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Stephanie Raufer |
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Caroline Becker |
Renee Prymus
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[ Bios ]
Alyssa Creasy
My husband, John, and I met in high school and have been married since June 2000. We have three great kids, Téah, Micah and Lyle. We enjoy gardening, creating music together and learning how to teach and love our children. I am currently a stay-at-home mom which I find challenging and wonderful.
My prayer for the Open Door is that we would love each other, love our community and love God with all our heart. And that love would overflow from our worship and prayer.
Don Barnes
Coming soon..
Ryan Duchene
I am one of the surprisingly few native Pittsburghers at the Open Door. I am a international tax consultant for Deloitte Tax and have been there for 8 years. My beautiful wife Anna and I have been married for almost 4 years now, and we live in Squirrel Hill. My prayer for the Open Door is that we are able to continue to find ways reach out to people across age, race and class lines, delivering the message of Jesus, even to those that don’t walk through the door of the Union Project on Sunday evenings.
Stephanie Raufer
Coming soon…
Christine Van Kirk
I came to Pittsburgh for nursing school at Pitt in 2005 and am still here 6 years later. I work at both East Liberty Family Health Care Center and Children’s Hospital as a pediatric nurse. I currently live in Friendship with my roommate Alyssa. I love running, rock climbing, volunteering at the Pittsburgh Project and eating anything with chocolate in it.
My hope and prayer for the Open Door is that we continue to live in to our community. That we find new ways to show love to our neighbors and that we truly endeavor to be the hands and feet of Christ.
Megan Shelly
I met my husband Ben within the first few months of living in Pittsburgh. Ben and I got married in April 2005, and soon after bought our house in Friendship. Our son Joseph was born in August 2009. I currently work part-time as a Staff Scientist for an environmental consulting firm and Ben works as a software engineer for a biomedical device company. When not working on our house… we enjoy hiking and camping and good beer.
My prayer for the Open Door is that we would know whose we are (that we belong to God and to each other), where we are (knowing our neighborhoods and neighbors), and that we would follow Jesus in ordinary and RADICAL ways, choosing risk over comfort, action over complacency. Also, that we would learn to pray.
Caroline Becker
How you have seen God at work in your life in the past 6 months to a year?
During this past year I have been growing in patience, gentleness, humility, and trust in God’s faithful provision for me and my family. God has been deepening my personal relationships and shaping the longer-range vision for the future of my family. God has also been giving me encouragement as I have been slowly fighting against spiritual apathy and learning more about simple, consistent praying.
What gifts, abilities and passions has God given you to assist you in being an elder?
I have passions for and some gifts in teaching/discipleship, children’s ministry, and international awareness/mission/ relationships. I have administrative and organizational abilities and have some experience with Presbyterian Polity and the Presbyterian Church in general. I also graduated from seminary with Farmer John and took Christian Education with BJ, so I know what they were trained to do as our pastors! J
What dreams and visions do you have for our church to grow in Christ and his mission in the coming year?
My dream/vision for our church is that we might become settled in our understanding of our identity in Christ in order to continue deepening the well of our faith in Christ so that we might have more to draw from as we more fully integrate into the community. I especially hope for more steady, consistent discipleship for people on all levels (babies on up) and a greater awareness and embracing of the Great Tradition of the church.
What do you anticipate needing from the larger congregation to support and encourage you in your ministry as an elder?
I will need the larger congregation to communicate with me and allow me to get to know them. I know many of you (especially the families with young children), but there are many new faces I don’t know at all. In order to have a sense of the ‘pulse’ of our congregation, I must be able to know more than one limb of it. I will also need your prayers- for wisdom, discernment, and my continued growth in holiness and humility.
Renee Prymus
How you have seen God at work in your life in the past 6 months to a year?
In the past few months, I’ve noticed how controlled I am by my own worry, anxiety, and fear. Very tangibly and kindly (but not verbally!), God quotes that famous passage: “Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Then God adds, “And you know that worry you have about today? You don’t need to worry about today either. I’ve got it. You just be, and go about doing the next thing.” To say this to me tangibly, God has provided jobs, finances, food, a beautiful house… Still, like the Israelites, I often continue to doubt – and patiently, just like with the Israelites, God says it all again. Each time we go through this conversation cycle, the message sinks into my heart just a little bit deeper. Someday, I hope and desire that all the worry will be chased out by Love.
What gifts, abilities and passions has God given you to assist you in being an elder?
I really love talking and writing about God, God’s pursuit of us, and our journey with God. This passion is what makes me tick. To that end, I have a background in ministry, teaching, and writing, as well as silly graduate degrees in all of the above. When I teach writing, I encourage my students to learn more about who they are through their own words. When I teach yoga, I encourage people to be peaceful in their own bodies and their own lives. I have the ability to talk to a lot of people while only blushing for the first part of it. I also have mad editing skills. Basically, I bring passion and knowledge about God and people and sentences, as well as the experience of my own journey. I’m excited to serve the Open Door with these talents as an elder.
What dreams and visions do you have for our church to grow in Christ and his mission in the coming year?
As we grown as a church (we just turned 6!) and continue to discover our identity, I’m excited about being part of this stage of our identity formation. We call ourselves a “missional church community,” and I’m looking forward to exploring this word “missional” even more. To me, part of “missional” means that we are “missionaries” in our daily lives (although I’m working on finding a less-loaded term than missionary… maybe I’ll write a book about it 
. Whether we are at home with our children, in an office with cubical mates and computers, in a classroom, or conducting a train, we are doing God’s work—the work God has given us to do. I’m curious to see what would happen in my own life, and in our lives, if we saw our daily grind as holy because the incarnate God is present in it with us.
What do you anticipate needing from the larger congregation to support and encourage you in your ministry as a deacon or elder?
Prayers & love & honesty & words of encouragement.
Continue being your beautiful selves. J
