Bio Sheet for James Coffin

James Coffin was born in Iowa in 1951 and grew up on a farm at Centralia, Missouri. He graduated from nearby Sunnydale Academy in 1970 and studied for one year at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. After a year in Mexico as a student missionary, he spent three years at Newbold College in England, where he graduated in 1975 with a degree in theology, minoring in history.

In 1975, Jim married Australian-born Leonie Steed. They have three adult sons: James (wife Emily), Jared and Josh.

Jim worked as a pastor in Australia from 1976 to 1981. From early 1981 to late 1982 he pastored in Maryland, then went to work for the Adventist Review, the Seventh-day Adventist Church's flagship publication, as an assistant editor. While at the Adventist Review, Jim took selected classes in journalism from the University of Maryland. He also did a brief part-time stint as a copy editor at The Washington Post.

In 1986 Jim was invited to be senior editor at the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Signs Publishing Company in Australia, where he worked until 1991. While there (1988) he won the Australian Religious Press Association award for the best editorial in a religious magazine. His winning entry, titled "By Their Loot Ye Shall Know Them," addressed the less-than-exemplary moral behavior of a number of religious-media personalities.

In late 1991 Jim and his family returned to the United States, where he assumed responsibilities as youth/associate pastor at Markham Woods Church in Longwood, Florida, a suburb of Orlando. Since 1994 he has been senior pastor there.

Jim has written scores of articles for Seventh-day Adventist publications and had three books published: One Thing I Know—and Other Stuff I Strongly Suspect (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 2003); A Different Church for a Different World (Signs Pubishing Company, 2006); and Conversations With My Church (Signs Publishing Company, 2007); A fourth book—The Fine Print—is ready to go to the printers. During his time in Orlando, he has written some fifty articles, generally on religious or moral/ethical issues, for the main Orlando newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. 

He can be contacted at jim@markhamwoodschurch.org.