Assistant Pastors & Ministry Staff
Adam Bakun
Assistant Pastor for Small Groups, Training, and Welcome
Email | adamb@bostonvineyard.org
Adam joined the Greater Boston Vineyard Team in May of 2005 shortly before his marriage to his wife Ann. Adam's first involvement with the Vineyard came in 2001 while he was living in Providence, RI. He began attending a Small Group at the Greater Boston Vineyard to have a common Christian community with Ann. Since that time, Adam and Ann have put down roots in Cambridge and have been increasingly blessed by being served by and serving other through the Vineyard.
Adam is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. After high school, he spent a year in the Veneto region of Italy on a foreign exchange program before attending Wesleyan University. Adam received a BA in the College of Social Studies, a writing-intensive interdisciplinary major combining government, history, and economoics. Adam spent his first few years after college working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Providence. Prior to joining the VCFGB staff, Adam was the administrator for Healthy Futures, a sexual health program promoting abstinence until marriage. After three years of serving as an Administrative Assistant at the Vineyard, Adam's role was changed to Assistant Pastor in the spring of 2008.
Adam loves discovering new restaurants and promoting them to his friends. He enjoys games, especially the fast-paced "Crazy Uno!" Adam can also be seen at times walking the streets of Greater Boston reading comic books.
Campus Minister
Email | adam@bostonvineyard.org
Truth be told, Adam's secret life-long ambition is to be a superhero – complete with a super-cool superhero identity, super-natural abilities that can help people, and winning personality (tights not necessary). In the meantime, he's super excited about working at the Greater Boston Vineyard (an ideal, inconspicuous, mild-mannered alter-ego) and talking about Jesus with college students. Adam came to Boston for college and ended up studying Physics through a mix-up in paperwork. He had made plans to leave Boston and explore other exciting cities, but he heard from some friends there was going to be full-scale revival right here in Beantown. Needless to say he decided to stick around so as not to miss out on that action.
Adam really enjoys watching movies, eating ice cream and eating ice cream while watching movies. Other interests include running, rowing, rock-climbing, collecting t-shirts, defeating diabolical criminal masterminds and rescuing damsels in distress.
Dana Reynolds
Assistant Pastor for Worship and the Arts
Email | dana@bostonvineyard.org
Dana was born in rural Ohio, but got a taste for the East Coast in Maryland during his time in undergrad. Jobless after completing a degree in Philosophy and History of Mathematics, Dana found himself drifting back to the midwest. Like too many humanities majors, Dana began searching for another path which might lead to a career--music. Dana had played piano for several years but he'd never seriously considered pursuing music nor had he ever trained in the instrument he truly loved, the guitar. Finally on a serious career path, he applied to Berklee College of Music, was admitted, and again found himself on the East Coast. Two years after the move his curiosity was peaked by the Vineyard ad on the T; he visited and the rest is history. On staff, Dana oversees worship, sound, and projection at the Boston site.
Dana and his wife Lydia have two boys, Daniel and Peter. Dana loves to cook, and dreams of opening an American cuisine restaurant in Portugal to show Europeans just how good American food can be. He's a self-proclaimed "pie guy," his favorites being rubard, lemon meringue, and tart apple. Sometime in the future he'd also love to design and make wooden, mechanical toys.
David Linhart
Assistant Pastor for Youth
Email | davidL@bostonvineyard.org
David does not remember how he ended up in Greater Boston in November 2004, though it had something to do with gene mapping at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and becoming a doctor, unless his singer/songwriter career took off first. There was reason enough to believe the former might happen since he earned undergraduate and Masters degrees in bioengineering from Cornell University. There was also reason enough to believe the latter might happen because, hey, he really wanted it.
But David was ready to care about whatever God wanted him to care about, even if it meant a very new direction. He moved in on a Wednesday, attended his first Vineyard service that Sunday, took Vineyard 101 the following Sunday and signed on for his first church membership. One year later, when going after being a doctor or a rockstar stopped being the meaning of life, church membership was his only reason for staying in the area.
