Five Smooth Stones Ministry

Overview and Description of the Five Stones

June 1, 2026

Mission: Five Smooth Stones supports people in their spiritual, mental, emotional, and social wholeness — so they can face life’s obstacles with courage and faith.

Stone 1 — Ministry

This is the foundation of everything Five Smooth Stones does. Stone 1 addresses the spiritual hunger that many people carry quietly — a longing to understand the Bible not as a distant or complicated text, but as a living word that speaks directly into their daily lives. The audience here is the person in the pew and the person who has drifted away from the pew: believers who want to go deeper, and seekers who are not sure what they believe but are asking real questions. Drawing on years of pastoral experience and formal theological study, this Stone offers biblical teaching that is grounded, honest, and accessible — without being shallow. The goal is not to impress with knowledge, but to build people up in courage and faith so they can face whatever obstacle stands before them.

Stone 2 — Alcohol and Drug Recovery

This Stone exists because recovery saved a life, and that life belongs to the voice behind Five Smooth Stones. On June 13, 2014, sobriety began through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and what followed was not just the absence of alcohol — it was the rebuilding of a person from the inside out. Stone 2 speaks directly to people who are still in the grip of addiction, to those who are newly sober and trying to find their footing, and to the family members and friends who love someone in the middle of it. This is not clinical content produced from a distance. It is testimony. It is the hard-won wisdom of someone who sat in the rooms, worked the steps, and found that the same faith that sustains a ministry is the same faith that makes recovery possible one day at a time. The Acres Homes Recovery Group in Houston is part of this Stone’s heartbeat, and this content is offered in that same spirit of community, honesty, and hope.

Stone 3 — Classics

Literature and philosophy have never been purely academic subjects — they are maps of the human condition. Stone 3 is built on the conviction that the great books still speak, and that the questions Plato asked, the suffering Job endured, the choices Hamlet faced, and the grace Atticus Finch extended are not confined to classrooms or centuries past. They live in every person trying to make sense of their life. This Stone is for the curious reader, the former student who never lost the love of a great story, and the believer who wants to see how faith and the examined life have always belonged together. Drawing on decades in the English classroom and graduate study in literature and philosophy, this content bridges the world of ideas and the world of lived experience — connecting classic texts to questions of faith, recovery, identity, and meaning.

Stone 4 — Culture

This is the section where discussion is about any and everything in the world around us. From the mundane to the profane: nothing is off topic here. that said due the nature of much of the work done under the other stones, care will be given as to when and how opinions about the world at large is published. Something as simple as my favorite football team is the Houston Texans, it is, may interfere the more critical goal of defeating your personal Goliath.

Stone 5 — Academic

Stone 5 is the most formal of the five pillars, and it exists for a specific reason: there is a difference between popular content and scholarly content, and both have their place. This Stone is the home for longer-form, research-informed writing — essays, analyses, and arguments that engage seriously with ideas in theology, literature, philosophy, and culture. The audience here includes college students, graduate students, lifelong learners, and anyone who wants to read something that requires more than a few minutes and rewards careful attention. Stone 5 draws on the full range of formal education behind Five Smooth Stones Ministry — the graduate work in English, the philosophical training, the years of academic reading and writing — and offers it not as credential display, but as genuine intellectual contribution to the conversations that matter most.