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Dr. David Marine Mabry serves as Director of the Master of Arts in Family Ministries at �ǿմ�ý. He is also CEO of Encompass Connection Center, a nonprofit based in Springfield, Ohio, with the vision of seeing family trees and organizational cultures forever changed. Through its mission of inspiring and equipping relationships to thrive using timeless values and skills, Encompass strengthens marriages, families, and leaders across communities.

For more than three decades, Dr. Mabry has served in pastoral and para-church leadership, including roles as youth pastor, sports and recreation pastor, senior pastor, and Area Director with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He is the founder and former executive director of One Another Relationships, Inc., an organization dedicated to helping marriages, families, and leaders build stronger relationships through coaching, consulting, and content development.

Dr. Mabry holds a doctorate in Transformational Leadership and brings both academic insight and practical ministry experience to his teaching. He and his wife, Theresa, make their home in Springfield, Ohio.

Dr. Mercadante earned a Doctorate of Ministry in Pastoral Theology from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. He received a Master of Divinity with a concentration in New Testament studies from Wake Forest University Divinity School and a BA in Religion from High Point University in North Carolina. His doctoral dissertation was “Anxious for the Fray - Building Community and Fighting Addictions in a Rural Congregational Context.”

Dr. Mercadante teaches in our Quaker Studies, Pastoral Ministries, and Familly Ministries concentrations.

Dr. Mercadante is the Director of Leadership Development for the Evangelical Friends Church - Eastern Region. He accepted the invitation to join the EFC-ER team in March 2021. Before joining EFC-ER, he served as the Senior Pastor of Poplar Ridge Friends Meeting in Trinity, North Carolina, and as Ministry Director of Atlantic Friends Christian Ministries. In 2017, Dave founded Love InDeed, a non-profit ministry that serves under-resourced residents of Randolph County, NC.

He has been married to Emily since 2006 and they have four children: Lucy, Maggie, Oliver, and Hope. Some of his pastimes include reading, running, gardening, chess, and maintaining his hobby farm (with goats and chickens!).

Dr. Folashade of Nigeria brings the School of Graduate Studies an international twist as instructor of several Biblical Translation courses: Translation Tools and Technology; Oral, Sign Language, and Special Needs Translation; and MAST Methodology.

Dr. Folashade completed both a PhD in English and an MDiv in Nigeria prior to receiving an MA in the Biblical Translation. Her master’s capstone project prepared her well for her teaching assignments: “Assessing Comprehension when Teaching Symbolic Universal Notation (SUN) with the Universal Kit versus when Teaching with Translated SUN Materials in Yoruba Language.”

Her PhD thesis was titled: “Delivery Constraints and Pragmatic Designs in Academic Sermons of Student-Pastors in the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminaries.”

Dr. Folashade appreciates the different perspectives class members bring as they engage with the courses and is gratified at the thought that the courses help make the Word of God accessible to people of other ethnicities in their heart language.

Her husband Akinwale is also a theological educator, and they have two daughters.