Leaders

Christian Coon, Lead Pastor
Christian has been a pastor since 1998 and served two area suburban churches before moving to the city. He’s a native Iowan who worked in the non-profit public relations and journalism fields before going into the ministry. He loves running, blogging (www.genxrev.blogspot.com), all kinds of music, baseball, ice cream, and, most importantly, his wife, Anne, and two children, Caroline and Ethan. You can read some of his writing in the books “365 Meditations for Young Adults” and “365 Devotionals for Men by Men.”

Trey Hall, Lead Pastor
Trey looked up at the blackboard one day in a college Organic Chemistry course and realized he was never going to be a doctor. Since then he’s been on a haphazard journey of trying to serve God in a different way than he’d originally planned. It’s been a good ride so far. A Southerner by birth and formation, Trey’s been a pastor since 2000 and has served congregations in the United Kingdom and Chicagoland. A reader, runner, coffee drinker, public transit junkie, and very novice guitar student, Trey feels lucky to be living in one of the best cities in the whole world.

Brittany Issac, Associate Pastor
After finishing seminary and feeling burned by the church, Brittany opted for a job at Starbucks. Seven years later she left her management position to follow God’s leading back to ministry in two places, as a barista and a pastor. Raised in a small town in Central Illinois, Brittany loves the community feel of each neighborhood and thinks it is what makes this city so great. When she is not drinking coffee, she can be found cooking or taking a bicycle ride. One day Brittany hopes to finish a memory quilt that her great grandmother began 30 years ago.

Jen O’Grady, Downtown and Wicker Park Children’s Ministry Leader
Jen previously served as the director of religious education for Second Unitarian Church and program director and a board member of This Is Me, a non-profit that fosters substance in the world of adolescent and teen girls through programs designed for the “whole girl.” Jen and her husband Sean were born and raised in Chicago and are the proud parents of Emma and Elena. Jen’s favorite activities include bowling with her family, walking on either a treadmill or in nature and cooking new recipes. She really enjoys going deeper in her own faith journey and helping folks of all ages go deeper in theirs. Jen will direct children’s ministries at our Downtown and Wicker Park sites.

Amy Coffin, Andersonville Children’s Ministry Leader
Amy grew up in a church planting family, went to Princeton seminary, and served in India running a discipleship school. Since moving to Chicago in 2009, she has worked as a barista, a nanny, and now is delighted to be back in the church. Amy is passionate about Chicago family life, is a foodie (blogging at http://www.chicagonow.com/lincoln-park-housewife), loves the CTA, and her roof top deck. The winter is a challenge for this L.A. born girl, but the warmth of community at Urban Village along with her husband Joe and her puppy Chaco make it more inviting.

Sarah Marie Young, Worship Leader: Downtown
Sarah is a vocalist, pianist, songwriter and all around imaginative musician. A lover of all styles of music, Sarah began singing in a small Baptist church in Indiana alongside her musical parents. She went on to study classical and gospel voice at Indiana University, took a hiatus from college while playing in an indie rock band, and finally finished her music studies in 2008 at Columbia College for jazz, latin, and blues music. Sarah currently performs all these styles around the city with her husband, Matt. While performing, Sarah’s deep love for God has called her to be a worship leader, and she is so excited to use God’s gifts to inspire others to renew and heal lives through worship.

Teran Loeppke, Deacon
Teran is an ordained deacon serving in the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church. Urban Village is his second ministry appointment. His primary full-time appointment is as Community Organizer at Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp., a bricks and mortar developer of affordable housing and community based organization. Teran is very excited to be a part of Urban Village because it is a community that values authenticity, that encourages him and others to be and discover their true selves with one another and with God.

Emily Jones, Student Pastor for Discipleship
Emily is delighted to be coordinating Groups & Retreats at Urban Village. She believes that a diverse and vibrant small group system offers each of us opportunities to connect with one another and with God, to study and serve, to pray and play, to find the Spirit in the Mess, and to be (w)holy/blessedly surprised. In other parts of her life, Emily works at a local education non-profit, studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, and volunteers as a Medical Advocate for sexual assault survivors. Before moving to Chicago in 2009, she was an organizer for the healthcare worker’s union in Connecticut.

