Know Your Fellow Drunks

Alex Arnold

I was born alive and right-handed. I’ve lived my whole life in the environs of suburban Southern California, more specifically, south Orange County. They tried to brainwash me in public school but they failed. So I went back for more: I’m a philosophy student at Notre Dame University. I’m a kind of a geek, but so what? I dig the underground music scene, so there. That makes me cool, right? I’m tall, dark and handsome, and more importantly, single. So if any of you good-looking barmaidens are looking for romantic walks on the beach, candle-lit dinners and stimulating discussions of infralapsarianism, talk to Michael. Oh wait, he’s married. Tough luck then.

JS Bangs

Pending Submission

Jason Blair

Jason Blair is a denominational mutt. He went through the Methodist Sunday school and confirmation process, and was baptized as an infant. Post high school, he all but left his faith behind until God used a dorm room Bible study to call him back into the fold. From there, he has been in membership with the Evangelical Free Church. He was baptized again(!) as an adult, though currently believes he didn’t need to do that. Though he still worships and serves in the Free church, he keeps up on the Emerging Conversation, prefering to follow the trend to call it “Missional.” Jason likes simple church models and ancient liturgies, and if he wasn’t serving with a loving community, would find his spiritual home in the Anglical Mission in America or the Reformed Episcopal church. Properly, Jason simply likes to be counted as a bondservant of Christ – nothing more, nothing less. Aside from that, he’s a smart-a$$, a musician, a computer geek, and an avid science fiction and fantasy fan.

Ken Boyd

Ken is married with three children. He was raised in a Primitive Baptist church, but is currently a Southern Baptist. His family lives in western Arkansas near the Ouachita Mountains. Ken is a certified public accountant —- which means he enjoys numbers and has no sense of humor. Ken enjoys running, reading, and resting. He is a cat person, enjoys Blue Bell ice cream and is fan of 70’s classic rock.

Ken is currently a deacon and teacher at his church. He is currently teaching Wednesday night Bible study at a small church in the next county.

Ken is gratefully to Michael for allowing him to keep the Tavern’s books for the past three years. Ken is especially gratefully that Christ has paid Ken’s tab in full (John 19:30 & Col. 2:13-14)

Bart Campbell

I was born in Lexington KY in 1966. We moved all over the Midwest until we settled in Chicago. I lived there from the first through the Tenth grades. I attended and was confirmed in the LCMS. We returned to Kentucky the summer before my junior year. I graduated Somerset High School in 1985. 1985-1990 are the years in which my life took many crazy turns. For one thing, the only Lutheran church in Somerset was an LCA church (very liberal); so we began to attend FBCS and were forced to be Re-Baptized. In 1991, I went to Carson-Newman College and obtained both a BA and MA degrees. I met my wife there and we have 3 children.

Richard Campeau

I was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1961. French is my mother tongue. My growing up years were filled with family, the Montreal Canadiens, friends, hockey, school, Church (in the parish of Notre-Dame-des-Anges = Our Lady of All Angels), hockey. It was an excellent childhood. At the age of 18 I came to faith in Christ by reading the New Testament on my own. I am a graduate of Vanier College (Montreal), Concordia University (Montreal), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA). I also enjoyed a fellowship at Tyndale House at the University of Cambridge.

I am very much in love with Elizabeth (married 18 years). We have a daughter and a son. We live in beautiful Golden, British Columbia where I pastor the Baptist church.

Jack Heald

If it weren’t for Jim, Jack would be the most renowned pagan on the BHT. As it is, he is happy, (insofar as happiness is possible for someone so wicked), to be Number Two. For the sake of your eternal security, you should question both the motivation and the validity of everything he says. He tells the truth just often enough to keep you completely off-balance. He is the spawn of Satan. He is self-centered, ego-centric and probably suffers from a personality disorder or two. He bites the heads off kittens, takes candy from small children, laughs at inappropriate times, pouts when he is not the center of attention and is slightly paranoid about losing his hair. For reasons too bizarre to contemplate, some people like him anyway. Go figure.

