Jess and I

My wife Jessica and I (Tony Stiff) are originally from Clearwater, Fl. I just completed my MDiv with an emphasis in urban missiology & church planting at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In my last year at WTS I developed and organized the Fall Student Association Conference on the “Emerging Churches”, where Steve Lutz presented a preview lunch discussion centering around Liberti Church, Philadelphia. And where Scot McKnight, Mike Horton, John Franke, Dan McCartney, John Leonard, Ben Inman, and Walter Henegar presented main lectures; and Jerry Fourroux, and I presented breakout lectures. My wife is working on her M.A. in Biblical Counseling. Before attending Westminster I completed a B.A. in Pastoral Studies at Clearwater Christian College. My wife was the co-founder of Campus Crusade for Christ at University of Miami (Go Canes!) and just recently left Campbell’s Soup Company because of our move to the surrounding area of Atlanta, Ga where I pastor at East Lanier Community Church.

We share a passion for surfing, snowboarding, and all things involving water. We are the proud owners of Kona Kai, our 1 1/2 year old Chesapeake Labrador Retriever who was born on 6/6/06 - I kid you not! We love experiencing different cultures as they come together in urban atmospheres. We have a heart to converse widely in the body of Christ, listening to the Spirit speak to all his children. I personally have a passion for thoughtful pieces on hermeneutics, theological prolegomena, inner and inter textual studies of scripture; and the OT in its ANE context as well as the NT in its 2nd Temple and Greco-Roman contexts. But my biggest passion is for the missio Dei, to be used by God with his new people in Christ spreading the good news that His Kingdom has come in His Son’s life, death, and resurrection. To be found and to find myself in God’s wonderful work of recreation and forgiveness, the messy-dressy church He has chosen as His Son’s bride.

My Story

I grew up in the Church of Scientology until about the age of 13, both my parents where influential leaders in the movement. My mother was their #4 most valuable ‘auditor’ in their world organization, which translated into her counseling/auditing their movie star clientel, ex. John Travolta and Lerenzo Lames. I lived and breathed the air of both that community and ideology but my heart could never embrace it, because of God’s redeeming plan for my life.

God brought me to saving faith through a Young Life group in Fl. Afterwards I immediately began my missional journey to the un-churched by starting bible studies in my secular high school and creating a Christian Agressive skate team in central Florida that included pro-am skaters. After high school I did missions to North America for a year with Teen Mania Ministries, I served in their ‘Acquire the Fire’ youth ralleys that had audiences anywhere from 3,000 to 60,000.

The way I practiced mission changed a lot during that year, largely due to seeing so many Churches reaching out to the youth generations all over America and meeting so many different youth leaders struggling with the emerging cultures. Also my sense of the need for the Christian story in the 10/40 window was formed during this time. Surprisingly, it was at Teen Mania that my Reformational theology began to be formed as well, this is surprising because TMM doesn’t have any real intentional connection to whats known as the Reformed tradition.

My theological traditions since TMM have been both from a Reformed and Presbyterian perspective. I’ve been apart of five different Christian traditions (PCUSA; Charismatic movement; Fundamentalist Baptist movement; the Indepent world; and now the PCA). The first was the PCUSA church I was saved in, they used the Young Life group as an outreach model for their high schoolers. The second was a 2,000 member Charismatic church where I was a leader of a youth mercy as well as the evangelism team. The third was my college, it was a fundamentalist independent Baptist school (funny I didn’t fit any of those adjectives at the time, nor now). And the fourth was Grace Christian Fellowship, a small church plant that was independent and reformed and had a passion for overseas missions and the sovereignty of God. The final groups have been more PCA type institutions - Westminster Theological Seminary that is a non-denominational seminary but still very weighted toward the PCA and OPC communities; New Life Dresher PCA where I interned for four years under Ron Lutz, Mike Hollenbach, and Jerry Fourroux; and Corby Sheilds - New Life was the church Jack Miller pastored and where Tim Keller, Harvie Conn, Bruce Waltke, Tremper Longman, Anthony Bradley and many more attended and some lead on the session; where David Powlison attends currently. I pastor now at East Lanier Community Church, PCA.

I meet my wife during my seminary years, we had a wonderful distance romance, she was in South Beach Miami and I was in Philadelphia, I felt the ‘call’ to be missional to Miami if you know what I mean :). She is the most influential sanctifying force in the Lord’s hands for changing my hard heart and head. Missional living seems to come easy for her, she founded the Campus Crusade for Christ at University of Miami as a student there and spent a year in war torn Sarejevo Bosnia reaching out to Muslim college students, she is pursued a counseling degree at CCEF while we were at WTS. We both have a passion for Urban missions and the emerging cultures of the younger generations, as well as seeing God use and grow his body transgenerationally.

I recently graduated with an MDiv at Westmister Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in Urban Missiology. While there I was the Student Missions Fellowship President and the leader and organizer of the student Fall 07 conference on the Emerging Church. I was invovled in shadowing several church plants in Philadelphia area, and am now Director of Family Ministries at East Lanier Community Church outside Atlanta.

The Journey of this blog

I started blogging a little over a year ago, at first my intent in opening a blog was to explore how I might interact with the Emerging Churches because I was the student leader of a conference at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and I hadn’t really engaged in their blogging world much. As things progressed for me and the organic life of blogging took hold I realized that audience and intent are not always two things that collide in the blogosphere. Everyone is watching and listening and being careful with your topics and language is a continual task. But I did notice that overtime my blogging was becoming less and less a conversation between myself and the Emerging Churches and more and more an inter-seminary chat spot for Westminster students, and college alumni friends of mine at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. I guess you could say that there really isn’t a particular audience in mind for this blog right now, but since my wife and I have entered our pastoral ministry some of the more general feelings I’ve been adding to the site will increase and some of the topics and postings will be given over to our experiences and labor at East Lanier Community Church.

So if you go further back and see a number of postings on the Emerging Churches and then in the middle somewhere you see alot of inter-seminary chat stuff and now you feel a general impression of topics on the Gospel, mission, and culture don’t be surprised. This blog is still on the road…