Building Up the Body of Christ: Dr. Dan Doriani

Rick Matt (RM): Thanks for taking time to share your story with our readers. Let’s begin with a little background. Where are you from originally, and how did you come to know the Lord?

Dan Doriani (DD): I was born in New York City, but my family moved to Western Pennsylvania when I was in elementary school. We were a church-going family, but our church background was Baptist and Disciples of Christ, which was a very mixed bag. Most people in our particular church seemed to be genuine Christians, but the denomination as a whole was not fully orthodox. My parents were both involved in the church. My mother especially was filled with godly kindness, always teaching a Bible study or caring for people in need, but somewhat individualistic in her understanding of Christianity. My father was a talented but erratic man who had trouble keeping a job and could be hard on his sons. The gap between his professed beliefs and his behavior made it difficult for me to become a Christian.

I had Christian ideas in my mind, but in high school I was sort of a nihilistic, existentialistic theist who thought God probably existed, but I hoped he didn’t because I didn’t want to go to hell for not being a follower. I didn’t think he cared much about this world or about me either.

I did go to a Christian college—Geneva College, a Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA) school. You didn’t have to be Christian to go there, it was close to home, and they gave me a scholarship, so that’s where I went. I had the gift of falling in with a number of bright, athletic, funny, and godly disciples, including an extraordinarily kind and gentle roommate. I also had a professor who did a terrific job of explaining the Bible as a whole. Through all this, I became a Christian, and I would say it was a radical conversion. I devoured the Bible and thought and talked about theology all the time. Within 18 months or so I was even doing some teaching.

RM: Was this as part of a campus ministry organization?

DD: Not a campus ministry per se. It was more like the leaders of the school wanted to make use of Christian students who had leadership potential. I had a summer job with a quasi-independent organization called Coalition for Christian Outreach, a regional ministry covering West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, which was more a top-down thing, not student-run. A leader there informed me that I was to give a sermon-ish talk soon at a Tuesday night gathering. I did, and before long I was also doing some public teaching and also preaching a bit in area churches. People kept encouraging me to go into ministry. My most beloved professor declared: “You must go to seminary.” He recommended I go to Westminster in Philadelphia, which was the place to go at the time, so I did.

But there was a brief interim period first because I wanted to get married. My wife, Debbie, is two years younger, so I waited for her to finish college while I worked in a liberal United Methodist Church as a Youth Director and Director of Christian Education. The pastor had no interest whatsoever in doing Bible studies, so I taught them, mostly to people over 50 who were evangelical. I got a lot of experience through that. Once married, I went to Westminster for my MDiv and straight on to a PhD, which was a joint program with Yale, but awarded by Westminster. I also did some teaching and occasional preaching during that time. I completed my MDiv and all the PhD courses, languages, and research in five years, which I don’t recommend to anyone. I managed it pretty well, but I was mildly burned out, and we were expecting our first child, so I decided to take a break from writing the dissertation.

But my “break” actually consisted of taking a call to a church in Maryland, which was what today we call revitalization work. We had a couple of children while there. The church did revitalize, by God’s grace, and is still there, small but healthy. I wrote my dissertation at night after fulfilling my pastoral duties during the day. Shortly after finishing my PhD, I got several inquiries about teaching and ended up back at Geneva College for five years. I taught Bible survey classes three or four times a year because they were required for everyone in the school. I quickly realized I’d go insane if I had to keep teaching the same course a hundred times over the next 30 years.

RM: How did you get from Geneva to Covenant?

DD: Around that time, some seminaries asked if I’d be interested in teaching for them, but I didn’t feel I could leave Geneva at that point. Eventually, through God’s providence, I met Dr. Paul Kooistra, then President of Covenant Seminary, at a church conference. We talked together for two and a half hours. He explained Covenant’s philosophy of ministry training based on the pastor-scholar model: those who prepare pastors for the church should not only be strong scholars and academics, but also have real-world experience as pastors in the local church. This vision was unique at the time and resonated powerfully with me. I thought that if I ever taught at a seminary, Covenant would be my first choice.

