I count it one of the greatest blessings of my life that my parents were serious, devoted Christians who loved the Lord and loved me, so “from childhood [I] have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make [me] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). Their genuine faith and example made it easy for me to trust in Christ as a child.

However, in my adolescence, I became puffed up by “knowledge” (1 Cor 8:1), and “having begun by the Spirit,” I sought to “[be] perfected by the flesh” (Gal. 3:3). I began to rely, not on the finished work of Christ on the cross, but on my own good works. I became self-righteous and prideful. However, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas. 4:6). My inflated self-righteousness was punctured by struggles with sexual immorality, and I despaired that God would ever show me His favor again and use me for His glory. During this time, God spoke to me through the lyrics of one of my favorite hymns:
“When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.”
God reminded me, once again, of His gospel of grace—that He lavished His love and favor upon me, not because I deserve it, but because of His sovereign grace (Eph. 2:8-9). As I clung more tightly to the cross, the grip of besetting sins loosened, and it is now my honor and joy to preach this good news of Jesus to the precious saints of Trinity Cambridge Church.

I live in East Cambridge with my self-forgetful, guileless wife, Hanna, and my three tender, silly daughters, Inae, Inji, and Ina. I graduated from the Sovereign Grace Pastors College and have a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA.

Having grown up in church, I learned all the right things to do to play the part of a good Christian. Lead worship? Give me a guitar. Go on mission trips? Sign me up. All the while, I unremorsefully harbored sin and sought to fit Jesus within my agenda of living as comfortable and controlled a life as possible. In my heart, there was no treasuring of Christ as Savior, no serving of Christ as Lord.

That began to change during college. For what it felt like the first time, I heard about the necessity of taking up your cross and dying to yourself to be Jesus’ disciple. Through those sermons, God cut me to the heart over my countless sins. But still missing grace and obsessed with control, I then set out to kill those sins and earn my salvation through my works. But time and time again, I fell amazingly short of the glory of God, slowly coming to the belief that God must have rejected me. This came to a head on a short-term mission trip, where I found myself sharing a loveless, graceless, joyless “gospel.”

But during the aftermath of that trip, by Scripture and the ministry of faithful pastors, God finally humbled me to the point of total surrender. I finally experienced joy in Jesus for the first time as I tasted of His amazing grace in His death and resurrection for my salvation. Since then, it’s been my life’s goal to savor the grace of the cross for the rest of my life.

Exploring how not to waste my life, I began to consider a future of ministry in college. It was then where I befriended my lovely and hilarious wife, Christine, and we married in January 2020. We moved to Boston during the pandemic and joined Trinity shortly after. Since the summer of 2022, I have progressing on the eldership track, with the process culminating in ordination as a pastor/elder at Trinity in late 2025. I’m also working on finishing my M.Div at Southern Seminary online. Christine and I both testify that by grace this church has been such a huge catalyst to our growth in faith, hope, and love.

Growing up, I struggled with performing well in order to earn the approval of others. While on the surface I felt content about the friends I made, the respect that I earned, and the accolades that I achieved, beneath that I harbored deep, sinful insecurities about my self-worth.

My life changed radically when my family moved across the country in the middle of high school. I was terrified. I feared having to rebuild my life, make friends, earn respect, make a name for myself, all over again. But that was when the Gospel began to come alive in my life, and through the encouragement of my family, faithful friends and my youth pastor, I started to surrender my fears to the Lord, trusting that His ways and His plans were better than my own.

Almost immediately, God provided me with loving friends and a Christian community at my new school. Through those last two years of high school, I learned of how broken a sinner I was, and how nothing I did could earn my salvation or God’s approval, and how kind God was in sending His Son Jesus to die for my sins unconditionally. I learned to treasure Jesus as my Savior, and saw how amazing and irresistible the Gospel was to me and many others around me – our high school Christian club grew from 8 members to over 100 members in two years!

During college, I was blessed to be part of a Bible-centered local church, and was mentored by God-fearing elders. It was during this time that I also began to pray about pursuing ministry. Through the mentorship and prayerful support of my college church, I completed my Master of Divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary from 2021-2025. It was at Gordon-Conwell that I met my beautiful and kind wife, Cathy, and we married in the Fall of 2025. Since the start of my seminary journey, we have been members of Trinity Cambridge Church, and I am in the process of completing my pastoral internship here, with the hopes of pursuing ordination through Sovereign Grace Churches in the future.

By the grace of God, Trinity has been a wonderful church family for me and Cathy to grow in our faith and trust in the Lord.