My name is Jay, but a lot of people call me “PJ” or “Pastor Jay” or just “Pastor”. Because that is what I am vocationally called to be. 
My story starts off that I was born in the Philippines. My parents were there as Lutheran missionaries and I happened to come along 2 years after they had arrived. When I was born, my parents baptized me as an infant and brought me up in the Christian faith. They taught me Bible stories, they brought me to church, they taught me to pray. Today I would call all of those things “discipleship”, but they were just life for me.
When I was 13 we moved to the United States. That was pretty rough, adjusting to a new culture in the middle of 7th grade. But I made it through. I went to a Lutheran high school and ended up even going to a small Lutheran college for my undergraduate degree. That’s when God started doing some really big stuff in my life.
Growing up as the son of a missionary, I always thought that becoming a pastor was a possibility for me, if not an eventuality. So when I enrolled in higher education, I asked to be a part of the “pre-seminary program”. This was a sort of certification that you could get that would ease your way into the seminary. That’s not exactly what happened.
When I arrived at my college and met the other guys who were a part of the pre-seminary program, I was pretty turned off. That probably says something about myself and my maturity at the time, but it might say something about the people that I met as well. I just didn’t feel like I fit the mold of what it meant to be a pastor. So I jumped out of the program.
Fast forward a few years. I was completely confused about what to do with my life, so I had decided to take a break from undergrad and work on establishing my own business (renovating old houses). It was in the middle of that time that God did something crazy – the weirdest thing I think He has ever done with me.
I was sawing about an inch off of a 12 foot plank of cedar. I was concentrating heavily on the line that I was cutting when a “heard” a “voice”. Now it could have been what I had for lunch that day or just my subconscious, but it sure felt like a voice. It said “why don’t you think about becoming a pastor?”
“No thanks,” I said in response, “I’ve been there done that, got the tshirt . . .” but the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. Eventually I talked with my pastor and he helped me make the decision that I obviously made – to become a pastor. I went to the seminary and eventually was made a pastor by University Lutheran Church & Student Center in Tallahassee FL where I was ordained.
Since then, I have seen what it means to be a part of this movement of Lutherans that are trying to bring the church back to Scripture, Faith, Grace, and Jesus. It’s been a blast. And the great thing is, that because of Jesus, I know that it will be a blast that lasts for ever – literally into eternity. That’s amazing.
Thanks for reading my story! What is yours?