Bryan A. Sands

Bryan A. Sands is a veteran of working with not only students but all generations for nearly twenty years in the public school system, church and university worlds. He has a passion for people and helping them make wise choices with their lives. Bryan was ordained into the Christian ministry at the age of 21. After thirteen years in one church as Pastor of Student Ministries and the last three years as Associate Pastor of Outreach, Bryan moved to Hope International University where he has served as Campus Pastor since 2011.

In addition to his campus work, Bryan also has a passion for missions. Under his leadership, nearly half of the university students he works with were involved with some form of missions last year. Because of his leadership, Hope International University received the honor of being recognized by the President of the United States’ Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll program for four years. This award is the highest federal recognition for the commitment of higher education institutions to service learning and civic engagement.

While Bryan was serving full-time in the church, he started the fourth worship celebration service aimed at young adults. He developed leaders and shared passionately every week about the love and grace of Jesus. Bryan also teaches worldview, youth ministry and leadership classes at Hope International University.

Bryan earned a B.A. (Biblical Studies, '01) from Hope International University and a M.A. (Christian Apologetics) from Biola university.

His latest project is his book, Everyone loves Sex So Why Wait? The tagline is "A Discussion in Sexual Faithfulness." (Leafwood Publishers, April 2017) This book takes a different approach to waiting for sex for marriage. After working with millennials for many years, Bryan has discovered what works and what does not work in talking about sex. The first section of the book looks at academic peer-reviewed research from the psychological and sociological worlds. And what they are communicating about waiting for marriage just may surprise you! The second part of the book looks at vision--vision of what the reader's life can be. It is a book that re-frames how we as Christians talk about sex. You can view the blog at www.EveryoneLovesSex.org.

Having an interest in how to quantify spiritual development, Bryan has teamed up with Dr. Moradashadi, PhD to create a series of videos and curriculum to assess spiritual development. Instead of asking the questions, "How much do you read your Bible" or "How much do you go to church" to assess Spiritual development, Professors Sands and Moradashadi have looked underneath the surface. Using Dr. Moradashadi's Spiritual Narrative Questionnaire and the Spiritual Narrative Analysis, they were able to look beyond surface level questions to get to a robust understanding of where one is with their faith.

Bryan and his Australian wife, Caz, have two daughters, Abby and Lily-Rose and live in Orange County, CA.