Barrett joined Assumption in 2013. Originally from Virginia, he and his wife, Amy, moved to Seattle at the end of 2008. They lived on Capitol Hill and attended St. Joe's from 2009 to 2013 before moving to the Ravenna-Roosevelt neighborhood.
 
He has served as an usher and a Eucharistic Minister, and is a former chair of the Assumption Parish Council. He also supports ASB Drama, the School Building Council, Rebuilding Together, and parish gatherings such as pancake breakfasts and the ASB fish fry.
 
Assumption has been a welcoming community for his family. The church and school have helped form friendships that have become a local extension of their family, and as transplants, that welcoming spirit helped them attend Mass regularly, raise their kids in the pews, and stick around a bit longer after Mass for fellowship. "Those personal asks by fellow parishioners were vital to us feeling welcomed into the community," he says. He specifically says "we," because his whole family has committed time and talent when asked to support the parish and the community. 
On PFAC, he has learned the importance of prayer and discernment to guide the process over time. Reflecting as a group on Jesus' earliest teachings, he is encouraged by the resilience inherent in the Church, and sees the struggles and uncertainties of the early Church paralleled in what we face today. 

Barrett was not born Catholic, having grown up attending both Methodist and Presbyterian churches. When he met Amy and her large, loving Catholic family, his perception changed, and looking deeper, he found a truth and simplicity to the faith that supported it as a universal church. "Becoming one parish family needs to feel rooted in the efforts for our small community to reflect what it means to be Catholic, and a universal church," he says. For him, the Catholic Church can be personified as a large, busy family, one where individual opinions and preferences exist, but where flexibility, patience, and forgiveness persist to maintain the good of the family. "Somehow there is always enough for everyone that shows up."