I,
Brandon, was born and raised in Memphis, TN. I graduated from Craigmont High School in 2000 and then Rhodes College
in 2004. I met Jesus at a youth camp
with Bartlett Hills Baptist church in 1998 when I was 16 and quickly realized I would never been
the same. My wife, Michelle, was born in
Texas and their family moved back to Memphis when she was 5. Her dad, John Finley, has served as pastor at
Bartlett Hills Baptist Church for over 15 years. Michelle also graduated from Craigmont High
School in 2000 and then Union University in 2004. She was saved at the age of 5 in her home
with her parents.
Just after we graduated from
college, Michelle was accepted into a year-long program to teach English in
France. After much
prayer and counsel, Michelle accepted the position, we were married 2 months later, and a week after that we moved to France! It was during this year that God began to
reveal to us His Master plan for our lives! It turned out that Michelle was placed in one of the
least churched region in France. And yet we found a small, evangelical church in our town. On our first Sunday to visit the church we met an
American missionary named David Lohnes. David and his wife, Kathryn, had been serving as church planters in
France for over 25 years with an organization called World Team. As our friendship with the Lohnes’s grew, we
had the opportunity to see firsthand what being a church-planter in France really
looked like, how new churches were desperately needed to reach France, and we began to imagine ourselves in that role. Finally, with much fear and trembling,
Michelle and I acknowledged to each other that we felt this was the very thing
God had been preparing for us to do all along.
We returned home
committed to take the necessary steps to return to France as church planters
with World Team. During this preparation phase I earned my Masters of Missiology from Mid-America Baptist Theological, served as Youth Minister at FBC Millington, we sought out prayer and financial partners, and our family grew from two to five (and now 6)! Finally in Oct. 2014, almost 10 years to the day after Michelle and I first left for France, our family touched down in France again and joined a church-planting team in the same region north of Paris. To read the next "chapter" in our story, check out the tab above labelled "Our Current Project."
