About
WHAT IS GOD CALLING ME TO DO NEXT?
Stay in the Game was created around a different kind of question.
There comes a point in life when many people begin asking, "What's next?" Stay in the Game was created around a different question: What is God calling me to do next?
I believe our experiences — both the victories and the difficult chapters — can have purpose. Our stories can encourage someone else. Our failures can become lessons. Our struggles can create empathy. And our next chapter can still make a difference.
Stay in the Game is about faith, purpose, perseverance, second chances, and continuing to engage fully in life. It will grow slowly through written reflections, articles, personal stories, conversations, and eventually interviews, podcasts, and video.
ENGAGE
Stay connected to God, people, and purpose.
EQUIP
Keep learning, growing, and preparing for what comes next.
EMPOWER
Use your experiences and your story to encourage and impact others.
You don't have to have everything figured out. You just have to stay in the game.
The Background
A Life Spent With People
A Kid Who Struggled to Read
Growing up, reading did not come easily to SF. He struggled significantly — and looking back, it may have been dyslexia or another reading difficulty, though he was never formally diagnosed. School was not always easy, and few people would have predicted that he would eventually spend his career in education and leadership. He learned to work through the difficulty, discover his strengths, and keep moving forward. That experience never left him.
Educator, Coach & Leader
SF went on to build a career working with students, athletes, educators, families, and communities. Education and leadership gave him a front-row seat to what can happen when someone believes in another person, recognizes potential, and helps them take the next step. He never forgot what it felt like to be the kid who wasn't supposed to make it.
Pastor & Ministry
SF also served as a pastor and youth pastor earlier in his life. Ministry deepened his understanding of people, faith, grace, and the importance of meeting people where they are. His Christian faith has not been a perfectly straight journey. He doesn't present himself as someone who has always had everything figured out — and that's part of why people trust him.
A Chapter He Didn't Plan For — 2008
In 2008, SF experienced a life-threatening deep vein thrombosis in his brain. He spent 14 days in intensive care and 30 days in the hospital. It was a serious chapter — one that reminded him, in a very concrete way, that life can change without warning.
Divorce & Starting Again
SF also experienced a painful divorce. It was one of the most difficult and unexpected chapters of his life. He doesn't talk about it in detail, and that's not what this page is for. What matters is that it was real, it was hard, and it became part of a larger journey involving rebuilding, faith, grace, and the slow work of starting again.
Love, Family & A New Chapter
SF later remarried a wonderful woman who became an important part of his life and his new chapter. That relationship is a reminder — a personal one — that difficult chapters do not have to be the final chapters. That grace shows up. That new beginnings are real. That the story keeps going.
Why These Experiences Matter
Life rarely follows a straight line. SF's hasn't. His story has included difficulty and opportunity, success and disappointment, questions and faith, painful endings and unexpected new beginnings.
Those experiences don't make him an expert. They make him someone who can sit across from another person without judgment, listen carefully, and understand that there is always more to the story than what's visible on the surface.
Stay in the Game is not trying to say: look what SF survived. It's trying to say something simpler — everyone has a story, and everyone is still on the journey.
The Mission
The Idea Behind Stay in the Game
Stay in the Game brings together SF's lifelong interest in people, storytelling, leadership, faith, relationships, and helping people continue moving forward. It exists to create authentic conversations and written content — about struggle, faith, purpose, perseverance, relationships, second chances, hope, and the experiences that shape us.
The person behind the story is always more important than the content being produced.
The Christian faith is the foundation of Stay in the Game. But guests and readers don't have to share SF's beliefs. People who believe, doubt, question, search, struggle with church, or simply have a story worth hearing — they're all welcome at the table.
What We Stand For
The Values That Drive Us
Authenticity
Real people. Honest conversations. No requirement to pretend life is perfect. The most meaningful stories often include struggle, uncertainty, failure, growth, laughter, relationships, and unexpected turns.
Grace
People are more important than content. Stories should never be exploited for views, followers, or attention. Every person has value, every story deserves dignity, and second chances are central to everything Stay in the Game does.
Faith
Stay in the Game is rooted in the Christian faith and in the grace, forgiveness, purpose, and hope found in Jesus Christ. Faith is the foundation of this project. And the door remains open to honest conversations with people wherever they are on their journey.
Your Story Isn't Over.
Whatever chapter you are currently living through — the hard one, the uncertain one, the one you didn't see coming — your journey continues. That's not a promise that everything will be easy or that every story ends the way we hope. It's something simpler: there is still grace available, still purpose ahead, still a story worth telling. Stay in the game.
Want to Share Your Story?
Stay in the Game is ultimately about the people willing to have an honest conversation. If that's you, we'd love to hear from you.
Get in Touch