Aside from a few years in Washington, DC post-college, I’ve lived my entire life on the West Coast (Medford, OR until 11; Riverside, CA until 18; Berkeley, CA for college), and after living on the Peninsula for several years, San Francisco became home to me in 2018. My mom was a minister, and I grew up in American Baptist churches that leaned conservative evangelical, but I’m grateful that even as a child, somehow inside me I felt permission to question and wrestle with the things I was being told in church that didn’t line up with what I was reading in the Bible and my own internal sense of who God is. I first visited City Church in 2006 and then attended more actively/consistently starting in 2009 when I began volunteering in the Children's Ministry. I’m grateful that as a part of my deconstruction, City Church has given me an understanding of how God loves the world and wants us to be active in partnering with God to restore and renew the world. I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to play a role in doing that in  Children’s Ministry, other ministry roles at City Church as well as occasionally in my work life. I look forward to the opportunity to participate in that as a deacon as we rebuild and reimagine the diaconate at City Church.