Bio
I was born and raised in Stephenville, Texas, baptized in Faith Lutheran Church by my parents Ed and Cathy Knoll, and have gone to church pretty much ever since. My mom has been my Sunday School teacher for as long as I can remember except for two years of confirmation, one of which was taught by the pastor and the other by my father. I was very blessed to be in an active Christian family, however, it took quite a while for me to claim my faith back from my parents and make it my own. But more about that later. My brother, Dwight (3 years younger), and I had many awesome opportunities growing up. We rarely bought new clothes and never ate out at restaurants, but had many amazing experiences. Our family traveled all over Europe for six weeks, went on a two week mission trip to Jamaica, and visited almost every state in the U.S. There was hardly a single week during our summers when we weren’t at some church, athletic, scout or band camp.
In school I was always the kid that teachers would come up to at the end of the year or semester and say, “You’re so smart… why don’t you make better grades?” That was frustrating because I generally tried my hardest, yet felt I could never live up to people’s expectations. It was not until my third year at Concordia University that I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. I do not mention this to dwell on it, but finding out so late in life has finally explained my educational struggles (to state a negative) and why I am such a dreamer and visionary (to state a positive).
The summer after my sophomore year in high school I went to a servant event week at Texoma Lutheran Camp in Texoma, Texas. The lady who was leading the devotions for the week twisted her ankle one day and would not be able to make the several mile trek out to the campfire. So she asked me to lead the devotion/campfire. I didn’t want to do it because, at that time, I didn’t really have any sense of a personal faith. After going back and forth for a while, I finally said, “Fine! I’ll do it.”
I proceeded to make a deal with God… if he would make the talk good, I would do something for Him. (Thinking this meant I would help out in the nursery more often at church.) And that night, God kept up his end of the deal. I know this because I was saying things that I didn’t even know I knew. It was amazing. There I was, not even a Junior in high school, telling the other youth that what they needed was a relationship with Jesus, because He loved them and wanted to be their friend and savior. And that was the night I learned “my own” lesson. From that point on, I have been in service to Jesus.
My last two years of high school were a blast. I was very active in anything and everything Christian. I was a leader in a bible study that met at the school once a week. I was vice-president of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I started up a student action group/bible study that met every morning before school from 6:45 to 7:45. And I became a junior leader for Young Life my senior year. I did these these activities not because I thought they were what “a good Christian” should do… but simply because I felt led by the spirit.
In the fall of 1998 I came to St. Paul to attend Concordia University, because of that summer at camp. One of my counselors told me Concordia had a new program in outdoor ministry, and that he thought God could use me in camping ministry. Who was I to argue?
My first year at Concordia I met the woman of my dreams, Kimberly, and was blown away by her passion for ministry. That summer, I worked at Camp Lutherhaven, and discovered that Camp Directors spent most of their time running a camp, and almost no time in ministry with the kids. I decided that outdoor ministry wasn’t for me and switched over to the Outreach program.
Kim and I were engaged on New Years of 2000. Which was the beginning of our most difficult and blessed time together. That spring semester Kim was hit very hard by depression and after one very difficult night we finally got her the help she needed. The next day I went back to Concordia and, realizing that I hadn’t been to class in about a month, withdrew from classes and started looking for work. I found a job at Kim’s home church, St. Andrews in Mahtomedi working with the Junior High program. It was an amazing learning experience and my first time working with a large church (600 7th-8th graders and 300 9th graders). I worked with the program that summer, and they were going to have me become the director of the Junior High program in September. Kim and I decided to move our wedding up to that October (2000) since we would be financially secure. As it turns out, the church had gone over budget on their new sanctuary and on September 1st they informed me that they would not be able to offer me the position. At the time, I was really frustrated, but now I can look back and see God’s hand in the whole thing. He still had a lot that he wanted to teach me.
Kim and I were married on October 14th, 2000. I worked several odd jobs while she went back to school in the Director of Christian Outreach program at Concordia. Then, in January, Bethel and Emmaus Lutheran churches (in the St. Paul, Como Park area) contacted me about being their youth leader. They were working on sharing ministry together, and wanted to try a partnership in youth ministry. I worked for both churches for about seven months, until Bethel decided to dissolve the agreement and, even though it was financially difficult for Emmaus, they decided to bring me on full time.
