Mason United Methodist Church

Pastor Chuck Harris was born and raised in Astoria, Oregon.  He graduated from Astoria High School in 1983 and attended Pacific Lutheran University between 1983 and 1988.  During his summers off from college, he worked in Astoria at a fish packing plant and cannery, where he was a proud UFCW union member.  In 1988, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from PLU, with a double major in History and Religion and a minor in Greek.  From the fish packing plant, he received copious advice from co-workers to “keep it real” and don’t forget about people who “actually work for a living.”
 
Chuck then moved from Tacoma to the Midwest and attended The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  During his seminary days, he was active in an environmental awareness program and did his field studies in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s far, southeast, side.  After finishing seminary, he was ordained in 1993 at Luther Memorial Church, Tacoma, which was his first-call congregation.
 
Along the path of his own journey of faith, Pastor Chuck has become an ever more grateful student of God’s amazing grace.  His own experience of marriage, divorce, and then marriage anew taught him that God is always for us (never against us) and that even in the most troubled of times, the grace we know from God in Jesus is abundant beyond our wildest hopes and imaginings. Throughout his faith journey, he has learned the life-giving art of a daily return to his baptismal waters, where God cleanses, renews, and strengthens him for each of his vocations” husband, parent, friend, and minister of the gospel.
 
Chuck is married to Kirsten Harris, who is a small business owner, entrepreneur, and passionate about increasing sustainability in the apparel industry at all levels.  She is a proud graduate of the University of Texas, Austin, and her career in the world of apparel has taken her to companies as diverse as Nike, Nordstrom, and Amazon.  Their immediate family includes Thomas (a physics researcher in California), Katherine (a Whitman College graduate studying the world), and Ken (a Junior at Mt. Rainier High School in Des Moines).  Their home in Normandy Park also includes an energetic golden-doodle, Dazi, whose primary goals in life are either to snuggle with humans or zoom around the yard; two cats named Tili and Tizi, who oversee the domestic life of the Harris household, and Nardo and Sherman, tortoises who are models of Zen-like patience and calm.