I started my career as a scholar in training, skipping past popular Christian literature of the time and sinking my teeth directly into the biblical texts via language helps, a few semesters of Greek, training and Hermeneutics before being thrown directly into the fray at California State University Sacramento in 1979 where it was being somewhat overrun with cults and isms vying for new devotees. I formed the Apologetics Resource Center at age 22 (a non-profit corporation that lasted for decades). Already by my early 20s I was steep in Kierkegaard, Pascal, the major Catholic thinkers and the Early Church Fathers. I had seen what the riff in the 1920s in America had done to dissipate the real work of theology and I was determined to avoid both the extremes of Fundamentalism and Liberalism.

I ended up doing immensely practical ministry for nearly 25 years. But I never stopped writing theology, or reading and studying every aspect of the human condition. I wrote for a very popular audience and spent years as a secular journalist developing a style suited for a secular audience.

This all culminate in street ministry - living with and "pitching my tent" in the middle of "the goo' in West Oakland to establish a safe outpost for a few men in 2014.

Now it is time to bring the two together. Six years of off and on intense training on the streets of Portland, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Francisco and Oakland - and my earlier 30 plus years of theological training and study. Time to bring top scholarship together with what no book can possibly teach - get a Masters, then a Doctorate - then teach.

The goal is to flesh out a "Biblical Anthropology."

.

At the GTU I am free to take Graduate classes at all of the affiliate schools and the University of California, Berkeley (Go Bears!)

It is a dream come true, some 23 years after I first enrolled at SFTS. I'm just a little sharper now.