I’m a reader and writer who lives and works in West Michigan, where I manage web content and write for a Christian liberal arts college. I earned my MFA in creative writing from New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho.
I enjoy spending time at home with my wife and two sons. I love good beer, good food, and good books. My interests include creativity and the Christian imagination, popular theology, and Christian cultural engagement.
My first book, Cheers & Amen: Thank God for Good Beer, is forthcoming from Lion Press in 2025, and my work has been published in The North American Anglican, The Rabbit Room and Rabbit Room Poetry, American Reformer, Story Warren, Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and elsewhere.
I also write middle-grade fiction, texts for hymns and sea shanties, and formal poetry. Andrew Peterson once referred to one of my poems as “the best Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that Hopkins never wrote,” which is pretty much the greatest thing anyone has ever said about my writing.
Current Projects
Cheers & Amen
Thank God for good beer!
Beer is a gift from God, given for his glory and our joy — and we should thank him for it.
Cheers & Amen is a Christian celebration of craft beer. By connecting the unique pleasures of beer to the Giver of all good things, we aim to encourage Christians to reflect more deeply about their faith and, through their beer, to taste and see more clearly the goodness of God.
Look for the book, Cheers & Amen: Thank God for Good Beer, to arrive sometime in 2025. In the meantime, follow along, share our stuff, tell your friends, and drink up.
You can find more information at cheersamen.com.
Cheers!
Bishop’s Commonplace Hodgepodgery
Bishop’s Commonplace Hodgepodgery is a collection of words and sentences that have caught my attention. My only goal is to share whatever I find to be interesting, amusing, thought-provoking, edifying, inspiring, horrifying, or otherwise arresting.
This is another Substack publication, and I try to send it out once a week.
Find more at bishopscommonplace.com.
Christ Is Lord
There’s a lot of hubbub about how Christians should (or shouldn’t) be engaged in politics, and many Christians are confused:
Maybe you already believe that Jesus is Lord, but you don’t know how that fits into a neutral, secular public square.
Maybe you want to vote for your Christian values, but you’ve heard that’s just white Christian nationalism — and you’re not racist.
Maybe you’re unhappy that we’re transing kids and killing unborn babies, but you’ve been taught that Christians should never impose their morality on others.
Christ is Lord is for Christians who would never read 500 pages of political theology, but would happily sit down with a Bible study from Lifeway.
It aims to encourage Christians that it’s okay to want something different and better for our neighborhoods, cities, states, and country — in Jesus’ name.
Another of my Substack publications, you can find it at christislord.substack.com.
Recommended reading
Fiction
Godric, by Frederick Buechner
That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis
The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Sorrows (first edition), by Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Nonfiction
The Things of Earth, by Joe Rigney
Lifting the Veil, by Malcolm Guite
Poetry
The Wretch on the Gallows Tree, by Daniel Mitsui
The Fiddler of Driskill Hill, by David Middleton
