Shaping Families

Harvey Yoder is a licensed professional counselor at Family Life Resource Center in Harrisonburg, Va., and has also been a pastor for many years. He hosts his own radio program, "Centerpiece" which airs on three stations and writes a regular blog at Harvyoder.blogspot.

Harvey was born in Nowata County, Oklahoma, and grew up as the eighth of nine children in an Amish family that migrated to eastern Kansas and then to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. At 21 he enrolled in Eastern Mennonite College and after graduation taught at Eastern Mennonite High School in Harrisonburg while also serving as pastor of Zion Mennonite Church for over 20 years. He was director of Highland Retreat Camp for three summers, and did an interim two years as principal of Western Mennonite School near Salem, Oregon, from 1972-74. He earned a masters degree in counseling psychology from James Madison University in 1979, and studied at Associated Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, during a sabbatical year in 1984-85, completing his seminary degree at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in 1994.

Since 1988, Harvey has been a full time counselor and church resource person at the Family Life Resource Center in Harrisonburg and serves as pastor of Family of Hope, a Mennonite house church congregation. In 2007 Herald Press published his book Lasting Marriage: The Owners' Manual.

Harvey married his college sweetheart, Alma Jean Wert, in 1964, and they have three children and four grandchildren.