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Rev. Donald Marsden
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Contact Information 508 Cokesburg Lane |
BACKGROUND
Many centuries ago in times and places now long forgotten, Donald Marsden’s ancestors came under the influence of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They immigrated to the United States mainly from England where they settled in New England. Some of them were Non-Conformists who left England in the seventeenth century to settle in Massachusetts where they formed a Congregationalist theocracy. Some were Episcopalians. His great grandfather, Thomas Marsden, a Methodist, emigrated from Blackburn, Lancashire in the 1870s, where the family had come under the influence of John Wesley’s revival in the north of England during the late eighteenth century. Grandmother Ella Haywood Vose from Canada was a Presbyterian with roots in Scotland. A family history search suggests that the name Marsden originated near Huddersfield in Yorkshire, in the north of England where medieval Norseman looted and pillaged the native Brigantes, but eventually settled to graze their cattle. And so there is a long and circuitous pathway, largely lost in unrecorded history, reaching back to ancestors who worshipped the Norse gods – Woden, Thiu, Thor, but undoubtedly there was a time and a place when the gospel was first preached and believed in by those long forgotten ancestors who worshipped the spirits of nature. Thus they were brought to the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Donald is grateful that at one time, missionaries brought the gospel to his ancestors, whoever they were, and that the gospel has been passed down to him from generation to generation through the long and complex historical process.
Donald grew up in family attending the Presbyterian Church. During high school, after attending the confirmation class, he declined to join the church, because he was an agnostic. But he remained active in the church youth group where he was influenced by experiences serving on summer work camp teams in which the youth traveled from the wealthy suburbs of Connecticut to Leeds, Maine to become acquainted with people of another culture – and to work repairing homes of people living in hidden rural poverty with pastor Carl Geores in the Rural Community Action Ministry at the Mission at the Eastward. These summer work camps were decisive for the formation of Donald’s faith. Through them he experienced the gospel in action. His call to faith and to serve God grew out of these early mission service experiences. In the summer of 1976 as an eighteen year old college student, he underwent an awakening of faith and a sense a call to serve God as a minister of the Presbyterian Church. After graduating from college in 1979 he postponed his attendance at seminary to serve for two years as a fraternal worker doing youth ministry with German youth in West Berlin, Germany and visiting churches behind the iron curtain in East Germany and Russia.
MINISTRY AND INVOLVEMENT IN MISSION
Studying at Princeton Seminary Donald did not expect to become involved in mission service, but expected rather to follow a course of service as a pastor in Presbyterian churches in the United States. But God had other plans. Following graduation from Princeton Seminary Donald was married to his wife Laurie, who also studied there. Donald served for five years as pastor of Logan’s Ferry (United) Presbyterian Church in the Pittsburgh area, and then for eight years as an associate pastor at Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia. In both pastorates mission work and ministry with children became significant concerns. During his years as an associate pastor in Richmond Donald began to take groups to conduct Vacation Bible Schools in partnership with evangelical congregations in Russia. Through these visits to Russia Donald and Laurie felt a call to long-term mission service.
In 1997 the Marsdens, together with their three children, Hannah, Christiana and Jeremiah, were called to serve as mission co-workers of the Presbyterian Church USA in Russia. The Marsdens spent eleven years in Russia where Donald organized a center for ministry training and a publishing house
He was also introduced to frontier mission work among the native peoples of Siberia. In November of 1999 Donald participated in a large conference called “The Gospel for All Peoples” initiated by PFF and held in Salekhard, Siberia. It was there that Donald first got to know Harold Kurtz and hear the vision for frontier mission. Donald and Harold followed up this conference with visits to churches in that remote arctic region. At first Donald was skeptical about becoming seriously involved in this work, but in 2002, he made a commitment to explore this work more deeply, and asked Harold Kurtz to be his mentor in it.
Donald and Harold worked together for several years conducting seminars for those working among the native peoples in arctic Siberia. Traveling by snowmobile in the frigid winter to visit the Nenets people living in teepees, by boat in the summer to visit isolated villages, and through study of missiology at Fuller Seminary and in Africa, Donald has learned more and more about ministry among people who worship the spirits of their ancestors.
SERVICE WITH PFF
As the newest staff member of PFF Donald will maintain and sharpen the focus on work he has begun with the native peoples of Siberia – the reindeer herding Nenets, the Khant and other native people groups of the Russian Federation. Donald is available to share the vision of the kingdom of God and opportunities for your church to become involved in frontier mission. He and his family are now based in Richmond, Virginia.