LCC staff

LCC Staff

Rev. Faye Orton Snyder
Pastor Emerita

Rev. Faye Orton Snyder served the Lafayette Christian Church ( Disciples of Christ) as Associate and Senior Pastor from 1986-2009.She is a graduate of Pacific School of Religion and has been trained and prepared by The Center for Courage & Renewal to be a facilitator in their Courage to Lead Program for Clergy, Spiritual Leaders and Congregations.

She currently serves the Lafayette Christian Church as Pastor Emerita.

Faye and her husband Steve live in the Bay Area. Together they have 7 children and 18 grandchildren.

Rita Lilly
Music Director

Rita Lilly is a professional classical singer and teacher who moved to California from NYC in 2000. Specializing in the performance of early music, she sang and toured with the renowned Waverly Consort from 1988-1997. Since coming to the Bay Area, she has been a featured soloist with numerous ensembles and orchestras in the bay area and throughout the country. Previously, she earned her BA/BS in voice with K-12 music certification from the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, NY. She was the Music Director of St. Jerome Catholic Church from 2004-2009, is the voice teacher of the SFEMS baroque workshop, is on the faculty of the Pacific Boy Choir Academy as their private voice teacher, maintains her own voice studio in her home and thoroughly enjoys being director of the LCC Choir.

She enjoys her family time with Nitash Balsara, professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley and founder of SEEO and her two lovely children,

Sonya and Matthew.

Lino Rivera
Pianist

Born in the Philippines, Lino Rivera has performed as a solo recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and accompanist on three continents. He makes it his mission to advocate and premiere contemporary works; to explore and meet the artistic, creative, and technical challenges of piano transcriptions; and to discover and perform obscure solo piano repertoire throughout the ages. Lino is a celebrated performer for Composers, Inc., an organization based in San Francisco that is dedicated to promoting works by contemporary American composers.

Lino holds degrees in piano performance from the University of Santo Tomas, the University of Hawaii, and a doctorate from the University of Maryland. He currently serves as professor in the Performing Arts Department at Saint Mary's College of California, while maintaining active concert engagements internationally. He recently performed in Switzerland and Mississippi, and he served as soloist for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra last spring. He will again be teaching and performing at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Germany this summer.

Diana Silva

Bookkeeper

Diana Silva is our bookkeeper. She has been a part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) all her life, growing up in the San Jose church and later attending Disciple churches in Kansas and Virginia. Diana and her family joined Lafayette Christian Church in 1984, with Diana becoming the Treasurer two years later and by 1993 was taking care of all the bookkeeping for our church. In 1987, Diana became our organist with four years of previous experience in Alexandria, Virginia and for 32 years, her gift for music enriched our weekly worship. Diana retired as the LCC organist in 2019. She is married and has two grown children who consider this church part of their family.

Kelley Lawton (she, her)
Office Administrator

Kelley Lawton has been our "church secretary" and Office Administrator at LCC for 18 years. She loves coming to work in this warm and loving, close-knit community and walking about our beautiful campus, filled with lush old trees.