A personal collection
Selected work
Ideas, words,
gatherings, and tools.
I’m an eclectic nerd.
My work crosses disciplines, but I keep returning to a practical question: how can people understand one another, learn together, and move good work forward?
I research, write, make music, lead worship, and experiment with software. I keep returning to how we live and work together.
Selected professional work
Communications, learning, and the work of bringing people together.
Scholarship, shared.
Editorial coordination, newsletters, website content, video, and a newsletter editor web app for the Hispanic Theological Initiative at Princeton Theological Seminary.
HTI communicationsLearning alongside working ministers.
Curriculum editing, facilitation, and mentoring within a seven-module hybrid residency for eleven working and bivocational ministers.
New Again residencyTheology in the classroom.
Course design and twice-weekly teaching for THEO 200 at Azusa Pacific University: sixteen weeks, 23 undergraduate students.
Teaching at APUA scholarly gathering, together.
Speaker logistics, task tracking, website work, and communications for Fuller’s 2025 Missiology Lectures.
Fuller event coordinationHelping a book find its readers.
I led publicity and social strategy for Robert Chao Romero’s Brown Church (IVP Academic, 2020). During the campaign, its Amazon reviews grew from 6 to more than 175.
Academic writing
Faith, power, and the lives we make possible.
The Color of Compromise
A review of Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism.
René Velarde, Transformation
38(2), 186–188
Full text through the publisher; access may require a subscription.
Poetry
For what refuses a tidy explanation.
Ministry & music
Words and songs in the company of other people.
More than a decade as a pastor, worship leader, and educator is part of the work, too. These recordings come from that life in community.
New Again cohortVisit New AgainWorship at Mariners AnaheimChristmas, 2025.Play
The recording is also available directly on YouTube.
Only King ForeverLCBC York, 2014.Play
The recording is also available directly on YouTube.
Love Don’t DieLCBC, 2014. Easter gathering opening song.Play
The recording is also available directly on YouTube.
Your Love is a SongFirst Presbyterian Church, Salinas, CA, 2010.Play
The recording is also available directly on YouTube.
AI systems
AI, algorithms, and a few things I wanted to make easier.
These projects are a place to learn by building. I work with AI collaborators, define what should happen, and examine what comes back.
Some use AI to work with language. Others use algorithms: sets of rules for sorting information. The point is a tool a person can understand.
Across these experiments, I’m asking how information moves, how people and agents coordinate, and where human judgment belongs.
An inbox with a little judgment.
The problem: the emails that needed my attention were buried in my inbox, and finding them took too much digging. The fix: n8n, a piece of software that automatically sorts my incoming email, flags the messages that need a person, and turns useful ones into short, readable notes.
Inside the project
n8n checks for new email and passes each message through a few steps. Simple if-then rules sort the predictable ones. When a message needs more context, an AI model reads it and helps decide where it belongs. Anything important is set aside for me to review myself.
Personal workflow
A desk for the things in my head.
The problem: my tasks, notes, and AI conversations were scattered, so it was hard to see what needed attention now, what could wait, and where I needed help. The fix: Work Atlas, a piece of software I built that keeps all three in one place.
Inside the project
Tasks, notes, and conversations with an AI assistant sit side by side in one workspace. The assistant works from the same information I see and helps organize the next step, so the work stays visible.
Private project
A custom AI assistant I can talk to.
The problem: I often start with a thought I would rather say out loud than type. The fix: a voice pilot, a piece of software that lets me talk through that thought with my custom AI assistant.
Inside the project
The software turns my speech into text, passes it to the assistant I already use, so it keeps the context of our earlier work, and plays the reply back as speech. The hard parts are timing, handling interruptions, and making sure I hear the full response.
Private pilot
Agents who can work together.
The problem: the AI assistants I use each work on their own, so one cannot easily pick up where another left off. The fix: shared tools that several assistants can use, so they can build on one another’s work and help carry a project forward.
Inside the project
The first shared tool is a piece of software that automatically turns a recording into text. Different assistants can use it, and each transcript stays linked to the original recording, so I can check the result.
Experimental tool
Luminosa AI is the research and development practice I founded. It connects these experiments with research, software development, and consulting.