The Rev. Tom Simmons was not supposed to be a priest. He will tell you that plainly.
Growing up in Fairfax, Virginia, Simmons came to faith in college and felt the familiar tug of vocation that many seminarians describe. However, he resisted it. The pastors who had shaped him in those early years were extraordinary men, and he did not think he could measure up. So he chose a different kind of service altogether, enlisting as a machine-gunner in the 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, and later taking a job on Capitol Hill, moving between offices in both the House and the Senate.
"I wanted to dedicate my life to something that mattered eternally," Simmons says, reflecting on those years. "And ministry became the place where my gifts, convictions, training and passions aligned."
The pivot was not sudden. It took time, a change of heart, and what Simmons describes as a very tangible redirection from God, one that landed him at a small, struggling Episcopal congregation where he discovered, to his own surprise, that he could actually do this work. With the support of a bishop who saw something in him, he entered the ordination process in the Diocese of Virginia, a process that extended by an extra year because, as Simmons remembers it with a kind of wry gratitude, he simply had more to learn. That additional year produced a master's degree in Christian education from Virginia Seminary. He was ordained in 1998.
After four years as assistant rector at a large Richmond church, where he served under three different rectors during a period of transition, he was ready for his own congregation. In 2002, he arrived at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Purcellville, Virginia, and something clicked.
"It felt like the right guy at the right time," he says. The church doubled in size twice in six years.
Simmons had earned a Master of Divinity from Westminster Seminary and, much later, a Doctor of Ministry in preaching from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, studying under Haddon Robinson, one of the most celebrated homileticians of the twentieth century. That doctoral work would eventually reshape not just his own preaching, but the way he thought about helping others share the Word of God.
Ministry, the Reverend Tom Simmons learned, is not a straight line.
In 2008 and 2009, a convergence of outside pressure, internal conflict, and his own acknowledged mistakes unraveled much of what he had built at St. Peter's. He calls it the “Year From Hell.” For roughly eighteen months, the congregation was in crisis. It was the first time, he says, that he had truly failed as an adult, and the experience hit him in ways he had not anticipated.
"My ambition for success and my self-image as the successful young rector headed places took some severe body blows," Simmons explains. "Ultimately that was a helpful refining process for me."
The congregation recovered. Growth resumed, slower this time. Simmons redoubled his investment in spiritual discipline and in developing his leadership skills more deliberately. The clarity and consecration that came out of that season was lasting. He came to see that ministry was never meant to be built around his ambition or his metrics of success. It was meant to be built around something much simpler.
"A defining moment was realizing that ministry is fundamentally about lifting up Jesus Christ, not ideas, not programs, not personality, not my ambition for measurable indicators of success," he says. "That clarity transformed how I lead."
In the years that followed, Simmons extended his reach well beyond the walls of St. Peter's. He served as chaplain for the Purcellville Volunteer Rescue Squad, joined the board of INOVA Loudoun Hospital, and wrote a bi-monthly newspaper column called Church Chat that ran until 2019. He also served on the board of Coaching Mission International, a nonprofit providing coaching services to front-line missionaries around the world. These roles deepened his conviction that the gospel did not belong only inside a church building.
"Those roles reminded me that ministry extends far beyond the church walls," he says. "They shaped my conviction that the gospel belongs everywhere."
The Sermon Coach was born out of Tom Simmons' own stuck place.
Several years into his tenure at St. Peter's, with his doctoral work underway at Gordon-Conwell, he found himself burning out behind the pulpit. He was spending the hours. He was not getting the results. Week after week of original messages, and he felt his creative well running dry, his stress climbing, his passion dimming.
"I was investing the time, but not getting the results," he says. "I wanted to improve, but how? I didn't know how to get from here to there."
The doctoral program under Haddon Robinson restored something in him. It renewed his passion and gave him a sharper understanding of preaching as both craft and calling. But it also led him somewhere unexpected: into the discipline of coaching, and the realization that what preachers needed was not more critique, but better questions.
"A coach is trained to help people who feel stuck to move forward," Simmons explains. "Coaching isn't about critiquing your sermons and giving advice. It's building a trusting relationship, believing in you and what God is doing in your life."
He developed a yearlong coaching program, with sessions twice a month, built around the idea that the coach should ask rather than tell. The influence of Edgar Schein, the MIT management professor, runs through his philosophy. Schein argued that what builds relationships and solves problems is asking the right questions. Simmons took that idea into the pulpit preparation room.
The results, as reported by clients, are specific and concrete. Preachers finish the program with less stress around sermon preparation. They say they see more in Scripture and rely less on outside commentaries. They find their creative instincts flowing again. They feel, as one client named Dave put it, genuinely empowered to be better preachers, not because someone told them what to do, but because someone created the space where they could figure it out themselves.
"You've made it fun for me to preach, and be excited about the changes I'm making," Dave told Simmons. "You've done a very good job to create the space where that change could be made."
Another client, Mark, put the stakes plainly: "Preaching is so important to everything we're trying to do in ministry. It's the only time you get to speak to all these people every week. You probably want to work on that one."
There is another version of Tom Simmons that exists entirely apart from the pulpit and the coaching calls. It lives in a woodshop.
His side business, Creation in Wood, is not an afterthought. It is, by his own description, a passion. He makes furniture, toys, cabinetry, kitchen interiors, casework, and the bigger the project, the better. He and his wife Danielle have added furniture refinishing to the operation, and together with friends, they are outfitting a new shop, restoring hundred-year-old machinery and expanding capacity for whatever comes next.
Woodworking, Simmons has said, gives him something ministry cannot always provide: the satisfaction of holding a finished thing in his hands, something beautiful and useful that did not exist before.
He is husband to Danielle, father and stepfather to nine children, a grandfather figure in a household that has gathered people from many different directions. He teaches shop class to seventh graders at the Good Shepherd School in Loudoun County. He prays for his parishioners by name, using prayer cards, and texts them when he does.
Now 58, Simmons is honest about where he stands. St. Peter's is smaller than it was. The strategic plans of the post-pandemic years have not produced the growth he hoped for. He is considering early retirement in 2028, after thirty years in ministry. He’s also taking a twelve-week sabbatical in 2026 to get clarity on God’s vision for his next steps.
"I want to get back to teaching," he says. "I think it could help strengthen St. Peter's for the future."
And through the mountaintops and the valleys alike, he has learned to pray differently.
"Through it all, I gained a new prayer life," he says. "A survival prayer, full of deep intimacy and interaction with Jesus. I will always follow Jesus and live surrendered, responsive and obedient to His purposes for me."
