Hello, I am Pastor John and I am a lifelong Lutheran who was born in Alameda, CA and raised in Claremont, CA. I attended Lutheran High School in La Verne, CA, and went on to attend Concordia Teachers’ College in Seward, NE. In 1983, I accepted a call and returned to Lutheran High as a History teacher and basketball coach. Later, I was called to teach at Martin Luther High School in Maspeth, Queens, NY. While I was there, I met Martha and we were married in 1990. In 1994, I accepted the call to be principal at Redeemer Lutheran Church and School in Glendale, NY. Our twins, Aaron and Andrew, were born in 1996, and two years after that I took the call to be DCE at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Reno. Martha and the boys remained in NY to sell our house and joined me for our new life in Reno during February 1999.
In 2006, I began Seminary training at Concordia University in Irvine, CA. My Seminary education concluded in 2013 and I was ordained into the LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) roster and accepted the call as Associate Pastor of St. Luke’s, Reno in August of 2014. In April 2018, I took the call to be the Sole Pastor at Trinity Lutheran in Gardnerville. After several months of commuting from Reno, Martha and I sold our home there and have settled into our new home in the Carson Valley.