James Coffin was born in Iowa in 1951 and grew up on a farm in Missouri. He graduated from Sunnydale Academy in Missouri 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.

Jim worked as a pastor in Australia from 1976 to 1981. After pastoring in Maryland for 18 months, he went to the Adventist Review, the Seventh-day Adventist Church's general publication, as an assistant editor, in 1982. While at the 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 Signs Publishing Company in Australia, where he worked until 1991. In 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.

Since 1994 Jim has been senior pastor of the Markham Woods Church in Longwood, Florida. In addition, he serves as director of Global Mission’s Center for Secular/Postmodern Mission (www.secularpostmodern.org).

Jim has written scores of articles for Seventh-day Adventist publications and one book (One Thing I Know—and Other Stuff I Strongly Suspect; Review and Herald Publishing Association), and he still writes as his schedule permits. He also writes four or five opinion pieces each year, usually about religious or ethical issues, for the main Orlando newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. He can be contacted at jim@markhamwoodschurch.org.