through. And I know that none of this is me. Nothing is built in my power – and if it is, it will fail. I have had to learn to get out of His way, get my hands off the wheel and let Him do it His way. Everything. All the time.
Musical Interlude – The Scream (Click to listen) – from a poem by Uncle Doug
