I am currently the lead pastor of the Vineyard Church of Ithaca, which I planted along with my wife Elizabeth, and current associate pastor, James Cherian in 1999. However, I will be leaving the Ithaca Vineyard and preparing to move to Dublin, Ireland to plant a Vineyard Church there.

I write here about things that I find interesting, or that I care about. However, at the same, I recognize that for some reason, not everyone cares about the same things that I do. Regardless of whether or not they should, I am hoping that people will actually read (and share) what I write here, so I’ll try to keep the minutia of my life to a minimum.

Although this is my personal blog, it is difficult to separate what I write here from what I think as pastor of the Ithaca Vineyard. So while the views expressed on this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the Ithaca Vineyard, they generally do.

who is this blog for?

While I’ll write about much of this in the context of church planting and my experience leading a church, the bigger issues I want to wrestle with are how do we communicate our faith with “secular people?” How do we gather people that are not homogeneous, and form them into communities of faith? How do we encourage people to “try Jesus?”

I normally post three or four times per week. To make sure you don’t miss any posts, you can subscribe via RSS or email.

my biography

I have served as the lead pastor at the Vineyard Church of Ithaca since it was planted in 1999. In that time, the Ithaca Vineyard has grown from that original team of 16 people (13 of them Cornell students) to a church with a Sunday morning attendance of over 200 people. While that will not get us on the cover of too many magazines, over the past decade, we have been the fastest growing church in our county*. [*Our county, Tompkins, has the highest percentage of people with no religious affiliation in New York State].

Prior to planting the Ithaca Vineyard, I had been involved with campus ministries at SUNY Fredonia, University at Albany, and Cornell University. I planted at lead the ministries at Albany and Cornell, and still serve as a University Chaplain at Cornell.

I have been married to my wife, Elizabeth for twenty-one years. We have 4 daughters (ranging from 17 years to 1 year old). We live just outside of Ithaca, in Trumansburg, NY. (If you’re interested in a series of random facts about me, or want a bit of a picture of how my brain works, you can find that here.)

my contact info

You can contact me via email or follow me on Twitter or Facebook.