Garrett Anderson - Moderator

Pastor - Liverpool Presbyterian

Garrett grew up on a farm in the midwest, still has a fondness for the smell of cow manure and is known to occasionally chew on a blade of grass. After college he was a campus staff member with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Illinois, Kentucky, and later in New York. He attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena California where the weather was “totally bitchin’”.  He once would brag that FTS educated more Presbyterian seminarians than all the other presbyterian seminaries in California combined. Now he feels compelled to explain that he’s not one “those kinds” of evangelicals.

When asked in class about his calling he replied, “I’m still not unsure that God doesn’t want me to become a minister.” The professor said “Yep, I get it.” Struggling with his call after the Long Beach General Assembly Garrett distinctly heard the voice of God tersely say, “I’m in this church; you can be, too.” While in seminary Garrett served as Ruling Elder in South Pasadena Presbyterian Church. With a more solid sense of call he was ordained and installed as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in 2003 in Genesee Valley Presbytery.  Nevertheless, every January he writes in his journal, “God, are you sure there’s nothing else I could do?”

Rev. Anderson has enjoyed being a Minister of Word and Sacrament for 17 years.  (Seventeen out of nineteen isn’t bad.) Previously having served as chairperson of the Working-Group-formerly-and-once-again-known-as-the-Committee-on-Ministry and now having been elected moderator of the Presbytery he suspects that he is an example of the Peter Principle.

He is married to and in the shadow of the Rev. Mary Anderson.  They have one son, Samuel, a musician who thinks (not unjustifiably so) that his father is a guitar playing hack. Sam, a double PK, grudgingly comes to church.

Garrett enjoys wood working as it allows him to escape talking to people.  He is an avid Adirondack backpacker and completed the Northville-Placid Trail but had to come home because he ran out of toilet paper.  In 2018 he received the enneagram into his heart and found it to be a tool of the Holy Spirit to unlock his otherwise somewhat stingy heart. He is beginning an enneagram teacher certification course in 2021 and hopes to begin a Master’s in Mental Health Counseling program afterward.