About Pastor Russ


Born and raised in Baltimore, then moving to Florida in his youth, Russ came to faith in Christ as a third year college student, through the testimony of his brother Doug. Russ transferred from the University of Florida to Shelton College, affiliated with the Bible Presbyterian Church, and there he was introduced to the doctrines of grace, and felt God's call to preach. He received his Master of Divinity degree from Faith Seminary in Philadelphia in 1976. 

Since then he has pastored churches in New York, Tennessee and Florida. In November of 2004 he was called from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, where he was serving as an Assistant Pastor and teaching Bible at Westminster Academy, to become senior pastor of Liberty Church, PCA in Owings Mills, MD.  He and his wife Donna have two children, Nathan and Grace, both graduates of Covenant College, and seven grandchildren.  

After 13 years at Liberty, Russ has now retired from full-time service. He and Donna are now living in Chesterfield, VA, near their daughter and her family.  Russ now spends most of his time sitting by the phone, waiting for someone to call and invite him to preach.  He is sometimes heard to mumble, "Is this phone even on?"

Update:  In August of 2018 Russ was asked to serve as the part-time pastor at River's Edge Bible Church, PCA, in Prince George, VA, about 5 miles east of Hopewell on Rt. 10, James River Drive.  He is pleased to be able to minister to those sweet folks, and to preach to a congregation that hasn't yet heard all his sermons, or what he likes to think of as his humorous anecdotes.  You can see videos of his sermons on the Facebook page of River's Edge Bible Church, PCA.

2 comments:

  1. My thinking is, if I keep moving around, the creatures from my home planet may not find me, if they come back. I've grown accustomed to it here. I also jumbled the letters of my Zoltonian name, Kiashu, which is why Sukhia looks like it was poured out of a Boggle box. There's minor risk in writing this---they aren't big readers on Zolton.

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    1. By the way, if you think the accompanying photo doesn't look like me, it may be because it's a photo of my friend Joe Leeds, in a sailor suit for VBS.

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