Arizona State University, Bachelor of Social Work, 1995
Perkins School of Theology, Master of Divinity, 1999
Saint Paul School of Theology, Doctor of Ministry, 2023

Pastoring with autheniticity, transparency, and gratitude.

Angie is an ordained United Methodist pastor who has served churches in Texas, Arizona, and Kansas since 1992. Starting in youth ministry, she had a passion for talking to teenagers about topics others wouldn't broach. Sex always topped that list, so her longing for a Biblical sexual ethic began.

While in seminary at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas, Angie met Shannon Ethridge, author of the Every Woman's Battle series of books. At the time, Shannon owned B.E.S.T. Ministries: "Where you can Have the Best Sex by Waiting Until Marriage." Angie and Shannon began visiting youth groups to lead purity-based retreats for grades 6-12. Using every manipulative technique and teaching adopted by abstinence-only Christian educators, Angie led youth to sign a “purity pledge” to wait until marriage before having sex. 

Fast forward to 2013, Angie found herself preparing for divorce, weeping on the phone with Shannon, lamenting that life was not turning out as she thought it would. Being divorced with three kids caused her, once again, to consider the Bible and sexual ethics. Reflections on the purity movement, spurred by both her experience in marriage and unexpected divorce, led to more questions than answers. In her ordination as a United Methodist pastor, Angie vowed to be celibate in singleness and faithful in marriage. However, meeting the second man she would eventually marry, Jonathan (also divorced), raised questions neither one of them had expected to face about living a life of sexual integrity.

As an act of repentance and a quest for knowledge, Angie entered a doctoral program at Saint Paul School of Theology and graduated in 2023 after writing her thesis, Messy Sex: A Complicated Sexual Ethic to Heal the Damage of the Purity Movement. Her conclusion? Sex is messy! The Bible isn't as clear as the purity movement touted. What's worse, the purity movement harmed a generation of youth, leaving many filled with shame and guilt about the very good gift of their sexuality.

Messy Sex seeks to acknowledge the difficulty of a one-size-fits-all Biblical sexual ethic.  Some have called this relativism (or even blasphemy), but Angie calls it realistic and authentic truth-telling. Sexual ethics is a complicated subject. Angie hopes to help people find God in the complexity, the complications, and the nuance of living a life that is both holy and honors the gift of sexuality in healthy ways. Many churches have historically limited their engagement with sexual ethics to a simplistic focus on abstinence – making it difficult, if not impossible, to connect with increasing numbers of unchurched people and leaving most of the experience and questions of married, divorced, and widowed people alike unanswered and unaddressed. Instead, Angie is saying what people already know: Sex is a messy, complicated, beautiful gift of God’s creation. By providing leadership to faith-based groups and churches, through classes and workshops about the ethics of sexuality, Angie is providing language for these churches and their pastors to begin new conversations about sex, the Bible and how Christians can live lives of sexual integrity, with joy rather than shame.