Dave served as Pastor responsible for Counseling Ministries at the First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton for over 30 years.
His main task was the oversight, training and supervision of the extensive lay counseling program of the church. He also served as pastor of marriage ministries, consultant to various support groups, and gave oversight to COMI (Caregivers of the Mentally Ill) and Family to Family (the NAMI family training program). Dave continues to serve on the board of Marble Retreat Center, Marble, Colorado.
He holds graduate degrees in Biblical Literature and in Counseling Psychology as well as the Marriage and Family Therapy license in California. He is a clinical member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. His publishing credits include Promises from Proverbs, Zondervan 1984, 2012; Secrets of Your Family Tree, Moody 1991, revised 2008; Torn Asunder: Helping Couples Recover from Infidelity, Moody 1994, revised 2008; the Torn Asunder Workbook, Moody 2001, revised 2008; Steps To A New Beginning, Nelson 1992 (winner of The Gold Medallion Award in Personal Evangelism for 1993); Close Calls: What Adulterers Want You to Know About Protecting Your Marriage, Moody 2008; and Anatomy of an Affair: How Affairs, Attractions and Addictions Develop and How to Guard Your Marriage Against Them, Moody, 2017.
Dave and Ronnie have four adult children and ten grandchildren, four of whom lived in Turkey for 9 years; and in their “spare time”, they jog together and have completed the Free Press International Marathon.
How In the World Did a Guy Like Me Get Involved In a Project Like This?
In the summer of 1959, at the age of 14, I attended a small, very rustic church camp in northeastern Kansas. It was such a great experience that when I returned home, my entire family started attending the little corner church that sponsored the camp. We were very involved for several years, but while in high school, the pastor’s wife passed away very suddenly. The shock and grief of that little community was turned to anger, though, when the pastor left town a few months later with the wife of one of the parishioners.
Several years later after graduating from Bible College and Seminary, I joined the staff of a rather large church in northwestern Ohio. Throughout those ministry years, I knew of several pastors who became involved in adultery and left the ministry in shame.
But, I was shocked more than anyone when I received a phone call from my senior pastor’s wife who was sobbing hysterically on the phone. After several hours at their home that evening, attempting to make sense and bring comfort in this chaos to the three teenage children, I decided to do some detective work.
To make a long story short, within 24 hours, I flew to the city where my senior pastor was to turn in his rental truck. My problem, I got there too quickly. He did not show up before I had to return to the church for services the next Sunday. Before we returned home, we left a picture of the pastor with the truck rental manager and a phone number where we could be reached.
The manager called two days later; we flew back; confronted the pastor, but he refused to return to his family. I wept like a baby, but after getting control of myself while on the way back to the airport, I told my friend who was driving, “I am going to go back to graduate school and figure out why men will so easily (so it appeared) trash their families, careers, and even their lives at times, to engage in infidelity”.
That was over 40 years ago and these books and workbook are the result of that 40-year mission.
