Former Pastor Dr. M. Craig Barnes
From 1993 to 2002, Rev. Dr. Craig Barnes served as the pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. In addition to preaching and providing pastoral care to this large congregation, he led the church into a ministry of grace to the city of Washington.
He is a 1978 graduate of The King's College in New York, holds a Masters of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from The Divinity School of the University of Chicago where he studied Church History under Martin E. Marty, a leading scholar of the American Church.
In 1981, Mr. Barnes was ordained and called by the First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs to become their Minister of Young Adults.
In 1984, he took a leave of absence to pursue his Ph.D course requirements. In 1986, he returned to Colorado Springs where he assumed the duties of Minister of Education.
In January, 1988, he was called to be the senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin. His tenure there was marked by a vision for the church in the world.
In 1992, Mr. Barnes completed his Ph.D. with a dissertation on John R. Mott. It was in that same year that his first book, Yearning, was published. When God Interrupts appeared in February 1996. Hustling God was published in 1999, and his fourth book, Sacred Thirst, in January of 2001. Dr. Barnes writes about the struggles of contemporary people to make sense of God's grace in their lives.
Dr. Barnes left NPC for a teaching position at