Pastor Matt grew up in Southern California and did his undergrad in History at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and then went to seminary at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.

It was at college that he met his wife Anne and began sensing God’s call to youth ministry.  He started working with teenagers at age 21 and still loves working with them.  Once Matt finished seminary he received a call to Northern California and served there for 4 years before coming to Washington.  He came to Columbia because he felt a calling to serve at a church that was not only trying to reach teens for Jesus Christ, but also doing its best to equip and teach parents how to raise their kids as followers of the Lord. 

Matt has 2 children who are amazing gifts from God.  In whatever spare time he has to recover from the last youth event Matt likes to run and hike in the awesome Creation that the Northwest provides!

Scott is a native of the Northwest. His father was a Methodist pastor and their family moved around Oregon and Washington before he graduated from High School in Centralia, Washington in 1976. Scott heard a call to ministry while at Seattle Pacific University, where he graduated in 1981. Scott served in the mission field in Australia and New Zealand before attending Gordon Conwell Seminary near Boston, Massachusetts.

Scott met his wife, Mary, in 1985 while doing a church internship in Cleveland, Ohio. They married and moved to Pasadena, California where Scott graduated from Fuller Seminary in 1987. Scott took his first ordained position as Associate Pastor in Escondido, California.  Later, Scott was the pastor at 1st Presbyterian Church in Brawley, California. 

In 1999 Scott took the position of Head of Staff Pastor in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.  Scott earned a Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Seminary.   In 2004 Scott’s family moved to Newberg, Oregon where Scott was an adjunct professor at George Fox Seminary. From 2005 until 2016 Scott was pastor at Cooper Mountain Presbyterian in Aloha, Oregon. From 2016 until 2019, Scott was the Stated Supply Pastor at Mt. Scott Park Presbyterian in S.E. Portland.

Scott and Mary enjoy bicycling, evening walks, hanging with family and friends, following the Blazers, Seahawks, Ducks, and Beavers, and being proud parents of Elizabeth and Michael, and daughter-in-law Kylee.

Jeff Haagenson brings a diverse musical background to his work at Columbia. He has studied choral music, opera, voice, piano, and guitar. He incorporates all of this into classical, traditional, popular, contemporary and jazz styles of worship music.  Jeff enjoys working with the contemporary worship band and leading the traditional choir.  He considers it a privilege to work behind the scenes to prepare Sunday morning worship services that enhance and support the messages of the day.  He also enjoys preparing the annual Christmas Concerts and special worship services. Jeff is a composer and arranger of both classical and contemporary music and has served as a music director at the high school and college levels. Jeff considers it a privilege to work with High School students at the church. He incorporates them into the worship team as he teaches and mentors them to be a new generation of worship musicians.

In his spare time, Jeff loves to practice and play guitar as well as biking, skiing and exercising.  Jeff’s wife Anna is also a musician and they frequently perform together.  Jeff and Anna have three boys - James, Matthew, and Adam.

Jeff has a Bachelor’s degree in music from Concordia College and a  Master’s Degree in music from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Tifny is a native of the Pacific Northwest. As a military spouse, her family has moved seven times in the past ten years, but is thankful to be settled back home. She received her Master’s degree in Social Work from Portland State in 2006 and brings a diverse range of experience in parent-child education, therapeutic preschool, foster care and pregnancy resource ministries, working with at-risk youth, and military family and spouse support. She and her husband Aaron have two children, Max and Stella.

Lydia grew up in Spokane, Washington and has lived in the Pacific Northwest her whole life. She loves student ministries, the outdoors, hiking, sports, and just hanging out with youth students. Lydia attended Whitworth University where she fell in love with the study of theology and began to discern what a call to ministry would look like vocationally. During her time at school she was able to study church history, serve her community, intern within different ministries, and find her call to youth ministry. After graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology and Speech Communications Lydia returned to Columbia Presbyterian Church after being a 2018 summer intern. Lydia is married to Liam Fitzpatrick, one of our Utmost Athletics coaches.

Steve is a retired Presbyterian minister who has worked in Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington. His longest time was spent serving the church in Toledo, WA where he ministered for 25 years. Pastor Steve grew up at CPC. In fact, his family was one of the 3 or 4 families that actually helped found CPC back in the 1950’s. They believed that the neighborhood areas around the heights needed a Sunday school for children in the area. Steve would say that as a child his only memories of church were at CPC. Along the way Steve felt called to pastoral ministry and he became ordained in the Presbytery of the Cascades after attending seminary at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Steve has been attending Columbia since 2015, mostly just enjoying being a part of the church, but he has also helped out with our middle school youth group as well. He loves to canoe and treasures his role a grandpa (“bapa”).