Rev. Samuel L. Green, Jr., Student Pastor
Rev. Samuel Green is a first-year Master of Divinity student at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He is an ordained itinerant deacon of the Chicago Annual Conference in the AME Church. He is excited about helping God’s people transform their dreams into realities by understanding their God-given purpose. He is a native of Orlando, FL and loves Mickey Mouse!

Celeste Grace Groff, Student Pastor
Celeste has explored many different careers, now embracing being multivocational. She is a journalist and community gardener growing into the role of minister while studying at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She grew up in Washington, D.C., a few blocks away from the National Zoo (where she was a keeper’s aide while considering becoming an environmental educator), and could hear lion roars and gibbon calls in some early mornings.

Tim Kim, Worship Leader : Wicker Park
Tim is studying to get his Master of Divinity and Master of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is originally from Los Angeles and is therefore a weather snob who doesn’t understand the workings of humidity and snow (not to mention rain, wind, thunder, and lightning). Tim dislikes drivers who don’t give you the thank you wave when you let them in, when it rains while he is wearing suede shoes, and ketchup on anything but french fries (especially on rice). He drinks 3-4 cans of diet coke a day and wishes he had a dog named  Mr. Marbles.

Enoch Kim, Worship Leader: Andersonville
Enoch, native of Guam, is a singer, songwriter, musician who loves to sing songs with communities.  He studied Audio Engineering at Greenville College and moved to Chicago to pursue a career in music.  He loves being silly and sharing in laughter.  A few of his inspirations are Michael Jordan, Will Smith, and Martin Luther King Jr.  He is excited to share life with the community of Urban Village.

Jon Reynolds, Student Pastor for Young Adults
Jon Reynolds is a Graduate Student at Garrett Evangelical Theolgical Seminary and lives in Evanston IL. Jon comes to Urban Village from the fantastic state of Michigan. He works primarily with the young adults at Urban Village Church but also enjoys creating videos for worship. Jon is very excited to be spending a second year of ministry at Urban Village and looks forward to continuing to learn about the practice of ministry while in school.

Cody Schuler, Church Planting Intern
Cody Schuler has called the famously frozen Fargo, ND home for the past six years and is looking forward the adventure of coming to Chicago to be part of Urban Village this year. Cody is a full-time pastor who’s leaving ministry in Fargo for a year to learn about church planting on the ground in Chicago. Like most pastors, Cody has an obsession with books — but also loves coffee, photography, kayaking, Blue Devil basketball and is a certified public radio junkie. His ministry passions include creation care and mission trips to Peru.

Matt Richards, Church Planting Intern
Matt Richards is a southern gentleman from Durham, NC who loves greasy food, politics, theology, Steve Martin movies, energy efficient road trips, and men with manners.  Matt grew up in a non-religious family and then encountered this fellow named Jesus in college.  Things haven’t been quite the same since.  Matt counts Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Marilynne Robinson among the people who have taught him the most about the Christian life. A social worker by training, Matt is two classes away from finishing his Masters in Divinity at the University of Chicago Divinity School and is also a fellow at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis.

Jonathan Dean, Theologian-In-Residence
Jonathan was born in industrial Dudley, in the U.K., and raised in rural Cambridgeshire, in the beautiful ancient city of Ely. He studied Classics at the University of Oxford and theology at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his Ph.D. in Reformation Studies. Ordained in the British Methodist Church, Jonathan has served churches both in the U.K. and in the Chicago area, and worked in Britain as a prison chaplain in a high-security jail. Presently, he teaches Religion at Aurora University, teaching courses on spirituality, Jewish and Christian responses to the Holocaust, world religions, and survey courses in Christian history. He is also a Fellow of the university’s Wackerlin Center for Faith and Action, helping students to integrate academic learning with the spiritual life.