Rev. Dr. David A. deSilva
Director of Music
DdeSilva@ashland.edu
David deSilva became Director of Music and Organist at CUMC staff in 1998, having served in similar capacities at Episcopal, Lutheran, and Methodist churches since 1985.
He says, "I deeply appreciate the importance of music and worship at CUMC. We have a talented cadre of singers and instrumentalists whose combined strengths allow us to dream big. The church is committed to excellence in church music, and highly responsive to our efforts to encounter God together through the pursuit of the sublime. I hope that our church will continue to attract people with a heart for singing or instrumental worship, to help us in this pursuit as we both bring to life the musical proclamations of faith entrusted to us by our forebears and give new voice to what God is doing in our midst."
David is also Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church (Florida Conference). He is the author of numerous books in biblical studies, including An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation (InterVarsity, 2004), Introducing the Apocrypha (Baker Academic, 2002), and Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle "to the Hebrews" (Eerdmans, 2000), and several spiritual formation books, including Sacramental Life: Spiritual Formation Through the Book of Common Prayer (InterVarsity, 2008) and Praying with John Wesley (Discipleship Resources, 2001).
He has been married to Donna Jean deSilva since 1990, and together they have three sons: Adrian, born in 1995, Austin, born in 1998, and Alexander, born in 2001. (They stopped having children before getting to the "Bs" in the baby name book.) He enjoys racquetball, trying to cook a variety of ethnic cuisines, plucking at the mandolin, and, most of all, playing and discovering the world afresh with his three sons.