Fifteen years of youth ministry taught me that almost everything worth doing starts with making room for somebody. This site is the rest of it — the hobbies, the servers, the half-finished builds, and the work.
This is where I put things I am working out. Some of it is ministry, some of it is a game server, some of it is a website I built at two in the morning to find out whether I could. It is all public because writing it down once is cheaper than explaining it twice.
I have been making websites since Homestead in 1998 — through WordPress, Drupal, and whatever came in between. I have never been especially good at code. I have always been extremely willing to find out what a tool will do if you push on it.
Fifteen years with students and young adults, and the family that does it with me.
Pull up a chairA two-night retreat for middle school students, and the biggest weekend on our calendar.
Save a seatDelco Tactical — the field, the kit, and how a hobby became a ministry.
Gear upServers running out of Eldradia, the machine under the stairs.
Get connectedCamping and hiking, which is where most of the good conversations happen.
Come alongBuild logs, tools, and documentation for things nobody asked about.
Read the docsWhat I can help with, and how to ask.
See what I doThat was the motto in youth ministry, and it turned out to be the whole job. Camping, hiking, airsoft, board games, video games — none of it is a gimmick. Those are the hours where somebody actually talks to you. The hobbies became the way I made time and space to share the gospel I was called to share.
It carried over into a church plant in Philadelphia that did not work out. That one still stings, and it is still online, because pretending it did not happen would be its own kind of dishonesty.
I am an IT director for a non-profit now. I still feel called to make room for people who need fellowship, and my family is in it with me — this has never been a solo project.
Breakaway is a two-night retreat for middle school students, and it is the most concentrated version of everything else on this page. Students come from a number of different churches and spend a weekend together — games, meals, worship, and teaching. The programme is why they sign up. The hours in between are where the conversations actually happen.
Meg is the one who carries it and the one people call. I do the plumbing behind it: registration, the money, the website, and the spreadsheets nobody wants to look at. That is a fair description of how most of our ministry has worked for fifteen years.
This year's is at North Bay Adventure Camp in Maryland, with Ashley Bohinc speaking and Ripe Worship leading. The theme is Best Life Ever.
A field, a lot of kit, and a surprisingly reliable way to get people who would never come to a small group to spend six hours together in the woods. It has its own home, which is where the real detail lives.
delcotactical.comEldradia is the machine under the stairs. It runs the game servers, the backups, and rather more Docker containers than strictly necessary. Everything on it is invite-only and run for friends and family, which means it gets looked after like it matters.
Right now that is Project Zomboid on Build 42 with a 347-mod pack, and a campaign called The Cold Chain that got badly out of hand in the best possible way.
The server hubTrips, trails, and the logistics of getting a group of people somewhere with no signal. This is the oldest tool in the kit and still the best one — nobody checks their phone at a campfire, and everybody talks.
Trips and write-upsHomestead, then a parade of CMSes, then WordPress and Drupal for years, and now building with AI in the loop. The tools keep changing and the instinct does not: I want to know what happens if I push on it.
What comes out of that gets documented — a Minecraft arcology build plan nobody asked for, a Gmail signature builder that runs entirely in your browser, an assessment form built for somebody else, this site's own design system.
Build logs and toolsI have a full-time job and I am not starting an agency. But I do this all day, I enjoy it, and if you are stuck on something in this neighbourhood I would rather help than not.
No pitch, and no invoice for a conversation. Ask, and I will tell you straight whether I can help or whether you want somebody else.
How to reach meMeg and I do this together, and so do our kids. Ministry is not something one of us leaves the house to go and do — it is the shape of the whole family, and most of what is on this site happened because all of us showed up for it.