Now David makes as few plans for himself as possible since they always fall apart. For example, after a Vermont wedding to Yaminette Diaz in June 2006, the two planned to set up life together somewhere hot, like Brazil or Puerto Rico. Now settled in Somerville, their future is looking rather Nordic. But the two mostly grew up in the Northeast anyway, even though David started school in Jamaica, his dad is Czech, his mom is Haitian/Dominican, and his wife is Puerto Rican.
It turns out that David did not plan on joining the Greater Boston Vineyard staff as Youth Pastor, a good sign that he is not getting in the way of God's plans since that is exactly what happened in November 2006. David is a new person through God's work here, and he wants to be part of making that happen for others through a focus on Greater Boston's youth and families.
Kristina Kaiser
Assistant Pastor
Email | kristina@bostonvineyard.org
Kristina has been on staff at the Greater Boston Vineyard since July of 2006. She and her husband, Dominic, began attending the Vineyard in the spring of 2002 when she graduated from New England Conservatory with a Master of Music in Vocal Performance. Since coming to the Vineyard, she and her husband have really enjoyed growing in their leadership skills and taking advantage of all of the education that is offered here. They both feel that they have never before been on such a springboard into what God has for them, and the church has been a huge part of that. Kristina currently co-leads a small group, a cluster, and Move Mountains Prayer with Dominic. She also helps lead worship, co-directs the gospel choir, and assists with the arts portion of Community Offerings.
When Kristina isn't at church, she can be found teaching voice or piano lessons, cooking, watching movies, cleaning (to be honest,) organizing a social event, or attending a social event. Life is never boring, and she doesn't intend that it will become so anytime soon.
Before moving to the greater Boston area, Kristina and Dominic lived in Wisconsin where they attended the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. She was born in Wisconsin, and lived there throughout her adolescent years, but she spent many of her elementary school years in Indiana.
Director of Community Youth Programs
Email | reena@bostonvineyard.org
Reena graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in anthropology and a minor in business administration. She has a passion for youth and served as president and founder of the campus group National Organization for College Placement (UNC Chapter). After graduation, Reena made the leap from the South to cold, snowy New England in 2005 to join The Posse Foundation, an organization that works with outstanding young leaders. Upon moving to Cambridge, she decided to find a church… her pick from the phonebook ended up being a great choice, and she has been coming back ever since her first visit. Reena came on staff in the summer of 2007, as the Director of Community Youth Programs. Although she misses some of that good ole' southern charm from time to time, she has gotten to know and love the Boston area.
Associate Director of Community Development
Email | stephanie@bostonvineyard.org
Stephanie grew up in the sunny, smoggy, suburban, Southern Californian city of Rancho Cucamonga (yes it is a real place and that's its real name). After 18 years of suburbia and not knowing where to attend college, she decided that a small college on the other side of the country sounded like a fun change of pace. She attended Gordon College and graduated with a BA in Social Work.
Growing up she found herself having more fun working with elderly Russian immigrants at a service center in downtown Hollywood and others from all over the world than she would with her own peers at her school. In college she had some influential experiences in numerous urban areas and became passionate about cities, systems, social justice and the church's role in it all. She helped start a tutoring program for low-income youth, trained students in community development and even dabbled in the public policy realm a bit.
After giving up on finding a vibrant church in New England, she randomly visited the Vineyard with one of her friends. Initially impressed by the quality of coffee, she kept coming back. Her agreement to help out one summer with the annual Community Fest led to a fulltime internship which then somehow led to a fulltime job. Despite growing up in a large church, with her dad as a pastor and swearing that her destiny would never involve the fate of employment in a church, she couldn't be happier!
Stephanie likes cooking, dancing, walking along the Charles River (her most beloved spot in Boston), drinking good coffee, talking with friends, doing crafty & creative things and meeting new people. She also has a great fondness of fruits, vegetables and all things of the whole-grain variety. One of four kids, she secretly prays that her entire family decides to relocate to the East Coast.
