Contact Dave at dave@pittsburghmennonite.org
Dave brings a desire for PMC to be a place where life happens. He works toward a PMC where neighbors, friends, and even enemies can courageously come together to learn how the Spirit of God wants to work. He believes PMC can be a community of stability and discovery, of healing and growth, of recreation and revolution and, through all this, service and worship. He believes that PMC will discover her identity as people come together from every race, class, orientation, age and gender to discover the miracle of the Body of Christ: that in the loving joining of those separated by difference or strife, the power of God is unleashed.
Dave has been searching for a way to make life make sense for a long time. His journey has taken him from a childhood outside of Philly to Massachusetts, where he went to college and then married Caren in 2002. The two of them ended up in rural New Hampshire a few years later, where Dave ran a carpentry business and Caren was a librarian. They bought a farm and welcomed their daughter, Clara, into the world. Through all this, Dave developed an abiding appreciation for good work, for land and its ability to sustain creatures—from the bobcat to the human—and for the ability of neighbors to help one another.
But somehow, through years of growth, exploration and work, Dave still could not shake the thing he had always cared about: the church and its work. He could not shake the conviction that his life should be more directly connected to telling the Jesus story.
In 2008, he and Caren became involved in a small Mennonite Church. There, both of them were encouraged to grow and use their gifts. Before too long, the church asked Dave if he wanted to do a pastoral internship, which led to an interim pastorate while the pastor was on leave. After that, Dave and Caren decided he should go to seminary and he ended up at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C.
At Duke, Dave was privileged to work with some of the finest theological thinkers in the world. Between his classes and the family’s experience at Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, Dave emerged from his time in Durham with a faith in Jesus, a theological perspective, and a deepened belief in the church and her work.
