I’m your host, Luke Jones, and this is Mess of Pottage, my “professional” website. It’s where I get my email and host my blog.
(I also have a “hobby” website at Accretion Disc, where you can find my personal blog.)
As I mentioned on the front page, I’m ordained as a minister of Word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church(U.S.A.), where I serve as pastor of Desert Hills Presbyterian Church in Yucca Valley, California, a few minutes from Joshua Tree National Park.
I’m a “solo pastor,” so I work with all the ministry teams in the church, but my passion is reading the Bible to hear how its message – the Good News about Jesus – matters to us today. Then I try to share what I’ve learned. You can see some of my sermons online.
Desert Hills is my first calling as a pastor. In 2006, I graduated with a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. While at seminary, I worked at a small multicultural church in Plainsboro, New Jersey, and volunteered as a chaplain at a local prison.
Ministry is my second career. Before seminary, I worked as a software developer. I grew up in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and attended New Mexico Tech in Socorro, where I earned the first of my two degrees in Computer Science. After college, I lived in Albuquerque before moving to New Jersey to take a job with AT&T Bell Labs. That’s where I met my wife Margo. Since then, we’ve lived in Indiana, Oregon, and finally Colorado, where I worked for HP prior to going back to New Jersey to attend seminary.
Margo and I recently celebrated our 22nd anniversary. We have two school-aged children. In my copious free time, I like to tinker with computers.