Menu Close Menu

Who the heck is Joshua Villines, anyway?

 

Headshot of C. Joshua Villines

Thank you for stopping by. This is my personal website, so things are much more informal here than they are on the professional websites I also maintain. If you are looking for professional information, please go to The Human Intelligence Group for my work in threat assessment, intelligence, crime prevention, firearms, and training.

Most folks who come to this page looking for my writings on religious topics, or occasionally they have seen my name linked to writing/editing in the fantasy publishing or gaming fields. Those visitors are often surprised to learn that my day job involves various means of training people to prevent or investigate violent crimes and terrorist threats.

While that is my day job, I am also a fully ordained and endorsed member of the Christian clergy. I am not currently serving a church, although I do supply work in the Atlanta area as-needed. You can read the full story of me being fired for my support of LGBTQ persons here.

I think, as church attendance continues to decline and as fundamentalism continues to render Christianity increasingly irrelevant in the minds of educated Westerners, more and more clergy with other marketable skills will work bi-vocationally. In many ways this is a good thing because it will encourage us to find ways to serve as priests and pastors to our neighbors in every setting, not just from 11 to noon on Sunday. Many of us also feel compelled to produce lengthy blog posts as a form of "public theology." I am also a fully endorsed Chaplain, and I provide chaplaincy support to local law enforcement agencies, personally and as an instructor.

So, although being a member of the clergy is definitely a large part of my identity, it is not my sole vocation. Drawing on my intelligence training in the Army, and over twenty years certified as a law enforcement instructor, I work as a consultant and trainer - focusing specifically on threat assessment, counter-terrorism, firearms training, HUMINT, crime prevention, and qualitative data/crime analysis. You can read more about that here.

In addition, I have taught several sections of courses as an Adjunct Professor for Mercer University, and I avocationally do some writing for the computer game industry. Related to that work, I have edited a few high fantasy, steampunk, and science fiction novels/anthologies. I got started writing in those fields working as a journalist while I was in seminary, and I never stopped.  Spending my evenings writing about fantasy worlds where the good guys always win is a nice change of pace from my day job.

If you still haven't learned enough, my results from various personality tests are here.

Last Updated March 27, 2020
e-mail me if it's out-of-date