My name is Sankie Lynch. I am a captivated follower of Christ. My wife is Jamie. She is a captivated follower of Christ. That means we still struggle in sin, but are forgiven and amazed at God’s mercy found in Christ. Jamie and I have been married since 1999. We have three little boys, Sankie Price II (7 yrs), Owen Gregory (5 yrs), and Jackson Xavier (3 yrs), and oh how we would love to have a little girl one day!
As we were getting married, I became a youth pastor in a church plant in NW Arkansas. We served there for almost three years before becoming missions mobilizers for The Traveling Team for two years. It became clear that further education would be helpful in pastoring/church-planting/revitalization in the future. We moved to Tahlequah, Oklahoma to finish degrees at NSU and planned on moving to one of the coasts for Seminary. While in Tahlequah, Grace Baptist Church asked me to come on staff as the Associate Pastor of Twentysomethings & Small Groups. We were at Grace for ten years. We have many great memories with some great people over the last fifteen years. We’ve been close with so many people who faithfully served Christ’s Kingdom and are a true joy to be around.
While at Grace for those ten years, we saw many young college kids progress to marriage and eventually starting their own families. Many of them were in our home several nights each week as our family was ever expanding. We walked alongside many couples in pre-marital counseling, through their weddings and marriages, and now many are young parents. Most of them got to see our flaws and failures in raising our own family, as well as any good points we had to offer.
For the past seven years I’ve been working on a 96-hour Master’s of Divinity through Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY. It is a slow process with full-time ministry, a growing family, and trying to live out life-on-life discipleship. The M.Div had an emphasis in Pastoral & Theological Studies—but I recently switched in emphasis to Great Commission Ministries. I only have about six classes remaining. Seminary has been an incredibly enjoyable experience. Jamie and I made a decision my first year, that our marriage would come first, then our discipling of our own children, then ministry, and then Seminary.
After fifteen years of ministry experience and hundreds of hours in books and papers you would think I would be better at following this Man I dearly love. Yet, I find His grace and preaching the gospel to myself daily are the only things that keep me in the ballpark of Christianity. This world is full of too many tragedies and hurtful relationships to destroy a person’s faith—if not for the persevering power of Christ that the Holy Spirit enables us to walk in. I fail daily at being the type of husband, father, pastor and friend that I know I need to be. But this living Jesus offers me hope and keeps re-creating me as I gaze at Him in the middle of failure (2 Cor. 3:18).
We joined the staff at New Beginnings to help cast vision, acknowledge, equip, engage, and encourage parents in becoming their children’s primary disciple-makers. It has been a true joy to join such a great family of people and a group of leaders truly walking in integrity in leading their own families.
Our family spends lots of time around the dinner table eating, laughing, playing and getting in trouble! With three boys there’s always lots of wrestling, tackle football, baseball, and basketball in the living room. Some of our favorite things are spending time on the coast at the beach and spending time camping at the lake. We’re trying to be very intentional in shepherding their hearts towards Christ and living for His Kingdom, but there’s not a week that goes by where we hit every night with some deep spiritual investment.
Lynch's At Sea from New Beginnings Church on Vimeo.
We’re striving, but struggling like most people around us to find rhythms that keep us engaged in the world while still gathered as a family for the most important things—Christ and His cross.
We have one goal for our boys as they leave home at 18 and that is to “Love the LORD, their God, with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength,” and “to love others” as Christ has loved them, (Deut. 6:4-10; Matt. 22:36-40; John 13:34-35). We want them to be intentional and purposeful with their lives to make disciples who know how to make other disciples (Matt. 28:18-20). That doesn’t come about through legalistic rigid rules of parenting nor through unintentional church-going. But by a work of the Holy Spirit and thousands of moments of pointing them to the supremacy of Jesus Christ, God may captivate their hearts in Christ.
I stated earlier that I am Captivated In Christ. That doesn’t mean we think we’re always right or ever better than others.
Captivated in Christ means that Jesus Christ and what He performed on the cross, in my place, became the sole focus and single worthy object to live for.
Jesus substituting Himself in my place—He took on every sin I’ve committed in the past, all I commit in the present, and all sins I’ll ever commit in the future. And if we’re not careful, we go, “yeah, yeah…I know, I know…Jesus died on the cross…got it.” And therein lies our problem. For nonbelievers and believers—if we are not halted by this truth—if we are not captured in contemplation over this truth—if it is less than magnificently captivating—we may not have understood it in the first place.
If you knew the depth of my sins—His grace (unearned favor) and His mercy (not getting the punishment I deserve) are indescribable. It’s indescribable captivating grace.
Sin was once captivating—now I stand amazed—in awe—and captivated by the Person of Jesus (the perfect, holy, righteous life He lived) and the work He did on the cross (holy innocence taking on wrath as if He was guilty).
This Jesus changes everything!
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sankie@nbchurch.info
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