Graduate Profile: Keller Hackbusch, MTS

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I was born in San Diego in 1976, but grew up in Reno, NV because my father accepted an engineering job in Reno when I was one year old. I’ve been in Reno ever since. I grew up in Reno with my parents and two brothers in a loving and moral home, but it was a home absent of faith in Jesus Christ. I can only recall ever hearing the gospel once during my childhood from my grandma and I never attended a single church service until I was in college. Following in my father’s footsteps by pursuing a career in engineering, I attended the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) in 1994 to study Electrical Engineering.

It was during my time at UNR that I was invited to attend a college Bible study at a local church in the Reno-Sparks area with one of my best friends. The whole experience was strange for me, since I grew up with no understanding of Christianity or the Bible. Before attending this Bible study, the only time I read any of the Bible was for an assignment in a college world cultures class. Attending this Bible study was the start of my journey to saving faith in Jesus Christ. After a couple months of attending the Bible study, I began attending the regular church services and hearing preaching for the first time. I also began reading the Bible for myself shortly after. Reading the Bible was especially impactful at this point in my life. The Gospel of John was one of the first books I read, and by the time I finished reading John, I believed it was a true account of Jesus’ life on earth and that I was a sinner and in big trouble if Jesus wasn’t my savior. I continued to read and attend church after this.

A few months passed between that first Bible study and when God saved me, giving me eternal life. Around this time I also met Maria, the woman who would become my wife. We met, dated, and were married before I finished my engineering degree at UNR. Shortly after Maria and I were married we became part of Calvary Chapel Reno-Sparks. I also finished my engineering degree in 2001, after 7 years, and was working for my father at the engineering firm, Dinter Engineering. I worked at Dinter Engineering the entire time I was in college. Eventually, a few years later, I tested for and received my professional engineering license (P.E.) for Nevada, California, and a couple other states during my career. Maria and I spent four years at Calvary Chapel, which was a great experience as we heard verse-by-verse preaching every week. We learned a great deal about the Bible in this time and God began working on us in new ways. Also, around this time, my parents were saved, and began attending Calvary Chapel with us. This was a huge encouragement and great blessing to our family. Our first child, Grace, was born in 2003 and our son, Ashten, in 2005.

As our family was growing and God was blessing us in many ways with my engineering career, God began to stir in me a desire for deeper study of the Word which led to a desire for pastoral ministry. I knew very little about pastoral ministry at the time, but the tug on my heart was undeniable. God also began to change my doctrine and understanding of theology as I studied deeper and deeper. Initially, it was my understanding of end times that began to change, which later led to changes in my understanding of the Doctrine of Salvation. I didn’t know what Reformed doctrine or what the Doctrines of Grace where, but I understood that God changed me, and we could no longer stay at Calvary Chapel. After a couple months of research, we were introduced to Reformed Theology around 2006, and our lives were changed forever. God was so gracious in teaching us and leading us to the teachings of John Piper, RC Sproul, and many others, including two churches in the Reno area that were Reformed. We visited both churches and ultimately settled on Community Bible Church in Reno. The other church was Grace Community Church in Minden, NV, which is an hour drive from Reno and pastored by Dr. Brian Borgman, who provided the helpful and wise advice to attend Community Bible Church since it was much closer to our home. Dr. Borgman would, years later, be my professor for several RBS classes including Preaching, Doctrine of Salvation, and Apologetics.
We began to attend Community Bible Church (CBC) in 2006 and were eager to learn from the three pastors serving at CBC at the time, Pastors Angelo Sanchez, Akash Sant Singh, and Todd Musser. CBC is a Confessional Reformed Baptist Church, subscribing in large part to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. We were immediately welcomed and fell in love with our new church. My career continued to advance and I became a minority owner and CEO of Dinter Engineering, where I shared the daily responsibility of managing the small business with my business partners. These duties included engineering, project management, business management, and marketing. My design specialty was in airport lighting systems, which was an interesting and exciting engineering niche. In the midst of my growing career, however, the tug and pull of the study and serving in pastoral ministry was still there. The pastors at CBC guided me well during these first couple of years, teaching and tempering my desires for ministry.

