Michael grew up in Eastern Iowa, where he met and married his wife Tess in 1990. He attended the University of Iowa and spent 15 years in industrial sales and sales management.

Michael left sales to pursue a Master of Divinity at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis and graduated in 2007. From 2008-2015 Michael was the church planter and pastor of One Ancient Hope in Iowa City, his hometown. While there he also served on the Downtown Business District Association, and the Johnson County Local Homeless Coordinating Board.

In June 2015, Michael took a call to re-plant a multi-site work in the western suburbs of Chicago and successfully guided that congregation through relaunching as a stand-alone church. During his time in Chicago, Michael also served as the City Director for Made to Flourish, a Kern Foundation-sponsored project equipping pastors to integrate faith, work, and economic principles into their discipleship plans.

Michael moved to Washington, D.C., in 2018 to serve as Associate Director for another ministry focused on reaching Capitol Hill before leaving to form Faithful Presence (an EPC Endorsed ministry) in 2021. He is pursuing a Ph.D in Public Square Theology at Stellenbosch University’s Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology. Michael is a Fellow of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Institute for Biblical Research, and serves on the vision committee for the Global Engagement Consortium, a collaborating group of organizations engaged in either evangelism, apologetics, and/or cultural engagement led by Dr. Darrell Bock.

Michael is the author of the forthcoming, First Peter: Discipleship for the Public Square.

Michael and Tess have been married for 36 years and have four adult children, two sons-in-law, and four great grandchildren. They live outside of Washington D.C. with their cat and chickens.