Fiat Award 2019

The San Diego diocese will be giving me an award next month:

The San Diego Young Adult Office is pleased to announce David Bates as one of our FIAT AWARD recipients for 2018! David will be honored at the Annual Christmas Gala on December 15th.

David Bates was born in England where he worked as a software engineer. In his search for adventure, he moved to the United States over ten years ago, living in Washington DC, Seattle & finally settling in San Diego.

While David continues to work in IT, he is also a Catholic speaker, presenting at events around the country on Scripture, Church History & Evangelization. His talks can be found on his blog, RestlessPilgrim.net, & on the podcast Theology With An English Accent.

An active member of the San Diego Young Adult community since 2010, David has been involved in many different ministries at parish level, such as playing guitar for Our Lady of the Rosary Lifeteen Mass & leading the JP2 Group at St. John the Evangelist for several years. He is now a member of Holy Angels Byzantine Catholic Church where he is a choir member & cantor.

David has also served at Diocesan level, as a member of the Diocesan Pastoral Council & the Young Adult Commission, the group which inaugurated many San Diego traditions including the Annual Diocesan Young Adult Mass. David maintains the SDYAM Podcast which contains recordings of all the San Diego Theology On Tap talks. He orchestrated the “Daughters of the King” gala events & helped organize retreats for the Goretti Group. For fun, David enjoys dancing & has taught salsa & swing lessons at many youth & young adult church events.

Recently David has been pouring most of his time into the podcast, “The Eagle and Child” where, with his co-host Matt, he unpacks the works of C.S. Lewis, the Christian apologist & author of the Chronicles of Narnia. David also hosts a monthly book club where Lewis’ works are discussed at a local coffee shop. In addition to leading monthly Taize prayer evenings and a running group, he also organizes, as part of The Finer Things Club, outings to the theatre, the Symphony & other cultural events. He is currently writing the final chapters of his 1st book, The Table of the Word, a guide to starting and leading a Parish Bible study.

My pastor put an announcement in the parish bulletin on Sunday. As you may guess, he has a sense of humo(u)r about my being English…