If I learned the joys and struggles of a large ministry at St. Andrews, I definitely learned the joys and struggles of a small ministry at Emmaus. There I was able to do very relational ministry with the 30 kids in junior and senior high combined. Emmaus also gave me the opportunity to explore some new paradigms for ministry. Roger, the pastor, and I transitioned the conformation program from being one of primarily teaching the small catechism to something similar to Alpha that brought families together for a meal and then presenting and discussing topics central to the faith. It was awesome to watch the parents go from, “We’ve already done this and don’t have time” to, “I can’t believe how much my kid and I have learned and become closer during this time.” It was just awesome.
During this same time Stan Thompson and I started an alternative worship/fellowship experience at the church called 11-10 (based on Luke 11:10). The purpose was to provide a safe place for people to search for God whether they had known Him their whole life, or never met him. On Sunday mornings there was a highly interactive and constantly changing atmosphere that gave people an opportunity to hear about God, worship Him, and/or ask questions depending on where they were at in their faith journey. On Tuesday nights we would just hang out at a nearby restaurant (Old Mexico) and talk about “life, love, and all other things confusing.” It was powerful watching several people get to know Christ for the first time, or come back to him after many years of looking elsewhere for peace.
In the spring/summer of 2003 a couple things happened that led me to resign from Emmaus. I had been involved in many discussions about how the church could respond to the cultural transition to post-modernism (also known as the Emerging Church). It was becoming very evident that it was time for the church to start shifting some paradigms of ministry. At the same time I was taking Cross Cultural Outreach at Concordia. One of the things that hit me in this class (designed to teach students how to be a missionary in other countries), was that no one was treating America like a third world country. No one was attempting to get to know the new American culture and translate the gospel into that language. That realization gave me a strong desire to be a missionary to America.
Roger, my best friend and pastor, had a heart attack and, because of his slow and uncertain recovery, decided to resign. Kim and I decided this was a time to move on. So, we made plans to move to southern California to be missionaries in the Huntington Beach area. We had been blessed with a house and connections in the area, but at the last minute the whole thing fell through. That was really hard for us, because we felt like we were making a real commitment to serve God and couldn’t understand why he would take that away.
I started working a temp job and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to work at a church again, because I wanted to be in the ‘real world’ doing ‘real ministry.’ But I stared having dreams about this fat guy sitting on the couch yelling at some sports team on the TV, complaining about everything they were doing wrong. Then God would ask this simple question, “Do you want to just sit around complaining about my church, or are you willing to suit up and go help the team?”
The following week, I received a call from Woodbury Lutheran Church. They wanted to know if I would be interested in serving as their interim Director of Junior High Ministry. I helped them develop a website for their junior and senior high, and worked with the current senior high director to redevelop their youth ministry. I was considered for the new position, but they called another candidate.
I was still trying to find my place in the church. I knew I wanted to help her adjust to emerging culture, and I wanted to do this from within the church; so, I went back to Concordia to finish my degree and prepare for seminary. Meanwhile, I found affinity in a group called the Emerging Leaders Network, who gave me hope for the future of the church. There really were other people out there who thought about the church the way I did, and were working to bring about change. I took on the task of developing a website that could foster interaction, education, and encouragement for this group of people.
In 2005 Kim and I begin attending Spirit Garage. Through relationships developed there we had the opportunity to apply and be hired as the co-directors of Senior High Ministry at Bethlehem (the mother church of Spirit Garage). After working there for several months, we discovered we had irreconcilable differences in our philosophy of ministry. The church did not want us to “offend the students” by making absolute statements about Christ being the only way to be saved. We tried to work things out and continue serving there, but after several weeks it became apparent that this would not be possible.
A few months later, I found myself driven to apply for Luther Seminary for a Master of Arts degree due to the prodding (translated, “encouragement”) of Rollie Martinson. We were both on a panel on the Emerging Church at Luther, and he encouraged me to “work out my salvation” at Luther. He feels, (and in my time around Luther I’m able to see why) that Luther is a wonderful place for me to continue growing in my faith and wisdom as well as interact with others who are interested in the renewal of the church.
