Pastor Dave Thomas is amazed that a boy from the Ozark Mountains of Southwest Missouri not only serves an awesome congregation in Bellevue, Washington, but spent much of his adult life in Arizona, lived and worked in Africa for several years, traveled to quite a few Latin American countries, and has a son playing baseball and studying law, philosophy and English in an Iowa college.
Pastor Dave graduated from Parkview High School in Springfield, Missouri, so long ago that he had a punk rock rattail, a complete Elvis Costello collection on 8-track, and a “Disco Sucks” T-Shirt. He has degrees in Journalism from Arizona State University and Divinity from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, and studied before and after that at Drury College in Springfield and Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Pastor Dave has been married to Barbara for more than three decades – which sounds like a long time when you put it that way. He and his family are uber passionate (some say that’s an understatement) fans of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, enjoyers of the great outdoors, and homebodies who watch a lot of HGTV, NatGeo, ESPN, and “Elementary” and “The Black List” reruns. PD is an occasional golfer, a sadly lapsed fly fisherman, and an aging but occasionally still productive softball player. He quotes “The Princess Bride” – in character – way too much. And Scripture just about the right amount. His 8-track collection lives in his office at home.