Matthew Johnson

I’m a 27 year old associate pastor at Russellville 1st UMC and a recent graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary. The first 8 years of my life were spent between Ft. Bliss, TX (El Paso) and Regensburg, Germany. My parents divorced when I was 9, just a little over a year after my Mom took me and my sister to her hometown in Northeast Arkansas.

I graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1999 with a B.A. in English Literature. I have been married for almost three years to my wife and much better half, Heather.

I met Michael on a message board that was linked to Piper’s Desiring God Ministry about 4 years ago and since then we’ve shared a lot of food and I also mugged him of his Merton collection. I love the Razorbacks, Faulkner…well, most Southern writers to be accurate, but Willie is my favorite…, learning dead languages, and writing with my fountain pens. I hate the paragraph titles in the ESV and I intend to covertly baptize Bill Mac’s first grandchild ;-)

Bill MacKinnon

Born 1962, Winthrop NY. Raised Methodist. (actually, I’ve never been to a Methodist service in my life. I didn’t go to church at all. When people asked what I was I said Methodist because I knew I wasn’t catholic and Methodist was the only protestant denomination I knew the name of). Became a Christian at age 18. Attend and serve in a SBC church in Winthrop. Calvinist for about several years now. Avid outdoorsman. Degrees in Electronics, Science and Management. I’ve worked for 20 years at Clarkson University, a private engineering college in Potsdam, NY. I am the IT coordinator and instructor for the School of Business. Huge SciFi fan. Lovely wife, Miriam, and 2 children, Justin and Jenna. I love to teach. My favorite authors are C.S. Lewis, John Bunyan, P.G. Wodehouse and Patrick F. McManus. Love to play Racquetball (leaving to play in about 15 min). My son and I like to watch cooking shows (Emeril and Iron Chef!). I am an animal lover (roasted, mostly).

Jim Nicholson

All provable assertions about Jim Nicholson are unprovable.

Kurt Nordstrom

Rhizopus Afroswedius

The Afroswedius was first discovered in a Houston, Texas hospital. An interesting hybrid of African and Scandinavian stock, it is hard to easily define. A transient species, it was tracked far from its native Texas to as far north as New York City. It has since then returned to Texan soil, at least for the time being.

This particular specimen has been adopted by a friendly Georgian symbiote that we will refer to as ‘Amanda’. It has thrived throughout the relationship, though researchers have not determined if the Amanda is mutually benefitted.

The Afroswedius has been spotted in the halls of the University of North Texas libraries. Through its powers of natural camoflauge, it masquerades as a computer programmer, and actually draws a corresponding salary. It is not yet known how the Afroswedius actually manages to complete any work.

The Afroswedius is relatively sessile, and spends its time doing as little as possible. It consumes large quantities of food, and is often found basking in the glow of a computer monitor. Researchers spectuate that it may gain some benefit from such, but this is not proven. As the strain is both surly and curmudgeonly, caution is urged to all that would approach it.

Travis Prinzi

Travis Prinzi lives in Rochester, NY with his wife Tricia, daugher Sophia, and mini dachshund Bodhi. He used to be a cook, and then an interim pastor of a small Baptist church; now he’s an electrophysiology technician, and in three years, he’ll be an English teacher. That will all have taken place by the time he’s 30. He runs two blogs: Restless Reformer, where he says whatever he wants, and Sword of Gryffindor, where he writes about Harry Potter and runs the Hog’s Head PubCast. He used to be a Baptist, and now he’s a Presbyterian, but mostly he likes the terms “paleo-orthodox” and “post-evangelical.”

He has respect for beer.

Eric Rigney

I am a walking talking example of God’s grace and mercy—by every reasonable (and even generous) statistical indicator, I ought to be someplace far removed from where I am today. I come from a family that puts the fun in dysfunction, a family who has the door to their skeleton closet flung wide, with a barker outside enticing newcomers inside—yet somehow (glory to God) I avoided its siren call. I am married and I have a gorgeous daughter. I graduated from Georgetown College in 1994 with a BA in English, and from EKU in 2001 with an MA in Rhet/Comp and American Lit. I now teach writing and literature at Bluegrass Community College in Lexington, Kentucky. I am saved and kept by grace, through faith, and that is the best thing you can say about my life.

