By: Dezaray Barr
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David M. Grieve is the Senior Pastor at New Life Community Church in Marion, Indiana. He began college at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington in 1994. “My graduation story is not the usual college story,” Grieve shared. “The journey was long, but I finally was able to complete my degree and graduate from Northwest University in 2005 with a B.A. in Biblical Literature.”
After a rough spring semester in 1996, Grieve married his wife, Shami, and joined a one-year internship program, Master’s Commission. Along with his new bride, Grieve moved into his in-laws and began taking correspondence courses from another university. “It was during that one-year internship where God spoke something into my life that forever changed me,” he said. “What I didn’t understand at the time, but have come to understand, is how God was calling something, rather someone, out of me. He was drawing out the noble, kingly man of me and telling me I could be more than I was being and do more than I was doing.”
Grieve lays this concept and lesson out in his book that he published in October, Son of David: Drawing the king out in every man.
When Grieve was 18, he was planning to play college football. He was a summer camp counselor, “and on a Wednesday night, as these Junior Highers were worshiping God, I heard these words, ‘You’re going to work with kids the rest of your life,'” Grieve shared. That was when he felt called to be a pastor.
New Life Church is unique in it’s cultural DNA. “Our cultural DNA is loving God, others and yourself with great value,” Grieve shared. “Now while this sounds a lot like what other churches say, we focus first on learning to love ourselves with great value first, because it all starts there. Yes we are to love others better than ourselves, but you will never love others with great value if you are not loving yourself with great value. So when you love yourself with great value, you can love others with great value and as we see in Matthew 25, when we love others with great value we are actually loving God with great value.”
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Written by Dezaray Barr, PR Specialist for the Alumni Office. Dezaray is a junior Strategic Communication, Journalism and Honors Humanities triple major at Indiana Wesleyan University in the John Wesley Honors College. At IWU, Dezaray runs both the JWHC Blog and her own blog. Visit Dez’s website at www.dezaraybarr.weebly.com.