A year later, at a national conference for theologians, I met Dr. Bryan Chapell, then Covenant’s VP of Academics and Dean of Faculty. We were supposed to talk for 15 minutes, but that also went for two hours, ending with an invitation to come give a lecture at Covenant and see if I might like to teach there. I did give that lecture and ended up joining the Covenant faculty at the same time that Dr. Bob Yarbrough arrived for his first stint at Covenant. We were both New Testament profs basically coming to restart the department after a period of turnover. For a while we were the department.

RM: Your first period at Covenant lasted from 1991 to 2003, correct?

DD: Yes, I was here for twelve years, the first four just as a professor, then four more years as Dean of Faculty and Academic Vice President, then another four as just the Dean of Faculty. For much of that time, I still taught a full load of classes because we didn’t have enough faculty to cover everything. It kept me very busy. Eventually, we hired a few more profs and I was able to do more writing and speaking at conferences and churches. During this time, I was often asked to preach at Central Presbyterian Church, a large EPC church in Clayton, Missouri, because they’d had two rough pastoral transitions between 1995 and 2001. Eventually, they asked me to come be their pastor. After a substantial delay, I said yes.

RM: What drew you back to the pastorate?

DD: I love teaching, and I love pastoring, but I have this quirk—when I’m a professor, I miss being a pastor, and when I’m pastoring, I miss being a professor. I had begun to miss pastoring, which made the call attractive to me. I also have a deep conviction that many pastors stay too long at churches when they should retire or do something else. So, I told Central I would be their pastor for eight to twelve years. It ended up being close to 11. By that point I was missing teaching again and wanted to do more writing. The time seemed right, the opportunity presented itself, so I came back to Covenant as a professor in 2013.

But I also served for eight years as VP for Special Academic Projects, which was a loosely defined role that allowed me to tackle some projects for the Seminary and enabled me to represent the school to various external constituencies—a sort of ambassador-at-large. I spoke at a lot of conferences, wrote books, and met with lots of people to build relationships. Fundraising was not part of the job, and I never asked anyone for money, but a number of those contacts did result in significant (and unexpected) gifts to the Seminary. In those years, I learned that people who are financially successful and generous give for a variety of reasons, but mostly they just want to know that their money will support something or someone they trust and believe in. I’m grateful to have been used by the Lord in that way. I’m back to being “just a professor” now—but with a few side interests.

RM: One of those “side interests” is the Center for Faith and Work St. Louis, which you founded. How did this come about, and what sorts of things does the Center do?

DD: The interest came partly from my father, who was an enormously curious person. Whenever he met someone, he would ask what their job was and follow up with a series of insightful questions about that work. People were often pleased that someone actually wanted to know about what they did.

I also had grandfathers who were totally different from each other. One was both a successful artist and a noted opera singer. The other was a very ordinary farmer. He had a degree in agriculture, which was unusual for the time, but he was not financially successful at all. It fascinated me that one man could be connected to the earth, milk cows with his own hands, and plant Christmas trees that he cut down and sold in the town square; and the other man could stand on a stage and sing to thousands of people and also paint beautiful pictures that people still enjoy today.

The faith and work interest took more root when I pastored at Central Pres, where many people had very interesting jobs. I wanted to explore this more, but pastoring prevented me from doing anything systematic with it. Then in 2017 an opportunity came about for me to start the Center for Faith and Work St. Louis as an independent 501(c)3. It’s modest in size, but we have our own board, our own budget, a few employees, and it keeps growing. The main thing we do is a podcast, called Working with Dan Doriani, which features conversations with people from all kinds of professions. We discuss their work, their faith, and the intersection of those two things. The podcast is growing by 40% a year, which is significant. We’ve recorded 85 episodes so far and keep getting better at doing it. These are mostly done through Zoom because I talk with people all over the country, but we try to do them in person when we can.

I also speak widely to represent both the Center and the Seminary. I do maybe a dozen conferences on faith and work each year. And we run cohorts for leaders through Zoom. The current one has people from six different states. Each session is about 75 minutes long, with a time of instruction on biblical principles of leadership and a complicated case study, usually based on real challenges business leaders face, so we can apply those principles. The Center also has lots of resources available on our website, with more to come.