Kent Runge

I was born in Anaheim California in 1960 and spent the first thirty years of my life in the “land where nothing freezes”, picking pomegranates and oranges on the way to school. After a ten year sojourn in Western Colorado I found myself in Otter Tail County Minnesota, where according to Chippewayan lore there are two seasons: “Dog” and “Canoe”. I am un-degreed, but I’m known for playing well with others.

Laurie and I have been married for nearly eleven years; we are best of friends and aspire to be professional vagabonds. Our inability to have children is our most profound loss. Professionally I’ve been a mental health worker on an inpatient psych unit, a bicycle mechanic, a body shop manager, a technical writer, a youth advocate for high-risk adolescents, a printer, a graphic artist, an underground utility locator and a manufacturing operations coordinator. After much intellectual promiscuity I answered the Father’s call at age thirty. My “warm fuzzies” come from being a son of God, a husband, an uncle (X30), a friend and paddling a canoe. O’Doul’s is my “brew of choice”, Amber when I’m feeling reckless. (The gene pool in which I swim inspires caution in this area.)

Mike Shea

Call me Shea. It’ll bring back memories of high school soccer. I am the pastor of an Evangelical Free Church in Champaign, IL and have been since 1994. Before that, I spent two summers in India, anticipating being a career missionary there. How the plans changed is a story I’ll tell later. My internet moniker has been isaiah543, because Isaiah 54:3 is the verse from which William Carey preached his “deathless sermon” in which he is purported to have said “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God”. It’s also a verse God impressed upon me in May of 1989. “Your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.” Mobilizing for missions is a big theme of my ministry.

Champaign-Urbana is the home of the University of Illinois, where I studied philosophy. I believe I was born again while I was up all night reading the gospel of Matthew alone in my dorm room my freshman year. Before that I had called myself a Zen Buddhist for about a year and before that I had no church background. After college I served on staff with the Navigators at Northwestern University while going to seminary at Trinity. In the early years my theological influences were CS Lewis and Dallas Willard. Since seminary, it’s been Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, Piper and, most recently, Keller. I’m turning 40 this year and am the father of five children who are going to public school. My wife is working on her masters in early childhood special education. I’m currently working on a certificate in biblical counseling from CCEF via distance education. I guess I should add David Powlison to the list of recent influences.

I love playing the guitar, White Sox baseball, and reading Steinbeck and authors like him (any recommendations for me?). I also teach Hebrew at Urbana Theological Seminary.

My beer preferences are always migrating, but my scotch preferences remain consistent. Island and West Coast malts for me.

Sonia

Sonia grew up in a home populated by two parents, two sisters and, over the course of time, birds, fish, a cat, a dog and various lizards. English is her third language. Grace was preached at church but legalism was enforced at home so, by the time high school graduation rolled around, she was stressed and confused. She attended The King’s College, where she developed some clarity regarding her beliefs, met her husband (comp sci major, philosophy minor) and got confused all over again. She started out as a comp sci major and graduated with an elementary education degree (with comp sci concentration). However, student teaching cured her of the desire of ever setting foot in a classroom. As such, she has spent the 10+ years since graduation running a variety small offices and troubleshooting hardware, software and networking issues.

In her spare time, she knits, does needlework, creates scrapbooks, reads, thinks, reads some more, is a church and choir pianist and is a tech-elf for a handful of blogs, including her own. Some days, though, it’s more mountain troll than elf.

