Mike became pastor of FPCE in 2005 after serving a yoke of three small churches in Leechburg and Freeport, Pennsylvania. A 2002 graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary, Mike is a second career pastor.
“Prior to seminary I did computer work – among other things – for American List Counsel, a direct mail list and marketing company in Princeton, New Jersey. I was there for more than eleven years. I also pursued music semi-professionally. My undergraduate degree is in music education but after college I sort of fell into computer work, first in New York City and then in Princeton. This was 1984 and computer skills were in demand. After playing in some bands in NYC I was kind of musically fallow for a few years until I moved to Lambertville, New Jersey and started playing with an wide assortment of bands and musicians. I’m a drummer, by the way, and at one point I was playing off-and-on with four different bands in several styles; rock, R&B, country, jazz, and some old-time swing. So it was computers during the day and music nights and weekends.
Around 1992 and after many years away from the church, I started attending Thompson Memorial Presbyterian Church in New Hope, Pennsylvania, at the invitation of a friend. Something just clicked and I quickly became involved in the life of the church. I worked with the youth group. Then I became a deacon and, later, an elder.
Because of my involvement in the church and my growing faith, I started to feel somewhat dissatisfied with my professional life. At the same time my musical life – which as any musician will tell you ebbs and flows – started to ebb. Long conversations with my pastor and other close friends got me thinking about ministry as a vocation, as the next step in my life. After months of thought and prayer, I finally broached the subject with some trusted close friends and they affirmed my sense of call. My pastor and church were fully behind me.
I decided that San Francisco Theological Seminary was the best fit for me and began my studies there in 1998. And wouldn’t you know it? After about two weeks in San Anselmo (the town in Marin County where SFTS is located) I ran into a musician friend from Princeton in a coffee house. He told me a band he was in was looking for a drummer!
Of course the biggest unexpected surprise in California was meeting Mary Louise McCullough, another student in my class who had come from Richmond, Virginia. Mary Louise and I quickly become close friends and eventually fell in love. We got married in 2000. I also became step-father to Mary Louise’s then 16 year-old son Evan who now lives in Austin, Texas.”
Mike claims that, alongside his six semesters of coursework at SFTS his most formative experiences were a full-year, full-time internship at The First Presbyterian Church in Vallejo, California where he was immersed in the day-to-day life of ministry. He also completed three months of full-time Clinical Pastoral Education (hospital chaplaincy) at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
In addition to his responsibilities at FPCE, Mike serves on Pittsburgh Presbytery's Committee on Preparation for Ministry and the Administrative Commission for Transformation. He is also president of the board of the Wilkinsburg Community Ministry.
Mike and Mary Louise now live in Pittsburgh’s east end, about equidistant from FPCE and Sixth Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh where Mary Louise is the pastor. They share their home with a wiener dog named Hazel and a cat named Veronica. And he’s now in yet another band