RM: In addition to all this, you also serve on the board of The Gospel Coalition.

DD: Yes, I’ve been on the TGC board for four years now. It’s a great organization that does an enormous amount of work with a very modest budget and an army of devoted volunteers.

RM: One other area I’d like to hear about is interim pastoring. How did you get involved with that?

DD: One way to say it is that some people like to plow a furrow long and straight, and others like to have several furrows going at once. I’m a several-furrows guy. I like a diversity of tasks and challenges. I was first invited to be an interim pastor at the tender age of 27, while working on my PhD. That opportunity basically consisted of preaching twice on Sundays and meeting with the elders occasionally. I liked doing it, and the church grew a bit while I was there.

Basically, I keep getting asked to serve and I keep saying yes. Almost the minute I got to Covenant, Dr. Phil Douglass, whose specialty was church planting, asked if I would help him co-pastor a church in South St. Louis County, which I did for three years. He did the main pastoral work and some preaching, and I preached maybe 20 times a year. I loved it. When that ended, another church asked if I’d do the same thing for them for several months. Eventually, larger churches started asking me. I was interim at Kirk of the Hills, near the Seminary, twice. That was a delightful experience.

Then, Greentree Community Church in Kirkwood needed an interim pastor. That was a terrific experience too. We addressed several strategic issues fruitfully and found ways to unleash a marvelous staff. After that, Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, the PCA’s flagship church, needed an interim after the unexpected death of their longtime pastor Dr. Harry Reeder. I flew down there on weekends for six months while still teaching full time during the week, then my wife and I lived there for 14 months full time, so it was 20 months total. That was a challenging but also delightful experience. We made wonderful friends, and I enjoyed being able to prepare the ground, so to speak, for their next pastor, Scott Redd, who is there now and doing a great job.

RM: What is it about interim pastoring that makes it so enjoyable for you?

DD: I enjoy problem solving. Every church has its problems and flaws, things it needs to work on. You see those more clearly when a pastor has left for whatever reason. All four of the bigger churches I served as an interim had really good foundations, but there was still work that needed to be done. My gifts don’t lead me to do start-ups, but to help strong churches that have significant challenges. Churches in need of pastoral assistance can feel pretty low; but in my experience, they are usually healthier than they know. Ideally, the interim names their strengths, resources, and solid foundations, and that allows them to address their issues effectively and restore their momentum. I like to show leaders how much they have going for them, to help them to see and use their gifts more effectively. That’s a pleasure and a privilege.

RM: You mentioned before some things about Covenant that brought you here originally. What keeps you here? What have been some highlights for you?

DD: The most important thing is that we are pastor-scholars training pastors, which has always been the main goal. We do train people for lots of other things too, and our grads serve in kingdom ministry or church ministry in a variety of ways. But with the shortage—I would even say the desperate shortage—of pastors in the church today, our core mission of training pastors remains primary. I believe in that. The best and brightest graduates from many seminaries often become professors or serve in other ways, but the best and brightest from Covenant tend to become pastors; not all, but there’s a strong propensity for that. The church needs those pastors. That’s big for me.

I also like the way we go about community life. That’s not quite the same if you’re an online student, but even then, we try to create some sense of belonging to a larger covenantal community. I like how people on campus attend chapel together every week. And students actually come to visit professors during office hours because they want to get to know their profs and are looking for mentors for ministry. Even people who don’t intend to be pastors have an interest in how what they’re learning here applies to them in whatever way they end up serving. That’s outstanding.

For me, the main thing about Covenant is very simple: We’re an orthodox, evangelical, Presbyterian, convictional school for future pastors in Reformed denominations. I align with that mission, and I like the people I work with. It’s a blessing to know and serve with them.

RM: Is there anything else you’d like to say to our students?

DD: I would say, keep on paying attention to your gifts. If you can find the spot where you’re using most of your gifts, drawing helpfully on your experience, and taking to heart the wisdom of your mentors, that’s a good place to serve. That’s probably your happy place.

Note: This article first appeared in the spring 2026 edition of Covenant magazine. Get your copy or subscribe to Covenant here.