The Barn Leadership
The Barn is shepherded by a team of pastoral leaders, with each pastor having different areas of ministry. This team works in conjunction with the prayerful guidance of our eldership team. We also have several administrative staffers, and countless incredible volunteers who keep the church running smoothly!
Bruce Latshaw
Saved in 1969 at the start of The Jesus Movement, Bruce Latshaw is the founding pastor of The Barn Vineyard. He serves as the Barn’s co-senior leader with his wife, Lynn, and oversees various areas of ministry in the church, including prophetic, healing, deliverance, prayer, and The Barn Equipping Series. Bruce has served as area leader for the Vineyard Philadelphia Area, is the founding leader of the East Region Prayer Task Force, and served as a member of the Vineyard National Spiritual Renewal Task Force for three years. Bruce equips churches in how to develop prophetic and prayer ministry and is part of various networks pursuing worldwide revival. He leads the local ministerium of churches, has founded two Healing Rooms ministries in PA, and loves his ongoing call to build The Barn into the fullness of God’s dreams for this church.
His greatest passion is to equip Christians in their areas of ministry gifting and to create and launch new areas of kingdom ministry.
Lynn Latshaw
Lynn graduated with a BA in English and a Master’s degree in Guidance Counseling and Agency Counseling. Lynn is married to Bruce and has 5 adult children and 13 grandchildren (want to see my photos?). Lynn loves studying the Bible and her dream would be to translate the whole Bible, but of course, you have to learn Hebrew and Greek!
Lynn’s greatest passion is to see people grow in God and become the people God always envisioned them to be. “He has big plans for all of us! We are all God’s masterpieces. And out of that identity, good works flow easily towards others who are outside the church.”
An equal passion of Lynn’s is to see the different people groups come together in worship and work together on earth. She would be delighted to be in a multicultural church to experience the specific and special gift each ethnic group has to bring to the table. Why wait for the vision written in Revelations 7.9 until we leave this earth? Let’s have heaven on earth!
Along with this passion for unity comes a deep conviction that we as people of God are called to do justice now on this earth. Lynn’s favorite verse is “O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and what is required of you: To do justice, To love kindness And to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6.8)
They live in a dome down the lane from The Barn.
Mariah and Aaron Orr
Aaron and Mariah Orr are excited about the opportunity to serve as Youth Pastors at the Barn! Mariah grew up going to the Barn and brings a wealth of knowledge from her time working with Freedom Outreach and the Barn Youth Group as well as graduating from Vineyard’s Heroic Leadership Institute. After serving as missionaries in Wilmington, DE since 2011 where Aaron was the StreetLeader Director ministering to 14–18-year-olds, they felt God’s call to transition out of their position with UrbanPromise at the end of 2020. At that time, Aaron heard Holy Spirit calling him to finish a bachelor’s degree at Colorado Christian University that was started before coming to Wilmington.
After their marriage in 2016 (at the Barn!), Mariah completed her nursing degree and is a registered nurse and continues to practice as she continues higher education in pursuit of her God-given dream to become a doctor.
They love seeing people of all walks of life experience God in real, tangible ways. Both have encountered God’s radical, abundant love and minister with a belief that God wants to share that love with the people He brings into their lives. They also feel God has molded them to be champions of reconciliation, to bring people back to a God that desperately wants to be in relationship with them, and also, to champion the reconciliation of people groups and fractures in society that are not of God.
Cecile Ngbanda
Children’s Pastor
Cecile was born in the Central African Republic and moved to the US with her family 9 years ago. She is married to Amé and have three children. Cecile is making her debut as a Christian children’s book writer. She has been serving God over twenty-five years in churches on three continents (Africa, Europe, and US), at different leadership positions including Kids Ministry, Youth and Student Ministry, evangelism and prayer.
My mission at The Barn as Children’s Pastor is to prepare the children for the Kingdom of God–To help them discover and experience the love of God and to extend that same love to others. By God’s grace, we will see children saved, filled with the Holy Spirit and minister their spiritual gifts to one another.
Lenny Gawlikowski
Pastor and Director: Pneuma Center
Church counselor
Since 1999, Lenny ministered as an Associate Pastor at the Christian Life Center, New London, PA. for 11 years. Then in 2010, he helped found Shepherd’s Way, a ministry focusing on pastoral care for individuals and married couples, including physical healing, inner healing and deliverance prayer ministry.
As director of Pneuma Center at The Barn and of the School of Kingdom Ministry, his passion is now to lead, train and equip others in those areas as ministry leaders and ministry teams.
He is married to his college sweetheart Judi and have two adult children and three grandchildren.
Jessica Latshaw, Worship Director
Jessica Latshaw Taormina grew up here at the Barn, and her first time singing into a mic was in worship. She has a BFA in dance performance from UArts where she also studied piano and voice extensively, and has performed musical theater on many stages, most notably, the Broadway tour of A Chorus Line. She has performed her own songs on cool stages, such as NYC’s The Blue Note Jazz Club, Boston’s City Winery, and the UK’s Sage Gateshead.
Jessica loves to worship God and is truly honored to do it here. She is also a podcaster, which she co-hosts with her husband TJ (The TJ [and Jess] Show), writes on her substack, and is in the final edits before publishing her first book.
Home is loud and messy—mostly because of the three little girls she and TJ get to raise and not at all because she’d rather write music than fold laundry.
Keisha Caretto
Director of Freedom Outreach
Lakeisha (Keisha) Caretto lives with her husband, Luis, and their two dogs. She has a big heart for missions and helping the poor. She has led teams in Wilmington and abroad and been on several missions trips. She lived long term in Cambodia as a missionary studying at a Discipleship Training School through Youth With A Mission(YWAM) and helping start an aids orphanage. Keisha grew up in the city of Wilmington. At age nine she became part of Freedom Outreach, playing in the parks and attending the after school program. As she got older she began volunteering and has been part of Freedom Outreach ever since. Keisha graduated from the Vineyard Leadership Institute with a certificate in Biblical Studies.
Keisha has lots of passion for the people of Wilmington and enjoys pastoring the many children who are connected with Freedom Outreach.
Michele Poplo
Administration & Bookkeeping
Michele is our administrative assistant. She’s been with the church for 20 years, starting as a volunteer in the office. Michele and her husband Vince have a beautiful daughter, Lara. It’s her desire to see The Barn develop into a strong organizational and administrative body. Michele doesn’t like writing bios. She can often be found snuggling one of the many babies in the church..
