Josh Williams

Lead Pastor

Josh, originally from Iowa, moved to New Haven for school. While not knowing what was in store, Josh came for an adventure. He found it through studying and trying to live out justice, love, and community. After graduating Yale in the spring of 2008, he decided to stay in New Haven to go to Yale Divinity School for a M.Div, to pursue his future wife, and to invest further in New Haven.

Around the same time, Josh plugged into Elm City Vineyard and soon became its first intern. During that process, Josh started a few prayer groups on Yale’s campus and established and grew a connection ECV has with Agape Church for the Housed and Unhoused where Josh serves along with a core group of ECVers. Right before his graduation in 2011, Josh was ordained as a pastor in the Vineyard and accepted a job with InterVarsity where he served as a campus minister for Yale College. Weeks later, he happily married his wife, Tina, in a very musical service followed by a reception with much dancing. In 2014, Josh became ECV’s first full-time Lead Pastor, and he is thankful and excited for how God is maturing ECV’s vision and taking us to new places. Josh and Tina live in the Edgewood neighborhood of New Haven where they are seeking to love their neighbors with their daughters, Zoe and Joy.

Charissa Lui

Executive Pastor

Charissa is the Executive Pastor of Elm City Vineyard Church.

Patrick Dunn

Associate Pastor

Patrick is a proud native of Indiana, corn’s true home. He moved to New Haven in 2018 to begin working at ECV, and he is willing to give the corn here a chance. Before coming to New Haven, Patrick lived in Germany for a year studying theology. Before that, he served for several years in the ministry of the Presbyterian church in South Africa. He believes most people are far more interesting than they think, and he is excited to be at ECV, a community of interesting people who are also excited to meet interesting people all over New Haven. He is passionate about discipleship, which means figuring out together how to follow Christ. His hobbies include wondering about things, staring at nothing in particular, and not talking about himself on the internet. He’s married to Sofia, whom he loves. They have two cats, about whom his feelings are more ambivalent.

Kyanna Joseph

Family Pastor

Kyanna is a loud and proud Jersey girl (we don’t pump our gas– we pump our fist!) who loves serving and supporting children and their families. She first was introduced to New Haven County when she moved to Hamden to pursue her bachelor’s in Sociology and Masters of Arts in Teaching- Elementary Education from Quinnipiac University.

Kyanna showed up to ECV in the fall of 2015 and has been serving ever since (can we please bring Brunch group back, folks?!) A New Haven educator, Kyanna’s teaching career began with an internship year at Fair Haven K-8 followed by two years as a 6th grade Language Arts teacher at Engineering & Science University Magnet School (ESUMS).

Kyanna is passionate about working with children and families to develop the community in which they live through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. She is a crazy cat lady whose camera roll is filled with hundreds of pictures of her two cats and two dogs. She devours books at an alarming rate and will beat you in Mario Kart any day of the week.

Todd Kennedy

Pastor of Spirit and Word

Todd was born and raised in northeast Ohio, but his modest height and relative lack of speed, strength, and agility set him on a different path than his fellow West Akronite, 4-time NBA MVP LeBron James. Raised Catholic (of the post-Vatican II sort that might include a John Denver song at your baptism), Todd fell in as a University of Chicago undergrad with a group of folks who thought that God spoke to them and healed people (among other things), which he thought he should probably investigate, and soon found himself helping to plant the Hyde Park Vineyard. He’s been in the Vineyard ever since.

Todd did an M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary, following which he moved to New Haven where he met his now-wife Michelle in a homegroup that would later grow into the Elm City Vineyard. After a short stint on the staff of the then-NYC Vineyard, Todd followed Michelle to San Diego to marry her, tutor students at City College, make sausage, and eat fish tacos. They returned to New Haven just in time for the launch of the Elm City Vineyard as Todd started a Ph.D. program in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Union Theological Seminary in New York, a program (successfully) concluded approximately a decade later with three kiddos added along the way.

Todd is a founding steering committee member of the Society of Vineyard Scholars and has served in a wide range of ministries over the life of ECV. He joined the pastoral staff in 2019 with a focus on YDS students and others pursuing theological education and vocational discernment in and around the Vineyard and oversees ECV’s prayer ministry and prophetic teams, among other things.

Though Todd has lived on the East Coast for more than 20 years now, he can’t bring himself to root for one of those regularly successful, big payroll teams in New York or Boston. He still follows his beloved Cleveland Guardians and Cavaliers and has, in his middle age, exchanged one sort of football fandom for another and adopted a Premier League team (YNWA). Todd loves reading, hiking, and shouting encouragingly at his children’s baseball, basketball, and soccer games.

Bill Elander

Spiritual Formation Pastor

Bill Elander is the Spiritual Formation Pastor.

Tina Williams

Worship Pastor

Tina originally hails from Jacksonville, FL. Since moving to New Haven in 2005, she studied at Yale College and at UConn Law School, became involved with the homeless community in New Haven through Agape Church for the Housed and Unhoused, and married ECV’s own Lead Pastor (see above). She’s now happily serving as ECV’s worship pastor, and in her free time is working as an attorney at Esperanza Center for Law and Advocacy doing humanitarian immigration law. Her favorite things include: singing, worship music, meeting new people, eating all kinds of food, and the pursuit of justice in the world.  She lives with her husband in the Edgewood neighborhood with her adorable baby girls, Zoe María and Joy Amara Williams.

Matt Croasmun

Staff Pastor

Matt and his wife Hannah, along with Caleb and Kathy Maskell, planted the Elm City Vineyard in the fall of 2007. He completed his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (New Testament) in the spring of 2014 and serves as the Director of Research and Publication at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Teaching is his calling—in the church and in the university setting. Matt loves music, having majored in music composition as an undergraduate (MC ’01) and  writing and performing music in a variety of venues. After college, Matt spent a year on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Yale and Wesleyan and then, after getting married, spent 3 years at the Yale Divinity School through the Institute of Sacred Music. He serves on the steering committee for the Society of Vineyard Scholars for Vineyard USA and has a real passion for connecting the life of the mind and the life of faith. Matt also loves soccer (playing and watching), TEDTalks, the Chicago Bulls, NASA, and U2. He will also regularly insist to you that his daughter, Junia, is the cutest little girl on the planet.