Dave Kirk
Grace Community Church, North Liberty
davek@graceb3.org

Dave is the Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Grace Community Church in North Liberty, IA. He has served at Grace Community Church since 2009. Prior to that he was a Pastor at a church in St. Louis, MO for 13 years. Dave is also our Co Founder and Director of the EIBCC since its inception in 2013. Dave has been in full time ministry for 28 years. He earned a bachelors degree and two Masters degrees from Liberty University and is also a certified biblical counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).  He has been married to his beautiful wife Debbie for 28 years and they have four sons and one daughter. Dave is a huge sports fan and a die hard St. Louis Cardinals fan. He also enjoys coaching, mentoring, reading and listening to great music of all kinds. He is very passionate about leadership development and equipping people to grow in their faith so that they and their families can pass a spiritual heritage of the gospel down to future generations. 

 

Sydney Millage
Faith Baptist Church, Iowa City
semillage@gmail.com
Sydney loves meeting new people and getting to know them. After almost forty years of leading Bible studies and teaching women and children, her greatest desire is to love God and others by directing them to Jesus.  She earned an MABC (Master’s in Biblical Counseling) from Faith Bible Seminary in Lafayette, Indiana and is certified with ABC (Association of Biblical Counselors).  In 2018 Sydney wrote Sanctuary: Help and Hope for Victims of Domestic Abuse, published by Focus Publishing. She and her family are active members of their local church. You can visit her blogs, Heart Quencher or Sanctuary to learn more.

 

Aimee Marino
Grace Community Church, North Liberty
aimeem@graceb3.org

Aimee is the Biblical Counseling Director at Grace Community Church in North Liberty, Iowa. She graduated from the University of Iowa in 2012 and worked in a developmental psycholinguistics lab before joining staff with Grace in 2014. She is passionate about people and their stories, and seeing Christ revolutionize both for His glory. This is what drove her to become a certified biblical counselor with ACBC (the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors). Aimee enjoys baking, witty words, high fives, and the well-played prank. Although she traded her hometown Colorado mountains for Iowa cornfields in 2008, she still humors her inner mountain-woman by hiking, kayaking and spending as much time as she can in the sunshine. 

Jason spent his childhood in northeast Ohio where he attended a small church with his parents and two siblings. After graduating from high school, he earned a B.S. degree in Elementary Education and Biblical Studies from Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque, Iowa. He also earned his M.Ed. degree in Educational Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee.

For 18 years, Jason worked full-time in an elementary school as a teacher and administrator. During these years, he also served part-time at his church as a youth pastor, children’s pastor, and Biblical counselor.

At an early age, Jason thought he had confessed Jesus Christ as his Savior. But it wasn’t until much later that God opened Jason’s eyes to understand how Jesus’ death on the cross applied to him. Under the great conviction of his own sin, he repented and truly gave his life to Christ.

Today, Jason has a personal desire to help others who are feeling the burdens of life. He believes that God offers tremendous hope for the hurting through the truth of His Word (the Bible), and he works with people to help them experience life, joy, and peace.

Jason is married to Karla, and they have two children: Cohen and Melanie. 

Jim Sabin
Grace Community Church, North Liberty, IA
Jimsabin11@gmail.com

Jim is an elder at Grace Community Church and serves on the counseling team there. He is now fully retired after working as an engineer at Collins aerospace for 43 years. He and his wife Peggy have been married for 42 years and have been blessed with four children and nine grandchildren.

Jim became involved in counseling after Peggy asked him to take her to the Biblical Counseling training conference in Lafayette, because she thought he would make a good counselor. That was in 2008 and he has been counseling and pursuing advanced training in counseling ever since. Prior to Covid lockdowns, he volunteered through the chaplain’s office at Iowa Medical and Classification Center (Oakdale prison) for ten years. He is an ACBC certified counselor and has earned his Master’s degree in Biblical Counseling from Faith Seminary.

He is passionate about Biblical counseling and believes the counseling he received at a small country church when he was a college student saved his life. He loves spending time with Peggy, his kids, and grandkids. In his spare time, he loves to read, garden, and play the banjo.

Matt Magee
Oak Grove Church, Shellsburg, IA
matt@oakgrove.cc

Matt has served as Lead Pastor at Oak Grove Church since 2017. He has been married to Cherilyn since 2005, and together they have two amazing boys, Braden, and Skylar, which they home school together! As a family they love getting out to hike (especially in cooler temperatures), throw Frisbee, play football, baseball, and soccer.

Matthew has been in local church ministry in varying staff roles since 1998, serving at churches in TN, NJ, KY and IA as Worship Pastor, Youth Pastor, in Discipleship, and Lead Pastor. Through these experiences the Lord has developed in Matthew a passion for loving his family first, next to the Lord, and leading the church to practice a culture of one-another care through intensive and varying degrees of discipling and biblical counseling.

During his adult education years, Matthew earned a B.S. degree in Biblical Studies from The Moody Bible Institute (Chicago, IL), his M.Div. degree in Church Ministry from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and is pursuing his D.Min. degree in Biblical Counseling from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kansas City, MO). He is also a certified biblical counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).

Matt grew tremendously as a young adult under the personal discipling of his pastor, college leader and friendship with the church’s youth pastor, with whom he served and partnered in ministry. These discipling relationships provided an opportunity for Matt to get his feet wet in ministry in a positively challenging environment for his pastoral and theological development.