Pastor Josh Anderson

If I had to pick one phrase to describe the focus of my pastoral ministry, it would be this: “to declare the certainty of God’s love for you in Jesus Christ.” In all I do as a pastor, I seek simply to do this: to declare the certain truth of God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The primary means by which we can know the certainty of God’s love for us is by the incarnation of his Son, the word made flesh. In Jesus, the Triune God has taken on human flesh for the rest of eternity, and in Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension, and present intercession for us at his Father’s right hand, we can be sure of the certain love of God. This the theme of my ministry, and my prayer is that this emphasis comes through in all that I do as a pastor: from my public leading of worship each Sunday, to the sermons I preach, to the prayers I pray for the people I meet with every day.

Pastor Josh Anderson, Ami Anderson and their children from left to right (Cael, Tristan, Judah and Gillian).

I am originally from Richmond, Virginia, where I grew up as the oldest of nine children. My parents have been faithful believers all their lives, and I was fortunate enough to be raised in the church from my earliest days. When I was eighteen, I spent six months overseas as a missionary in Northern Ireland and Uganda, an experience that still shapes my understanding of the significance of the global church and the centrality of gospel proclamation. A few years later, I met my wife Ami at the University of Virginia, where we both earned our undergraduate degrees. Ami and I have enjoyed fourteen years of marriage, and my life and ministry would be impossible without her. A year into our marriage, Ami and I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where I attended Covenant Seminary to prepare for pastoral ministry. During our time in St. Louis, the Lord blessed us with three children: Cael (now 14), Gillian (12), and Judah (9).

After graduating from Covenant Seminary in 2008, I received my first pastoral call and served as an associate pastor in St. Louis for six years. During this time I was also able to begin work on a master’s degree in Creative Writing & Poetry from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The beauty and power of words and the craft of writing have always been of fundamental importance to me, and I found my studies at UMSL to be a great help in my work as a pastor. In 2014, I received a call to come to Colleyville Presbyterian Church (my first time to serve as a lead pastor), and my family and I joyfully moved to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to take up this new work. For the past three years, we have found ourselves loving our new life in Texas. Ministry and family life is not without challenges of course, but Ami and I have found again and again that even (and especially) in our weakness, Christ is sufficient. About a year after we moved to Texas, our fourth child, Tristan (now 4), was born.

Our church is not the biggest in the area, and it is not the most impressive. But it is a place where the gospel is faithfully proclaimed, where people are learning to love God and one another, and where each of us are continuing to learn in a new way this simple message: the love of God for each of us is made certain in the person of Jesus Christ. And for that I am deeply grateful.

In the Peace of the Christ who is our life,

Pastor Josh Anderson