Dave currently serves as Pastor responsible for Counseling Ministries at the First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton. His main task is the oversight, training and supervision of the extensive lay counseling program of the church. He also serves as a consultant to various support groups and gives pastoral oversight to COMI (Caregivers of the Mentally Ill) and Family to Family (the NAMI family training program). He supervises a leadership group that has developed The Gift Shop, a spiritual gift-based, computer-matched, volunteer ministry placement service. Dave also serves on the boards of The Center for Individual and Family Therapy and Marble Retreat Center, Marble, Colorado.

He holds graduate degrees in Biblical Literature and in Marital and Family Therapy as well as the Michigan Limited License in Psychology and 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, Secrets of Your Family Tree, Moody 1991; Torn Asunder: Helping Couples Recover from Infidelity, Moody 1994, the Torn Asunder Workbook, Moody 2001, and Steps To A New Beginning, Nelson 1992 (winner of The Gold Medallion Award in Personal Evangelism for 1993).

Dave and Ronnie have four adult children and four grandchildren who live locally; and in their "spare time", they jog together and have completed the Free Press International Marathon.

Click here to see Dave's VITA

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, “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 30 years ago and this book and workbook are the results of that 30-year mission.