I was born at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and grew up in Reisterstown and Owings Mills, graduating from Franklin High School in 1997. My mother's father was a Lutheran pastor, as were the four generations of fathers before him, though there's an interesting story about how they switched from Presbyterian to Lutheran (hint: there were a Lutheran girl and a smitten pastor's son involved!). My parents divorced when I was five, and my sister and I moved weekly between their homes; they lived close together so we could keep the same group of friends, go to the same school, and attend the same church. Each of my birth parents has remarried, and all four of my parents still live in Owings Mills.
My faith was fostered at several area congregations, including Grace Lutheran in Westminster and Trinity Lutheran in Reisterstown. Throughout high school, I robed up and proudly processed down the aisle with a cross, lit wick, or tray of communion cups in hand. I wasn't much of a church-goer in college and for several years following, but in 2004, I became a member of Christ, Inner Harbor.
I studied both computer science and French language and culture at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). I also developed a particular fondness for the theatrical works of Shakespeare. Upon graduation in 2001, I was hired by Verizon as a software engineer in the web development department. I worked for five days before receiving some devastating news: the tech bubble had burst in the months since I had been hired, and the entire class of orientees had to be laid off.
For the next few years, I found myself hopping from job to job. I returned to school in an attempt to get my teaching credentials but found that I had lost the fervor for classroom learning. I worked as a server and line cook at a chili restaurant. I did a stint as an assistant manager at a video rental store. I tried and failed to start my own business. I even spent two weeks as a temporary office assistant, photocopying, stapling, and answering telephones. I also spent a fair amount of time unemployed.
Chief and final among my "hopping jobs" was my two and a half years spent as a school bus driver. Having driven for the student transit system at UMCP during my college years, I already had the commercial driver's license required to work for my college friend's fledgling small business. I started by driving charter trips for weddings, conferences, and high school sports teams, but I soon got the opportunity to drive a daily route for elementary, middle, and high school students. For two years, I got to know the same students and families; I came to realize that I was already doing ministry! One of my pastors recommended that I see if "that seminary out in California" would be a good place to develop my pastoral identity, free of friends' and family's preconceived notions of who I should be. Sure enough, one weekend was enough for me to realize that being in the San Francisco Bay Area felt like going home.
Following four years of discernment, I enrolled in 2005 at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS) in Berkeley, California. The small seminary community was a supportive family where I felt comfortable to discover who Ryan the Pastor was going to be. While at PLTS, I met my future wife, Breonna (Bre), a Tucson native and graduate of the University of Arizona with a degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology. After serving my internship year in the Silicon Valley of California, Bre and I were married in August, 2008. Having started seminary the year after me, Bre spent the next year serving her internship at two ministry sites in Oakland while I was enrolled in my final year of classes. That year, I spearheaded the community organizing initiative to make PLTS the first Reconciling in Christ seminary.
I graduated from PLTS in May, 2009 and began work as the admissions assistant at the seminary. Our daughter was born in October of that year while Bre was enrolled in her final year of classes. As if we weren't busy enough, Bre was the student body president and I both became a published freelance writer and starred in the theatrical production of a play written by a fellow seminarian. If we didn't already know it, that year proved to us that "it takes a village to raise a child."
In March of 2010, we were assigned to the Delaware-Maryland Synod. Following Bre's graduation in May of last year, we moved back to Maryland and into my mother and stepfather's basement. Bre very quickly received a call as the Assistant Pastor at Christ, Inner Harbor, and I served as homemaker and stay-at-home dad starting in July 2010. We bought our first home in March 2011 and are very excited to see what God has in store for us now that I have been called as the pastor at St. Stephen, our neighborhood church!