I began classes at Luther and enjoyed a number of the conversations, but nothing grabbed me. I wasn’t preparing for an MDiv, and had been offered at job at Concordia Univeristy. One of the benefits is a “free” masters, so it made much more sense to study for free at CSP, then to pay for a MA I wouldn’t use from Luther.
And the story continues…
What Gives Me Life I use to think I was heading somewhere and that my mission and purpose were primarily concerned with reaching the end of this world and the beginning of heaven. I still look forward to that end–and I hope to bring others along–but I am learning to live in the present moment, and find my purpose in the here and now.
To that end, I have less of a mission statement, and more of a mission collage. Little pieces of wisdom and words picked up from those who have gone before keep me focused on being the part of the body God created me to be. (And not a bunch of things he created other people to be.) I now recognize my purpose in two aspects: as an individual part of the church, and as a member of the entire body.
Individually, I resonate most deeply with Paul’s statement in Ephesians 3 (from The Message):
“This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities. And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhastible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along.”
My heart still burns within me when I read that passage. I can not think of any better way to describe the calling I feel placed on my life. Outside of my own sense of calling, this has been confirmed in me by many different people: camp counselors, pastors, peers, students and parents in youth ministry, and most importantly unbelievers I have met along the journey. Repeatedly I have heard, “I’ve never understood this before, but when you talk about this God stuff it just makes sense.”
Whenever new excitements and passions begin to tug at my time and energy, I am driven by those opportunities that allow me to bring out into the open and make plain what God has been doing all along.
As part of the larger body, I have taken a vow of Availability and Vulnerability to God and to Others. This vow shapes and informs my individual life within the church. This is my communal mission statement. How it is lived out within the community, however, has more to do with my hopes and dreams for the church.
Hopes and Dreams for the Church Over the years the church has broken my heart more than once. She has been selfish, self-righteous, unfaithful to God, and too busy to love others the way Christ loves her. Yet she is Christ’s bride, and Christ is her head. I cannot love my savior if I do not love her. I do love her, because I have hope for her.
I dream of helping the church learn to look at every person in the world as a child of God, and help her realize that there is no “them”–only “us”.
I dream of a church where someone can not be a “member”, where people do not “attend”, and is not a place people “go”.
I dream of helping the church realize her most important functions are, and always will be, sharing hope, forgiveness, grace, mercy, love, protection, healing, encouragement and care. And, at the risk of being called blasphemous, her least important functions are worship, education, and outreach-programs.
I do not mean worship, education, and outreach are unnecessary, only that when the church is being who she is called to be, those become natural extensions of the incarnational community rather than pre-planned attractional events.
I dream of helping a church begin to live lives of community which take the Sermon on the Mount to heart, and which reveal Creator, Savior, and Sustainer to a world desperately in need of the grace God freely offers.
Taking a cue from Marva Dawn in “Truly the Community” I dream of helping people live into Romans 12 (from The Message):
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
More recently I have begun to understand myself as an apostle and a prophet. I can provide pastoral care; I spend a lot of time teaching; and, I love the idea of being a missionary. But as I have learned more about the role of the apostle and the prophet, I now realize those are the areas of ministry I thrive in. I understand a prophet to be a truth-teller who calls God’s people out and communicates His mission and vision to them. I understand an apostle to be an a trans-local minister, who stirs things up and gets things going; but recognizes local leaders and raises them up to take over the ministry.
I see a lot of teachers in the church. Many people serving as pastors are more teachers than pastors. And there are even fewer missionaries, most of them serving overseas. I hope there is still room for prophets and apostles in the church since these are the areas of ministry into which I feel called.
Judging by the way the prophets and apostles were treated by the religious in the past, I don’t have high expectations of being called to serve in the organized church. But since I have taken a vow of availability and vulnerability, I am always open to wherever God calls me. Which brings me to another one of those snippets for my mission collage, the Carmelite Vow: “Let each stay in or near the cell of their own heart, meditating day and night on the law of the LORD, and vigilant in prayer, unless otherwise employed by the Holy Spirit.”
These are the things the give me hope. With God’s calling on my life and these makers to give me direction, each day is an exciting step on my journey. And I pray God’s blessing on yours.
God’s Peace, Thomas Knoll