Born into a christian home in the “metropolis” of LaGrange, Ohio, I grew upon a 24 acre farm house in the middle of the country. My parents worked hard as business owners to provide for their family and send us kids to private christian school. There I met Melanie in 9th grade in Spanish class. I annoyed her as she sat in front of me and that was the beginning of our relationship. After a few years of dating in high school and while I was at Full Sail University in Orlando, we got married at the age of 19 and 20. We were young and stupid but so much in love. After being together more then half of our lives, we look back at all the God has done for us and in us. We have 3 awesome kids, have served in different ministries for 15 years, traveled the country in an RV for a year and now settled down on our own farm in NorthEast Ohio.

Today, I’m in the LiveStreaming Industry as consultant for schools, churches and corporations. I serve as a coach to tech leaders in the church and offer guidance with how to grow as a leader while dealing with the stresses of life.

When we lived on the road for a year traveling around the US, I was constantly reminded of how awesome our God is just by the simple fact of how majestic His creation truly is. You don’t really appreciate how vast this country is until you drive it – up and down mountains, through the deserts, along the flat plains. The USA is so diverse and this picture above is just a sampling of it. The “Big Tree” is one of the largest and oldest Redwood Trees in the Redwood National & State Parks. Its trunk is massive, the bark is 2 foot think and the root system isn’t very deep but super wide. The roots can spread over 100 foot wide, intertwine and even fuse together. This gives them tremendous strength against the forces of nature. This way they can withstand high winds, raging floods and forest fires.

These trees are another great reminder of the cross that Jesus died on to save us from our sins. They also remind me that we must stand together in a community of believers to withstand the elements of the world. If we don’t love Christ by growing in him and serve Him as well as others daily, we’re not doing as Christ commanded us while we’re here on the earth.

Tech as been a part of my life since I was kid. Growing up in the 90s was a great time to learn from others about technology. YouTube didn’t exist yet and so we had talk to each other and work with others to learn different ideas. Crazy, I know. I remember sitting in the tech booth at church or at the theater watching the crew working hard, moving knobs and pushing buttons. I knew at the age of 14 that I wanted to go into the production world.

I started out in the audio industry back when digital was just coming out but yet still very expensive. Heck, even the high-end analog boards were really expensive, very large and came with a lot of out-board gear. Now everything you need is built into a digital mixer, super compact and reasonably priced.

Even now, every kid that has a device can download an app and do basic video editing. Back when I started in the video days, we had huge towers filled with hard drives to capture in real-time from DV-CAM or Mini-DV tapes. Rendering and exporting took hours. Compared to my kids iPad, those machines were crap but thats all we had and we loved it. 4×3.  Standard def baby!

I started streaming our church services in 2007 with a 756k DSL connection – it sucked! Now with my iPhone, we Facebook Live all the time to share our experiences over a cell connection. Technology has evolved so quickly in my lifetime, we can hardly keep up with the changes and adapt our system with the new technology. Either way, we continue to upgrade to help us produce better content.