In 2009, I officially enrolled in Reformed Baptist Seminary (RBS) with the support of my pastors. For a couple of years, I studied (slowly) and worked hard in a growing and successful engineering business. RBS was a great opportunity for ministerial training and theological training without the requirement of me leaving my church, job, and home. I studied slowly, working on the Master of Theological Studies program with emphasis in Systematic Theology by taking two or three classes per year and even was forced to skip semester a couple times due to difficult circumstances. The affordability and flexibility for my situation was unmatched. The economy crashed hard in 2009 and the Reno area was hit especially hard. Our business began to struggle in 2010 and God began a new phase of working in our life. We learned many hard lessons during this season but were also blessed in uncountable ways by our church family, further building relationships.
In 2011, Pastor Angelo retired from his position as pastor at CBC and in the same year I entered into twelve months of elder training with Pastor Akash and Pastor Todd. I was installed as a pastor at CBC in May 2012 as a lay elder and began teaching Adult Sunday School frequently and preaching occasionally. Community Bible church also began to grow at this time and we were required to moved buildings. Reno is not a place with many church buildings, and smaller churches like CBC remodel office buildings to suit our needs. We moved from one office building to a larger office building that was already partly developed into a church space with larger sanctuary to allow for additional growth. And, in a fascinating bit of God’s providential working, the new CBC location was actually in the same building as Dinter Engineering, where I worked full time as CEO and Electrical Engineer. The amazing innerworkings of God’s plan to bring these two parts of my life together is truly amazing. Not long after CBC moved to the new building, I came on staff part time and began a 5-year period of serving as a bi-vocational pastor and reduced my engineering work to 25-30 hours each week. During these five years, I had my pastoral office and engineering office in the same building with a 20-second commute. My duties at CBC increased substantially to included occasional preaching, weekly Adult Sunday School theology teaching, counseling, and leading small groups. While it was challenging serving at CBC and working at Dinter Engineering, this time was again a huge blessing for our family. The business continued to struggle with the economy, the church was growing and full of energy, and I continued to slowly finish my classes at RBS. In addition to the Systematic Theology program, I took a few other classes as well. During these years of daily study, teaching, and counseling, I fell in love with the topics of biblical theology and biblical counseling. I’ve had the great opportunity to teach theology in our Adult Sunday School including biblical theology topics on the Temple, Jesus in the Old Testament, spiritual warfare, Israel, and the Holy Spirit along with systematic theology topics on the attributes of God, the spectrum of systematic theology views, and doctrine of salvation.

On December 31, 2018, I officially retired from engineering after 23 years. It was ultimately over 40 years with Dinter Engineering since my father began working with Dinter when I was 1 year old and it was all I knew. Stepping out of Dinter Engineering was a bittersweet departure, of course, because of my love for the people, but the work God has called me to at CBC, with my fellow pastors Akash and Todd, is truly the greatest joy in my life. I began full time at the church in January 2019 and plowed forward with even more teaching, preaching, counseling, and small groups. I finished my last class for my Master of Theological Studies in December 2019 with great relief and joy after 10 years of slow steady progress. At the time of completing the program, my wife Maria and I have been married 18 years, Grace is 16 years old, and Ashten is 14. We have been at CBC 13 joy filled years now, and for these same 13 years, we have also lived in North Reno on a 4 acre mini-ranch in the country.

I will conclude by simply expressing my great appreciation and respect for Reformed Baptist Seminary. RBS is designed perfectly for people like me who desire theological training but can’t leave home to study on a campus for a variety of reasons. The mostly self-paced distance learning is beneficial beyond description. We appreciate RBS so much CBC has been a partnering church for several years now. I am very thankful for Dr. Robert Gonzales’ care and guidance over the last 10 years. I am also thankful for the teaching and influence of my professors Dr. Brian Borgman, Pastor Robert Briggs, Pastor Greg Nichols, Dr. Sam Waldron, Pastor Mark Chanski, Pastor Jeff Smith, Pastor Robert Elliot, and Pastor John Reuther. Finally, I wouldn’t want to be on this journey with anyone other than my lovely and supportive wife, Maria and I praise God for the support and care of my family, fellow pastors, Akash and Todd, and the CBC family who love me so well.

Keller Hackbusch