The Founding Story of The Presence Network

At nineteen years old, I felt a calling to seek a path of training that would shape the direction of my entire life. Leaving home as a young man, I began an unexpected chapter working on a turkey farm in Willmar, Minnesota. The irony is picturesque, a city boy from Chicago working on a turkey farm, responsible for helping care for nearly ninety thousand birds, each day brought new lessons—about responsibility, humility, and the simple discipline of showing up and caring for living things. Those early mornings on the farm became the first classroom where I learned that meaningful work often begins with attentiveness to the small details of life in spaces where others may never recognize you.

With just enough money saved to buy textbooks, I enrolled at North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During those undergraduate years I worked in nursing homes, hospitals and with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association while pursuing my formal education in pastoral care, my deepest interest was not simply studying about ministry but living it, embodying it—being present with people where life was unfolding.

My vocational journey would evolve into many paths. I would later serve as a youth pastor in Topeka, Kansas, then work in social service roles as a parent educator, an advocate for children and an investigator in abuse and neglect cases. I eventually became a juvenile probation officer, discovering that working directly with young people navigating difficult circumstances felt deeply natural to me. I too was a misunderstood child who chased after experiences that were less than beneficial for me or for those I associated with.

Over time I returned to formal ministry roles, serving congregations in Wisconsin and later becoming a senior pastor in Olathe, Kansas. After 20 plus years in pastoral leadership, I felt increasingly drawn away from institutional structures and toward a more direct, compassionate presence with people facing real struggles in everyday life.

That calling led me into social service work and eventually into adolescent psychiatric care, where I managed a treatment facility and worked closely with young people in crisis. It was during this period that I began developing a framework to help children, adults and families rediscover stability and hope in their lives. That framework became known as LifeCare FIRST.

Eventually I felt drawn again toward the sacred spaces where people face life’s most profound transitions. That calling led me into hospice care, where I have spent many years accompanying patients and families through illness, grief, reconciliation, and the final chapters of life.

Sitting beside hospital beds and in quiet rooms with families, I have witnessed something powerful: what people often need most is not answers or explanations, but a compassionate presence—someone willing to sit with them in dignity and love.

Out of those experiences grew the vision for The Presence Network and the Chaplain Formation Institute: a community dedicated to cultivating compassionate companions who are trained to walk beside others during life’s most sacred moments.

The Presence Network exists to nurture people who understand the art divine nature of Presence—individuals who are attentive, humble, teachable, and willing to accompany others through the full journey of human life.

Because no one should have to walk that journey alone.   Your companion in this journey, Carlo