Holton knows his way around athletic fields. He was a two-sport athlete at Fernandina Beach High School and the No. 1 pitcher on a high school team that was ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today during his junior year. He once struck out current major league star Chipper Jones four times in game.

His skills earned him a rare full baseball scholarship at Georgia Southern University. But before pitching an inning of college ball, a ruptured tendon in his right elbow ended Holton’s career.

"My life changed. I felt guilty because I had a full scholarship other kids did not have, so I gave it up and went home," Holton recalls. "My dreams were destroyed."

To continue his education, Holton joined the Army Reserves. In 1990, he was called to active duty and deployed in Iraq during the Desert Storm operation.

As an emergency-room technician, Holton suddenly found himself in the people-saving business, and with greater concerns than baseball.

"It was an awesome thing," says Holton, who assisted surgeons and even delivered a few babies.

He also received a sobering view of life in a country whose laws were not based on Christian principles, something he had taken for granted while growing up in a Christian environment. His father, Charles Holton, was a longtime pastor at the Bailey Road Church of God in Fernandina Beach.

"Some things I saw and heard about were frightening," says Holton. "I came back a different person."

Holton had approached his spiritual life rather casually as a teenager, when he says he was often "living one way on Sunday and another way during the rest of the week," but made his spiritual life a priority when he came home from Iraq. The life experiences – and his role as a husband and father – "changed my view of things in terms of serving the Lord."

He joined the ministry at the Bailey Road Church of God, where his father served as pastor. He began volunteering for leadership roles, and eventually served eight years as full-time youth pastor. He left the church to become pastor at three small churches in south Georgia, a role that enabled him to meet Doug Scott, an area director for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Holton’s life took another unexpected turn in March 2007, when a teenager at his church tried to commit suicide at the church just moments before Sunday morning message. It was an athlete Holton knew well, mentored and loved.

"It changed my life. I was struggling. I didn’t have the answers for myself, which made it pretty hard to lead a congregation," Holton says.

A few months later, Scott called to ask Holton about serving in the FCA. Holton was soon asked to interview for a position in Greensboro, N.C.; on the way home, he stopped to talk to Greenville Area Director Lance Shealy.

"I fell in love with Greenville the minute I saw Greenville," Holton says. "I knew this is where God was going to have me."

Holton resigned from the church in November and started his FCA work here Jan. 2. If he had any doubts about his new direction, it was answered in a December meeting with Florida State defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews, who was grieving the death of a son.

"When I told Mickey that I had been praying for him and his family, he hugged me and there was a real connection," says Holton. "I knew right then that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.

"When you leave a church position, you give up financial security, but I’ve never regretted the move. God has allowed me the greatest opportunity."

As area director, Holton’s challenge is funding the three-person staff and the various ministries in those 20 schools. He does that by taking his message to any church group willing to listen.

"That’s the goal, to tell as many people as possible what we’re doing," he says. "There are a lot of great young people around here, doing a lot of great things."