Pastors & Staff

---

Dean Smith

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Dean serves as the lead pastor at the Palo Alto campus. One of the co-founders of The Highway Community (see History), Dean has over 25 years of ministry experience in just about every facet of pastoral ministry. Dean and his wife, Diane, have 3 kids and live in Mountain View with their alpha female Dachshund Abigail, and newest puppy Hazel. Dean enjoys ambient music, cars that run, children that obey, and modifying the Wikipedia Dachshund page.

John Riemenschnitter

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

John serves as the lead pastor of the Mountain View campus. Also a co-founder of The Highway Community, John is closing in on 15 years of experience in full time ministry (how the time flies!). John, his wife Lynn, and their kids, Kyle, Trevor, Blake, and Shelby, live in Sunnyvale. John enjoys music (listening to it, playing it, writing it), coaching youth soccer, working with the family’s two Australian shepherds, Sadie and Murphy, and roasting coffee beans in his garage. He also is president of the largest Michael Bolton fan club in the USA, boasting 17 members.

Chris McCormick

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Chris serves as pastor of family ministries, providing oversight for Highway Kids and student ministries as well as mentoring parents through the spiritual training process of their children. Chris brings more than 15 years of ministry experience to The Highway Community, the most recent of which were spent in the cool confines of Tempe, Arizona. Chris, his wife Michelle, and their son, Blake, are currently living in San Jose (Evan is at Colorado State University). Chris enjoys underwater diving (and the exotic places, like Belize, where that hobby takes him), fishing, and watching movies. He can also commonly be found in his office listening to vintage gospel LPs hand picked from his father’s record library.

Kevin Marks

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Kevin serves as Director of Creative Arts, encouraging artists and artistic expression at The Highway Community. Kevin has completed a year of post-graduate study in screen-play writing at UCLA, and is a gifted writer, songwriter, musician, video editor… you get the idea! He and his wife Kimmie live in San Jose with their two boys, Judah and Finn. Kevin can outlast anyone in a CD store, loves sushi and Korean BBQ, and can be found at any Neil Finn concert in the continental US.

Steve Joh

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Steve oversees Highway’s post-college group, as well as our local and global outreach efforts. He has also been spotted playing various instruments, including but not limited to the bass guitar, the mandolin, the electric guitar, and the Dikembe Mutombo, in the Highway Band. Steve is a graduate of Brown University, and has served on staff with InterVaristy and at Bayshore Christian Ministries in East Palo Alto. Steve can always be found either “in the game” (be it pick-up basketball or soccer), or “in the kitchen” experimenting with new things he’s learned on Alton Brown’s “Good Eats.” Steve, his wife Amy, and their daughter Bethany live in East Palo Alto.

Ryan Kingsmith

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Ryan leads worship, assists with the youth ministry, and oversees the creative arts teams at the Mountain View campus. Ryan met his wife, Anna, while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Bible and Theology with a minor in Pastoral Ministry at Multnomah Bible College in Portland, OR. A talented musician and songwriter who once played drums in a metal band, Ryan enjoys live music, writing songs, bicycles, and French movies.

Jehaan Mathew

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Jehaan leads the Palo Alto campus high schoool group. He also oversees Highway’s college ministry, which involves a weekly gathering and events for college-aged students, partnering with InterVarsity at Stanford, and a developing a presence on local junior college campuses. A former Highway summer intern, Jehaan recently graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior. He likes to surf, hike, and eat (everything except chocolate)—all while hanging out with his wife Julie and watching Jack Bauer save the world.

Seth Dickson

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Seth, a recent graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, leads Highway’s missional process, which involves creating an environment that moves people toward the living out of their true calling within community. Formerly of the investment banking world, Seth is also interested in finding creative and compassionate ways to use capitalism to help solve problems related to social inequalities. When he’s not reading geeky academic journals, Seth can be found longing for the imminent return of the 49ers dynasty or catching up with The Office on hulu. And it shouldn’t go without mention, he loves all things Cuban … the people, the culture, the food, and yes, his family.

Julie Pederson

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

After a career in high tech marketing and channel strategy, Julie now coordinates our Highway Kids ministry at the Mountain View campus. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, she and her husband, Ted, live in Sunnyvale with their two daughters, Deena and Melody. Julie enjoys rock climbing, volleyball, all kinds of music. But it’s her love for art—painting, drawing, and photography—that enabled her, as an elementary school student, to win a bicycle in a Kellogg’s “Stick up for Breakfast” poster contest. Grrrrrreat!

Kristi Paszkeicz

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Kristi works with the Highway Kids team to create an environment in which kids can grow in their relationship with Jesus through creative events that encourage kids to discover and use their unique talents and gifts. A graduate of Westmont College, Kristi and her husband, Damian, live in San Jose with their son, Zachary, their daughter, Natalie, and their puggle, Bogey. Kristi loves loves classic movies, art, design, music, piano, scrabble, and crossword puzzles. She also shamelessly admits knowing the words to all the songs from High School Musical and Camp Rock.

Emily Schreiber

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Emily is possibly the most organized, “neat” person imaginable—qualities which are indispensible when it comes to administrating Highway’s many-faceted ministry. As Director of Operations, Emily is all about the details. A gradaute of San Diego State University’s teaching program, Emily spent 2007 as the manager of Red Rock Coffee while continuing to develop her own organizing business, “Emily’s Neat.” Besides organizing, Emily enjoys good food, being outdoors, hanging out with her family, and volunteering. She also has an uncontrollable penchant for anything pickled.

Lisa Evans

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Lisa is a student ministries superstar who oversees our Middle School group and assists with the High School group. Just one job is not enough! A recent graduate of Stanford, Lisa brings four years of experience with Sonshine Ministries and an infectious enthusiasm to our student ministries. A self-proclaimed extrovert who often suffers from FOMO (“Fear of Missing Out”), Lisa can usually be found meeting with kids at Red Rock, or just hanging out with friends. And her minors in Spanish and Italian not only make her a walking translator, but also enable her to talk to almost anyone!

Bob Logan

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

A seasoned ministry veteran, Bob oversees ministry to adults and mentoring at the Mountain View campus. He and his wife Willine, who are proud grandparents, live in Mountain View, and are often seen together enjoying a beverage at Red Rock. Bob is a loyal, die hard fan of the San Francisco 49ers.

Maria Kucera

(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Maria answers the phone when you call, and provides invaluable administrative support of all varieties to the Highway staff. Maria and her husband, Keith, live in Sunnyvale, and have two sons. Born in Germany, Maria brings linguistic diversity and insight to the staff, as well as a love for fine German cuisine—“bratens” and “krauts” and the like. She also enjoys traveling the world on exotic and adventursome vacations with her husband.