Daniel Olander

Daniel Olander

Operations Manager

Life Story

I was just 2 years old when my family moved from my birth place of Longmont, Colorado, to where I was raised in Austin, Texas. I don’t have any memories of life before Texas, so I’m confident in calling myself a Texan. Austin was my home, which may explain why I can be weird at times; it’s just in my blood.

A few years after moving to Texas, my family made another move—from a Lutheran church to a Catholic one. Going to a different building on Sundays didn’t mean a lot to me as a kid, but I soon began to view God as an authoritative rule-giver who only loved you if you obeyed Him. I thought I needed to be a good person to be accepted, and so I tried very hard to be “good.”

The Lord changed everything for me while I was attending the University of Texas at Dallas. He allowed me to experience the emptiness of the worldly pleasures I pursued so fervently and gave me friends who told me the truth of the gospel for the first time. Through two of my coworkers, the Lord enlightened my heart to the truth that I could never be good enough on my own. In the person of Jesus, He had lived a life that was truly good, had died in my place, and had risen again to offer me new life through faith in Him. I confessed Jesus as Lord in January 2016 and was baptized in June of that same year.

I came on to staff at The Village as an Operations Intern in 2018 and have been graciously allowed to stay ever since. I married my wife, Kasey, in June 2019 and have been extremely blessed by her every day since.

Hope for The Village Church

I hope that we will be a people marked by love for the outsider and one another that will point everyone to Jesus as we minister to our community in His name.