Sanctus and Refuge Pastor
Brett was born in Chicago and raised in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, where he was surrounded by the gospel all his life but did not truly come to know the Lord until his late twenties. It started with someone inviting him to lunch and simply letting him ask questions about Jesus and the Bible for two hours. That lunch changed the trajectory of his eternity.
After coming to true, saving faith, he could not keep it to himself. He shared the gospel with strangers on the streets of Tampa, traveled the world on mission, and urged others to answer God’s call to salvation. The truth he had come to know had to be shared, inside the church and outside of it. He completed a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity at St. Petersburg College, and somewhere between the coursework and the street corners it became clear that the career he was training for was not the one God was calling him to. What God was shaping instead was a burden for preaching and teaching the Bible.
Before coming to Texas, Brett spent two years as a Pastoral Apprentice at Calvary Church in the Tampa Bay area. Those years covered just about every corner of church life, from preaching and leading small groups to teaching at VBS and summer camp and building relationships on local school and college campuses. He left Calvary in June of 2026 with deep gratitude for a church family that invested in him and gave him room to grow.
Brett and his wife Rachel moved to the Richmond area in the summer of 2026, and he joined The Sanctuary Fellowship staff in July as Student & College Ministry Pastor while continuing to work toward his Master of Divinity. He leads Sanctus, our student ministry for grades 6 through 12, and Refuge, our ministry for young adults ages 18 to 24, and he is passionate about being consistently present in the lives of students, on our campus and on theirs. His conviction is simple: students do not have to wait until they are older to be sent. Jesus told his followers to go, and that includes the youngest believer as surely as the oldest.
If you are a student, a parent, or someone with honest questions about faith, Brett would love to sit down with you. Someone once gave him two hours and a lunch table, and God used it to change everything. Maybe the same can happen for you.