Greetings, Glen Mar!
I have been expectantly waiting to greet you as your new lead pastor for some months now, and the moment is finally here! I am SO excited to be at Glen Mar and am looking forward to us leaning into our mission of praising God, growing disciples, and serving the world together!
For those of you who do not know me, I am a local Catholic boy turned Methodist with the help of my beloved Methodist wife of 19 years, Laura. We have three children: Ava, Sam, and Charlotte. I have been in pastoral ministry since 2013 and was ordained as an Elder in the United Methodist Church in 2021. I like to watch racing, baseball, and Star Wars, but I love Jesus, and I am passionate about sharing God’s love in Christ with everyone!
I also want you to know that I have some deep ties to Ellicott City that go all the way back to going to my grandparents’ home every day when I was little. I attended Centennial Elementary School for Kindergarten, Resurrection St. Paul for elementary and middle school, and then Mount Saint Joseph for High School. After graduation, I went into the Marine Corps, was injured, and came home. I then attended AACC and transferred to Towson University, where I commuted to school each day from that same grandparents’ home in Ellicott City. During college, I worked at the now-closed Normandy Health and Fitness, Home Depot, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, all in Ellicott City. As I said, I have deep ties to this area, and I am so excited to be back and serving Glen Mar, Ellicott City, and the world for Jesus!
In thinking about all those twists and turns of my younger life, I want you to understand that back then, I never knew I had a call to ministry, or felt particularly close to God most of the time. However, looking back on those years and the many since, I can see how God was with me and was working in my life. God was with me at school, in the military, and on the job. God was with me through all the changing, rearranging, and general unknowns of life. God was with me.
As we begin this new season of ministry together, I want to remind YOU in case you either don’t know or have forgotten: God is with you and has been with you. God was with you all of your years, however many or few, and whether you realized it or not. God was with you in the joyful times and the sad ones. God was with you, is with you, and will be with you, always. That is God’s promise embodied in God’s Son, Jesus, and through the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, God is with you, but God is also with Glen Mar United Methodist Church. And as of July 1, so am I, and I couldn’t think of a better place to be because I know it is exactly where God has called me to be, and I bet you can say the same thing. So let us keep our eyes focused on Jesus together as we embark on this journey to remind the world of God’s love for everyone in Jesus Christ, remembering that God is with us!
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Chris
