I'm Getting Back into Show Business

big changes for the free-range pastor

Dear readers, I have good news to share. Over the past year, I’ve been working on a part-time interim basis at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon, VA, as they’ve searched for an associate pastor. For several months, the search committee sorted through some 100 pastor resumes, conducted several Zoom interviews, and met with a short list of candidates face to face. Although I entered the short-term contract with no intention of seeking the ongoing position, God had other ideas. Last Sunday, the congregation voted unanimously to call me as their next Associate Pastor. I will move from my current half-time contract to thirty hours a week starting January 1. 

The results of the vote are announced.

The day of the congregational meeting, I preached a sermon about Mary’s visit from the angel informing her that she would be the mother of Jesus. She responds by pondering the news and asking, “How can this be?” It’s my question as well, filled with the bemusement of someone who has enjoyed this free-range lifestyle for almost eight years since departing the congregation I affectionately called “Tiny Church” in early 2015. I’ve been asked countless times whether I’d ever head back into the parish. My noncommittal response was that I’d consider it for the right opportunity, but that I hadn’t seen anything that tempted me in that direction. 

So what shifted? Why Trinity? This is a healthy, mature church with a strong staff, ripe for experimentation and collaboration. My colleague Stephen and I have known each other for more than a dozen years now; he and I have a lot of fun and complement each other well. Becoming an associate pastor after twenty years of ministry is a strange move–lots of people cocking their heads to the side with a “Huh” when I tell them–but I have no desire to be in the first chair, and at this stage of my life I feel no need to prove myself. 

There are challenges for sure. Like most congregations, we have stuff to shake out as we emerge from a world-altering pandemic that hastened a lot of trends that were already underway. I’m as befuddled as anyone about all that, but I feel like my gifts will speak into those challenges. I’m looking forward to being a coach-in-residence of sorts, but sticking around long enough to see a lot of things through.

2019 was a high-water mark for me in terms of speaking events. I think I did thirty events, including online stuff and guest preaching as well as out of town engagements. Three years ago at this time I said, “I sure would like to get on fewer planes in 2020.” We all know what happened next. (Did I manifest a pandemic? Haha.) A lot has happened since then, but one of the ways covid impacted many of us was to give us an appreciation for rootedness, for relationships, for the ways that transformation happens, which is up close and over time. It’s time to sink down into a community for a gracious while.

A thirty-hour call means I’ll still be coaching, though somewhat less than before. (Current clients, your contracts will be unaffected!) Speaking will probably take the biggest hit, but I’m excited to still get out there a few times a year.

Writing will continue as it always has, in the nooks and crannies of parenting and pastoring. The Blue Room will remain open as always to neighbors near and far who want to close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it could be. I strive to make it a humane and thoughtful place, though a friend told me this week that my work disrupts the status quo, which is the nicest thing anyone’s said to me for a while. There are a good number of Trinity folks here too, and the image of us all together, figuring stuff out, cheers me in these cold and gloomy days.

Steady on.

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What I’m Up To

Next week I’ll be talking via Zoom with two different groups studying Hope: A User’s Manual. One of those groups sent this wonderful photo of books going out to church members. It’s Hope, all tied up in a bow of Advent blue! 

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Link Love

In Forests Full of Mines, Ukrainians Find Mushrooms and Resilience. Mushroom hunting in wartime.

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