Jakob Topper is senior pastor of NorthHaven Church in Norman, Oklahoma.
- Where did you grow up?
In the Texas Panhandle, a small town named Borger, which exists to serve the oil industry.
- What is your favorite verse, book or story in the Bible? Why?
Jesus turning 160-ish gallons of water into wine.
This work really is a lot of fun sometimes.
- What is your favorite movie? Why?
“Country Strong.”
It’s like an old, sad country song turned into a movie, and it helps me feel the complexities of love and pain, as well as the resilience of the human spirit.
- Who are three people you admire?
Dorothy Day, Desmond Tutu and Osip Mandelstam, a Russian poet who resisted Stalin, loved deeply and paid for it with his life.
- What is one little-known fact about yourself?
I was a cage fighter (mixed martial arts) through my undergraduate and seminary years.
