We were growing up in West Virginia. Everybody was poor there in the southern part of the state. It was like growing up in the Great Depression from the stories I hear people tell. Everybody was poor and so we didn't know that we were any different from anybody else.

While I am the one who made the choice to enter the ministry, there was a choice before that one, the choice God made in calling me to be his in the first place.

My father was a Presbyterian minister, working among the poor in West Virginia. He had taken what amounted to a vow of poverty when he accepted that call and so we never had much money.

There are congressmen in our congregation, judges, federal reserve governors. And there are also people who are homeless and some who are mentally ill. To be able to talk to each of those people is something that I've had to learn how to do over the years.