Reverend Veronica Goines

Reverend Pastor Veronica Goines received her Masters of Divinity Degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 1995, and began a call as Solo Pastor at St. Andrew Presbyterian in December of 1995. She earned a Certificate in Pastoral Counseling in 2003 from the Lloyd Center Pastoral Counseling Service on the San Francisco Theological seminary campus. Pastor Goines’s preparation for ministry has included serving an Associate Pastor at South Bay Community Church in Fremont, California. She also served as Chaplain in the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Dublin, California, and completed a one year residency in both basic and advanced Clinical Pastoral Education at Stanford University Hospital, with a concentration in Cross Cultural Pastoral Care and Ethnic Healing. She served as Pulpit Supply for one year at Trinity Presbyterian Church, a multicultural congregation in Stockton, California. All of these experiences have served to inform and shape her ministry with St. Andrew, a historic multi-cultural congregation in Marin City, California.

St. Andrew officially became a “Redevelopment Congregation” within the first month of Pastor Goines’s call. As a historic “mission church”, St. Andrew was faced with the crucial tasks of spiritual renewal, identity clarification, and creating pathways for ministry and mission through leadership development, financial sustainability, and reestablishing outreach in a rapidly changing community. Pastor Goines has led the church in a process of congregational transformation that is witnessed in its movement from surviving to thriving, and from maintenance to ministry. With conviction, Pastor Goines has led St. Andrew in an intentional ongoing process of increasing spiritual revitalization, a growing commitment to local and global mission, spiritual formation, continuing education, worshipful work, and recommitment to affirming the gift of racial and cultural diversity in an increasingly multicultural world.

Pastor Goines’s ministry has also included serving as Adjunct Faculty for San Francisco Theological Seminary as an Intern Supervisor; as Co-Dean in the First Call/Newly Ordained Pastor’s Seminar for the Synod of the Pacific; and as Vice-Moderator, and Moderator of Redwoods Presbytery. She has served as guest preacher and keynote speaker for the National Multicultural Conference, the National Church Transformation Conference, and numerous local and regional conferences. Pastor Goines is currently serving as Spiritual Faculty with the National CREDO (Clergy Reflection, Education and Discernment) conference, through the Board of Pension of the Presbyterian Church, (U.S.A.). Pastor Goines is the mother of two adult daughters, Nicole and Amber Hughes.