Pastor David Carlson.

Read my blog: Fresh Read

Hello, I would be glad to meet with you if you are looking for a church home, or if you just want to talk.  First, it is only fair that you know a bit about me.

I was born and raised in Port Orchard, Washington, which is on the Puget Sound in western Washington.  I’ve been on this planet since 1956 - I’ll let you do the math.  My family always attended church, but it was not until my junior year of High School that I accepted the Lord.  In reality I was afraid he might call me to be a pastor or missionary or something odd like that!

Next came four years at the University of Washington in Seattle, where I received a degree in History and spent a lot of time with Ancient Greek.  There was a strong InterVarsity Christian Fellowship group there and it became a very formative force in my spiritual development.  I still use inductive and manuscript study methods that I learned with IVCF.

Seminary is supposed to take 3 years, but I managed to extend it. 

First, I was a volunteer staff member with IV in Missoula, Montana.  There I did various odd jobs to support myself and also worked with students.  The most interesting job was on a helicopter logging operation.  My future wife, Jerry Anne was a student at UM, and we met through the local IV group.

I attended the EFCA seminary near Chicago for a year, got married and returned to Missoula for a year, and then we both returned to Chicago to attend an Urban ministry program (me) and work in urban recreation (Jerry).  We lived next to a small city church for 3 years (10 minutes from Wrigley Field!).

After Seminary we served a city church in the borough of Queens, in New York City for 9 years.  Our three girls were born there, even with city traffic we never had to deliver in a taxi with the NY Times.  Our goal was to move an ethnic German church to be more open to the community.

After that we came to Madison in 1994 to serve at Bethany.  We live here in the neighborhood, our kids have gone to pubilc schools, and we live close enough to the Yahara River to carry over our canoe.  (tip:  don’t canoe when there are white caps on the lake!)

  My interests include the Brewers, wood carving, cooking (and eating), reading History and mysteries from interesting places, and languages. 

Bethany is a smaller church in a smaller city, but from an urban ministry point of view, everything is here, just on a smaller scale than Chicago or New York.  I am currently reading and thinking about how we can best communicate the gospel across the very deep divide between mainly “red state” churches and many of my “blue state” neighbors. 

I love the scriptures, and book by book preaching is my bread and butter.  My favorite books of the Bible are: Genesis; Job; Psalms; Luke; Romans; I John. 

Email me personally and we can start a conversation.  Anyone who contacts me from the web site wins a free cup of coffee in the neighborhood!  You can also find me on Facebook as David Eric Carlson

-D.C.