MuchGrace

The number one song on the day of my birth was Ode to Billy Joe by Bobbie Gentry, a dark Americana-folk song that reflected the mood of the country at the time and perhaps my parents too. Shortly after my birth, my father was sent off to Vietnam and remained there for the first two years of my life. I’m not entirely sure my parents knew what they were getting into when they brought me into this world; I was a handful right from the start. Fairly early on in my childhood, I became well acquainted with my father’s leather belt—and later, a special wooden paddle he got just for our father-son bonding time.I’m the middle child of two sisters. 

I grew up in San Diego, where my family attended Claremont Church of the Nazarene. My father was a school teacher, while my mother had to deal with us rugrats at home. When I was in the 4th grade, my father took a job in Northern California as a Vice Principal for a junior high school, so we moved to Auburn, where we attended Auburn First Church of the Nazarene. When my father was not at work or serving as a lay minister at the church, he was on patrol as a Placer County Reserve Deputy Sheriff. Consequently, he was well-known and respected in the community. My nickname became “Mr. Elliott’s Son.” My father, Dr. Daniel C. Elliott, went on to become a school principal, then superintendent, then professor of Education at Azusa Pacific University until he retired. Along with his career in education, he became ordained in the Church of the Nazarene and served in the Los Angeles district for many years until he returned to Auburn, where he continues to serve as pastor in the Sacramento District to this day.

I gave my life to Christ at a very young age, then again at kid’s camp, then again in my preteen years, and so on. I don’t know exactly which one of those took, but somewhere along the way, God adopted me into His heavenly family. There was a long stretch of my life starting in high school that I consider to be my prodigal years. I’ve served time in Jail, I was kicked out of the army, I’ve been fired from more jobs than I can count, and I was even asked at one point by the youth pastor not to attend church anymore. I deserved it all. Eventually, The Spirit found me and restored me to a right relationship with Him.

I am a lifelong musician and self-proclaimed music gear fanatic. I started playing piano as a young child, switched to the trombone in the 4th grade, and played all the way through high school. Along the way, I taught myself to play guitar and eventually settled on the bass guitar as my main instrument. I also worked professionally as a live sound and recording engineer and became heavily involved in concert promotion. In the musical instrument industry, I spent nearly two decades working as a marketing and product development consultant with a variety of musical instrument companies and served five years as the marketing and artist relations director for a major amplifier company. When I opened my own music store in 2012 called The Strum Shop, we developed a reputation far and wide as the place to go for all things ukulele. We, of course, sell, teach, and repair other stuff, but ukuleles are what put us on the map.

I’ve been married to my wife, Sherrin, since 1991. We have two adult children and a granddaughter who is in middle school. I currently lead worship for CenterPointe Church in Woodland but will be transitioning to Liberty Towers Church’s Roseville Campus in the coming weeks. I also lead worship for the Salvation Army on two Saturdays a month at their community breakfast. I teach a Bible study in my home on Sunday evenings and publish articles about the Bible, culture, and Christian ethics on my blog site, muchgrace.com, and elsewhere. I have served in ministry pretty much all of my adult life but only recently decided to pursue pastoral ordination.