Michael Spencer

The former lead guitarist for the “Kansas” cover band “Delaware”, Michael Spencer has led an interesting life. Born in Ireland in 1956 and adopted by blind Romanian refugees, he lived his early life in a large museum display in Bucharest, Hungary. His family was tragically killed in a manure spreader accident, and Michael was raised by a kindly old psychology professor and his hot, awesomely enhanced trophy babe wife in Oxford, England. There he became part of a circle of literary friends known as “The Doodlings,” none of whom were ever actually published. After studying the janitorial and custodial sciences in London, he came to America to work as a mafia chef, cooking briefly for Mel “the Wino” Palmieri and Billy “Pudgy” Servisi, before he became a full time instructor at McDonald’s University. He was converted to fundamentalist Christianity under the ministry “Howlin’” Harold Wilson, a renowned Gospel ventriloquist in the Dubuque area. He quickly took an interest in neo- orthodox theology and eventually studied with Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Emil Brunner, Mary Lou Henner, Mick Jagger, Richard Harris, Sir Elton John, Tonya Harding, Moby, Ron Howard, Barry White and Li’l Romeo. During his studies, he supported himself as Adrian Paul’s stunt double on “Highlander.” He briefly made headlines in the mid 90’s when he won the North American Coney Eating Championship by ingesting 31 Coney dogs, all with cole slaw, then attacking the second place finisher with a chair. His stint as a professional wrestler was cut short when he was injured in a match with Cactus Jack. He inherited the Boar’s Head Tavern from his adoptive parents in Oxford, and after trying to run the place as a “reservations only” restaurant for mob hits, he finally decided to go the theological bar route, and the rest is, of course, history.

Sharon Waters

What do the BHT readers need to know about me? I was born in 1959 a little town on the Interstate Twenty corridor between Dallas and Atlanta—closer to the the Big D than Hotlanta. If you’d like to know more about kin and clan from this area of the world you may browse here. There are some possessed historians that chronicle the lives of some of the most boring people in America. But, if you hold your mouth just right and squint you can see shades of a spooky Gothic South. My parents have both gone on to be with the Lord but they were perfectly wonderful. They had four of us altogether but we are spaced across two generations. I’m the only girl.

I remember my grade school years at Stewart Elementary much better than my undergrad years at LSU but the Koolaid was not as strong in the fifth grade as it was down in Baton Rouge. At some point I did graduate with a degree in Psychology (after first trying performance music, then music education, then sociology, then law enforcement, then Zoroastrianism). Psychology was by default. Two years later I talked the LSU grad school into letting me in by promising them I would donate first a kidney, then an actual kid for their equine research program. As it turns out they did not want to keep the child that was born during the year before I received my masters in speech communications and sciences program. They do have plenty of video tape of him and of his brother and sister with me down in the speech lab. The lisp did not go away entirely. However, the kids talk great. I just avoid talking about Zoroastrianism.

You should know that I completed another degree program, this time at a liberal theological seminary which equipped me to follow my call into full time, apostolic, ordained ministry in the United Methodist church. For nearly ten years I have served churches in North Georgia. A while back I tried to defect to a conference over on the West Coast. While that remains a possibility things are not exactly moving in that direction at this time. My husband and kids (one in high school and two in college) have suggested that they move anyway and let me catch up later. The trouble with that idea is that I’m afraid they’ll move and make me guess where they went.

I seem to be known here at the BHT as a liberal and a feminist—not that anyone of these guys has convinced me that they have a clue about Christian feminism. I do like the folks here at the bar very much. I pray for them as I trust they pray for me.

Phillip Winn

Currently an evangelical reformed low-church Anglican (complete with pipe) by a sovereign act of God (and a little help from Richard Campeau here at the BHT), Phillip previously attended Assemblies of God, word of faith, Baptist, and non-denominational charismatic churches before switching to Trinity Hillcrest.

Born (non-immaculately) in 1972, married (to one woman) in 1994, Texan (non-practicing) since 1996, Phillip has three children, born in 1998, 1999 and 2001. All were born before the conversion to Anglicanism, and so were baptized old enough to satisfy some credo-baptists, but not all.

Thanks to the BHT, Phillip believes very little of what he believed when he first joined up, and a lot he didn’t.

Aside from fixating on beliefs that have no practical effect on his life, Phillip is a computer-geek by day, by night, on the weekends, and in his sleep.