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.

Asha Evans

Family Pastor

A Californian by birth, Asha is delighted to finally experience the beauty of four seasons in New England. Asha received her Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics from UC Davis. After several years teaching and working with university student services, Asha and her husband, Robb, moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where she studied Turkish, taught English to refugee children, and had her first daughter. In addition to three years in Turkey, Asha has spent time in Iran, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Mexico, and her father’s native homeland of India and hopes to travel the world with her husband and three daughters one day. Her work with a peace building organization (Pathways for Mutual Respect) brought her to New Haven eight years ago. Now she works as a childbirth educator and doula, dreams of training as a midwife someday, homeschools her kids, loves being outdoors, enjoys artwork, crochets blankets, and does all the voices when reading aloud. She knows God is up to good work among the children and families in our community and is excited and honored to be serving ECV as the Family Pastor.

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.

Deniqua Washington

Good News Pastor

Deniqua credits her love for people and their diverse iterations to growing up in a military family. She moved about 5 times growing up, living in Italy and traveling between states, but she calls Virginia home. In Virginia she went to Hampton University, where she studied Broadcast journalism and spent much of her time as a young adult. Deniqua has been an active member of Elm City Vineyard Church (ECV) since 2015 when she settled in New Haven to study at Yale Divinity School (YDS). While studying at YDS she interned with ECV, and her work with the church contributed to her receiving both her Masters of Divinity and Sacred Theology Masters degrees. She divided her time between serving at ECV (Preaching/Teaching Team, Prayer and Prophecy Team, Praise and Worship Team, and Roots Youth ministry), and leadership roles at YDS (Transformational Leadership Fellow, Presidents Public Service Fellow, Yale Black Seminarians Vice President). She is passionate about the Gospel’s ability to tenderly evangelize, practically pierce through our day-to-day— all while supernaturally changing our lives. All of this contributes to her excitement in serving as the Pastor of Good News and Social Engagement at ECV, and spreading the Gospel of God’s justice, mercy, and love beyond the proverbial walls of the church. Now her time and attention goes to transformative ministry, spending time with friends and family, GOOD FOOD, the occasional (not so occasional) shopping trip, reading, writing, listening to tons of music, and tracing God through popular culture.

Nate Czajkowski

Youth Pastor

Nate is a native of Connecticut and loves the city of New Haven. Before pursuing ministry professionally, he worked in the advertising, branding, and digital world as a graphic designer and art director. Prior to Nate coming to on staff with ECV, he was the Assistant Pastor at Vineyard New Haven and did campus ministry at Southern Connecticut State University. He also has spent time volunteering for Elm City Vineyard’s Roots (youth) Ministry. He loves: talking to teenagers and college students about Jesus, art history, beautiful design work, making corny jokes that not everyone appreciates, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Todd Kennedy

Seminary Pastor

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 (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 NYC Vineyard (now Vineyard ONE), Todd followed Michelle to San Diego to marry her, tutor students at City College, make sausage, and eat fish tacos, among other things. 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 as an ECV elder and in a wide range of other ministries over the life of the church. 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.

Though Todd has lived on the East Coast for more than 15 years now, he can’t bring himself to root for one of those regularly successful, big payroll teams in New York or Boston. Though he’s retired his Chief Wahoo cap, he still follows his beloved Cleveland Indians along with the briefly glorious Cleveland Cavaliers and (despite some significant reservations about the NFL and football in general) can’t quite help but pay some attention to the Browns. Todd loves reading, hiking, drinking what the kids these days are calling “craft beer,” and shouting encouragingly from the sidelines at his children’s baseball, basketball, and soccer games. His kids are solid athletes, to be sure, but he suspects that they have a somewhat less bright future than the James kids do in professional basketball, all the same.

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.

Koritha de Leon

Administrator

Koritha hails from the Bay Area and has a long history of working with schools in various capacities alongside a steady commitment to campus ministry, ministry to Filipinos and Filipino-Americans, and ministry to the local Church. In particular, her passion for seeing cities thrive through the work of the Church is a great fit with our vision to see flourishing not just in our church but in our wider city too. Koritha has two children, Lukas and Amos, and she is married to David, a current Yale Divinity School M.Div candidate. She is also a STEM teacher for New Haven Public Schools and finds joy in seeing young minds light up as they make sense of their world.

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.