About

Thank you for visiting my blog where I share essays and videos aimed at strengthening our faith, love, and hope in Jesus. In addition to being Jessica’s raving fan I am a pastor, teacher, author, thinker, encourager, and a health and fitness enthusiast.

A Good-Hard Story

My life story reads sort of like a fairy tale. But before that turns you off, or makes you think that I am living in a dream world, please remember that fairy tales are far more than idyllic, children’s fantasies that have no bearing on reality. Fairy tales are dangerous tales—they are mythical tales of the adventure, risk, trauma, and brokenness that accompany the pursuit of a dream.

I was born in 1972 to the most amazing parents a child could ever hope for. I have an older brother named Jon Jackson, a younger brother Cheyenne Jackson, and a beautiful, younger sister named Amber Jackson Ellersick. I grew up in a small, rural community along the banks of the Pend Oreille River in Washington State where my childhood days were consumed with reenacting the Lord of the Rings and the Knights of the Round Table.

I attended a private, Christian school, and from my earliest memories could sense God’s touch of destiny on my life. After high school and two years of college (where I was pursuing a dream of becoming a high school English teacher, a track and field coach, and a novelist), I responded to a sense of God’s calling to vocational ministry and began pursuing theological training through the Master’s Commission (one-year school of ministry), Christian Life School of Theology (M.Th.), Liberty Theological Seminary (M.A.), Master’s Graduate School of Divinity (D.B.S.), and Azusa Pacific University (D.Min.).

I met Jessica, was swept off my feet, and married her in 1995. We moved from Spokane, WA to Colorado Springs, CO in 2000 and spent seven years working on staff at Freedom Church with a wonderful group of amazing, devoted people. In 2007 we joined Grace Church (now Hope City Church),  a phenomenal congregation in Claremont, California, one of the most gorgeous communities in the world.

We have fallen deeply in love with our current church family, and we are attempting to live lives with them that rival what is written in Acts 13:36 where it says that David fulfilled “God’s purpose for him in his generation.” We want that to be our epitaph as well. We are happy, healthy, and grateful to be allowed to serve God and the wonderful people in the 210-corridor of Southern California.

But we have also been broken. Deeply. We have experienced more pain than we knew the human soul could bear.

In 1996 our first daughter, Alexis Grace, was born with severe medical problems that caused her to endure more suffering in her 3 ½ years of life than most people suffer in a lifetime, and when we lost her, we hurt on levels that we didn’t know we could hurt. Our family has faced depression, addiction, and hurts both inside and outside the church. We have been disappointed, distraught, and disillusioned. But we have also experienced the healing, purpose, and joy that can only come from the presence and purpose of God.

The other loves of our lives are our other two daughters Amber Hope and Madelyn Joy, and our grandson Malakai Jonathan Moncibaez.  We are the luckiest people in the world to be family with these amazing people.

I am so grateful that you have taken time to peruse this blog. My hope is that some of the videos and essays in it will pump fresh life, hope, and encouragement into you as you, too, pursue the purpose of God for you in your generation.

Know you are loved!

Chris Jackson