“Not your father’s kind of priest…”
….the only clergy you’ll ever meet who can say that on the day he got ordained, he didn’t know it was going to happen!
Likes to say:
“I’ve never met a church in which I felt 100% comfortable; nor one that didn’t have something valuable to teach me.”
“Religion is best when it helps people raise profound questions; and at its worst when it proscribes answers.”
Favorite Quotes:
“Charity is the opium of the privileged” – Chinua Achebe
“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.” – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Some career-long definitions:
“Ministry is the responsibility of everyone, for each of their actions, to everyone else.”
“Christian mission is a mutually transformational encounter among people of difference; ‘not a self-serving mandate to duplicate your own version of faith.”
David’s unusual collection of ministry roles include:
- 15 years as the Founding Executive Director of Seafarers’ House in Florida, the world’s busiest maritime ministry, and the first one to add interfaith partners
- 7 years as Social Justice Pastor at Saint Mark’s (Episcopal) Cathedral in Seattle
- 3 years at Trinity Church, Wall Street, strengthening the role of African church leaders with $1.5m annual grantmaking for rural development, maternal and child health care, anti-apartheid initiatives, and TEE (alternative method of theological education)
- 4 years with the Lutheran World Federation’s USA office staffing UN representation and grassroots advocacy on policy toward southern Africa
- 5 years as an itinerant preacher and speaker roaming +50 North American cities sharing ‘what he learned’ in South Africa
- 9 years in local, national and international volunteer roles for Oikocredit, a global cooperative of churches that does micro-finance and development finance better than anyone else
- 2011 received into The Episcopal Church as a priest after being a rostered ELCA pastor