About Us

Equipping servants and leaders to flourish.

Who We Are

  • 546

    Rev. Michael Langer

    Founder & President

  • Laura Holroyd

    Staff, Communications Director

  • Tess Langer

    Staff, Director of Partnerships & Assessments

  • Rev. Patrick Allen

    Board of Advisors, Spiritual Discipleship; Associate Pastor, Chapelgate Presbyterian Church

  • Dr. Dan Sartor, M.B.A., LCPC, NCC, ACS

    Board of Advisors, Emotional Discipleship; Clinical Director of The Wings Center at Eagle Ranch, Inc.

  • Tracy Mathews

    Board of Advisors, Relational Discipleship; President, Attune to Grow.

  • Rev. Dr. Charlie Self

    Board of Advisors, Vocational Discipleship; Principal, Discipleship Dynamics

  • Dr. Timothy Padgett

    Board of Advisors, Ideological Discipleship; Resident Theologian, The Colson Center for Christian Worldview

  • Prof. Jeremy Knapp

    Board of Advisors, Cultural Discipleship; Adjunct Professor of English Literature at St. Louis University

  • Dr. Greg Forster

    Board of Advisors, Missional Discipleship; Director, Oikonomia Network

  • Dr. Randy Newman

    Board of Advisors, Evangelism; Senior Teaching Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism at The C. S. Lewis Institute

  • Rev. Dr. Luke Bobo

    Board of Advisors, Applied Ethics; Director of Bioethics, Kansas City University

  • Dr. Peter Yoder

    Board of Advisors, Theological Discipleship; Professor of Church History, Montreat College

  • Josie Risinger

    Board of Advisors, Communication & Operations; Director of Operations, Life Bridge Capital

  • Rev. Ryan Moore

    Board of Advisors, Church Relations; Senior Pastor, Wallace Presbyterian Church

  • Boaz Witbeck

    Board of Advisors, Strategic Planning; Senior Consultant, AmPhil

  • Undisclosed (Five)

    Board of Advisors, Public Square Engagement (Bipartisan group of staff working in various agencies and staff offices)

  • Rev. Leonard Bailey

    Board of Directors; Senior Pastor, Hope of Christ Presbyterian Church

  • Rev. Dr. Greg Perry

    Board of Directors; President Thirdmill Seminary

  • Rev. Dr. Ian Hard

    Board of Directors; Senior Pastor, Christ Church in Pembroke

  • Larry Lorimor

    Board of Directors; Elder, Christ Presbyterian Church of Georgetown

  • Rev. Derek Buikema

    Board of Directors; Lead Pastor, Orland Park CRC in Orland Park, IL

  • Rev. Tim MacGowan

    Board of Directors; Senior Pastor, Living Hope Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Warrenton, VA

What We Do

Faithful Presence was founded in 2021 by Rev. Michael Langer with the mission to offer whole-life discipleship, in the whole of life, for the whole of the public square.

Faithful Presence is a ministry in our nation's capital, equipping servants and leaders to flourish as they participate in Christ’s mission of making all things new through offering intentional spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, cultural, and evangelical discipleship.

Faithful Presence is for followers, seekers, and skeptics who are struggling with the implications stemming from the reality that we are finite, fragile, and fallen in a setting that offers as many opportunities as it does disappointments.

We do so through life-on-life discipleship, reading groups, pastoral care and counseling, cultural conversations, Bible studies, courses, policy discussions, and real community.

What We Believe

At Faithful Presence we find our identity in our faith and our understanding of our beliefs in the Bible.

We believe that the Scriptures are our loving Father’s means of communicating His will for a full and abundant life to the people that He created, and also His way of expressing His desire to have a relationship with us through His Son, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

We believe there is only One God who has always existed as three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – the Trinity, and that He really did create the world and everything in it.

We believe that His only Son, Jesus, was fully God and fully man and that he came, lived, suffered, and died just as the Old Testament predicted. He did it all on our behalf to restore our relationship with God, which was broken by our selfishness and pride. And that His victory over death was declared when he was raised from the dead on the third day to secure our Hope of redemption.

We believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. And that personal trust and commitment to follow and serve Jesus, and an admittance of our own inability to pay the penalty for our sinful actions, is all that is required for this hope. Fortunately for us, the faith required to come to Christ is a free gift of grace.

We believe that the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to everyone who calls upon the name of Jesus, and He works in us to conform and transform us towards a more Christ-like character and to provide assurance of the Hope that is waiting for us…even when things seem hopeless.

We believe that Jesus Christ sits as the head of the Church and that the Church is made up of all those people from every tongue and tribe and nation around the world who trust in Jesus. We believe that the Church is a family God created to weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh – for our mutual encouragement and for our accountability.

We believe that the world, our culture, and our lives present complex problems, and yet, far too often, the truths of the Bible have been misused, misunderstood, and misapplied to those complex issues – yet the gospel has the answers we seek. As Christians, we hope to bring the peace and hope of the true gospel to all of life, especially in our home – Washington, D.C..

We believe that how we live in this world is crucial to the advance of the gospel of Jesus. As Jesus prayed in the garden before his capture and crucifixion, we ask that “God would make us one, even as He and the Son are One, so that the world may know that God loves them, and sent His Son Jesus for them.” (John 17:21)

Our Founder

Michael grew up in Eastern Iowa, where he met and married his wife Tess in 1990. He attended the University of Iowa and spent 15 years in industrial sales and sales management.

Michael left sales to pursue a Master of Divinity at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis and graduated in 2007. A professor introduced him to the Acton Insititute and their work on Christian understandings of political philosophy and economic theory.

Following seminary, he returned to his hometown of Iowa City in 2008 to plant One Ancient Hope. While in Iowa City, Michael served as a Johnson County Local Homeless Coordinating Board member and began understanding the importance of public square engagement.

In June 2015, the Langers took a call to re-plant a multi-site work in the western suburbs of Chicago and successfully guided that congregation through relaunching as a stand-alone church. During his time in Chicago, Michael also served as the City Director for Made to Flourish, a Kern Foundation-sponsored project equipping pastors to integrate faith, work, and economic principles into their discipleship plans.

Michael moved to Washington, D.C., in 2018 to serve as Associate Director for another ministry focused on reaching Capitol Hill before leaving to form Faithful Presence in 2021. He is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry at Gordon-Conwell Seminary on “The Church and the Public Square.”

Michael and Tess have been married for 33 years and have four adult children, a son-in-law, and two grandchildren.