23/50: The Best Part About Being a Pastor
“It is loud, it is clear
It’s stronger than your fear
It’s believing you belong
It’s for calling out the wrong
From the mouths of our mothers
To the lips of our daughters
We can, we can dream
Like our brothers speaking loud like our fathers
We can, we can heal
Can you hear us?
Can you hear us now?”
Today is World Communion Sunday, something I didn’t celebrate until I became a pastor. But it’s a day to remember that Jesus sets a round table and we are on equal footing with our siblings around the world.
Today at our church, Naomi Hunter, an elder at Valley Presbyterian, spoke about her journey with racial justice. It was a beautiful message and Naomi is a wise woman who listens carefully and takes her journey seriously. She is one of a larger group of folks from my church who have gathered in a variety of ways to address racism. Their conversations have elevated the church’s structural commitment to anti-racism.
As I look back on ten years of pastoring, these kinds of stories have been the best part of my job: when the passion and spirit of people in a congregation rise to meet the world’s need. I am so grateful to have pastored two congregations full of devoted, engaged, activated and motivated folks who take their faith out into the world.
I have seen the lives of Guatemalan families changed through sanitary toilets, water filters and homes built by First Presbyterian in Bend. I was an eyewitness to one woman’s passion for indigenous people in Burundi grow into 300 children in school, crops grown that feed three villages and the dignity conferred by identity cards that give full rights as citizens. Every Tuesday afternoon, English-language learners still gather for tutoring in a low-income elementary school. Kids in the Dominican Republic are being tutored, getting healthy meals and learning basic hygiene. Another group gathers regularly to advocate vigorously for climate action. Privileged people are seeking to share power and resources to shift the tide of structural racism.
Each of these situations has brought deep change that challenges our Western colonial impulses and forges real partnerships across massive divides.
My job has only been to witness and make space for all of it. And that has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.