Philip is from Ireland, and became a follower of Jesus as a teenager. Meeting together with other believers to pray and study the Word and sharing the Good News in his hometown very soon became a lifestyle.  Philip felt a burden for Ireland, as, although a very religious country, there were so few who knew the freedom and joy found in trusting Jesus. Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away in Western NY, as a teenager Martha felt God was calling her to the mission field and felt drawn to Ireland. While studying at Bible college, she began to pray seriously for Ireland. We met when Martha was serving as a short-term missionary in Philip’s hometown of Drogheda.  We were married in 1988 and returned to Ireland in 1994. We have six wonderful children. Patrick is married to Haley and lives in Virginia. Julia is married to Hunter and lives in Tennessee. Brian and Colm are both studying locally at Maynooth University and Scott and Sarah are in secondary school.

We have been serving in Ireland for 24 years now. So while we are new to Communitas, we are not new to missions, church planting, or the Irish culture!
We have been working with churches, and church planting in the greater Dublin area. Over the years we have held many roles, but always with a focus on making disciples and helping them learn to make disciples, and forming missional groups to live out the adventure together!  We love that the vision of Communitas is to establish churches who follow Jesus in transforming their world and we are looking forward to continuing to learn and grow as we seek to start a new missional community and help develop a network of similar communities around the Dublin area.