I was four years old, at a church children's event, when I felt a desire to have faith and spirituality as a personal part of my life. My father became a pastor when I was ten and served in Minnesota and Nebraska. He confirmed and baptized me and one might think that I am just carrying on the family tradition, but I had no desire to be a pastor. During college in Seattle, I learned to connect art and music to the life of faith, at Yale I became convicted of the integral relationship between justice and the Church, and by the time I reached North Park in Chicago, I had accepted my call to be a pastor. This succinct summary illumines a key spiritual formation aspect in my life. That is, I have lived in the West, East and Midwest, in rural, suburban, and urban. I am Ivy League and Evangelically educated, and while this does not mean that I have experienced all of what life and God has to offer, it does mean that my pilgrimage has enabled me to be open to God at work in a variety of places, people and experiences. To me, ministry is simply about people; there is no other calling in which you are invited to participate so intimately and meaningfully in people's lives.
I never thought I’d be a pastor. My father was a pastor, in a Covenant Church, and I knew what it took, I knew what it meant, I knew that I really did not want to be a pastor. Obviously, something changed. This change did not occur overnight, and it did not occur without a struggle between me and God. And yet, I am answering a call from God to serve the church, to serve Bethesda Covenant Church.
All my life, I have had people tell me that I was going to be a pastor. And I would always shake my head no and explain that my father was a pastor and I did not want to be one. And almost every time they would tell me it didn’t matter, they were sure I was going to be a pastor. Once, someone I had never met came walking through a parking lot, stopped to talk with me and the first words out of his mouth were—“Man I can tell you are going to be a pastor.” I disagreed with him, but he just smiled and went on his way.
But I didn’t know then what I know now. Back then, deep down, down so far I didn’t know it was in me, I didn’t want to be a pastor because I was afraid to face the realities of life. I knew that a pastor was someone who was with people during the major moments of life—when a child is born, and when a loved one dies, when a couple gets married or goes through a divorce, a pastor can be there. When your health is good, retirement is fun, and your family is safe and secure, or when war happens, your child is struggling in school, and you’ve just been fired from a job, a pastor can be there. I know now what I did not know then, I did not want to be a pastor because I did not know how to be present in people’s lives during these moments, I did not even know how I felt about these moments in my own life.
So I finished my first seminary degree, and Amy and I went to be pastors for a year in a rural town in Minnesota. It was a year to figure out whether or not I was supposed to be a pastor, whether or not I felt called to ministry, and deep down, whether or not I could overcome my fears of being with people as they faced the realities of life.
During my year as a pastor in Minnesota and my subsequent two years getting my second seminary degree, I learned that ministry and being a pastor was not about having all the right words to say and actions to take, but it was, primarily about being present with people and facing realities together, even if I had nothing to say or do and even if I was afraid. And when I learned this, I realized that there is so much in all our lives that makes us resistant to facing the reality of the situations we are in, the reality of our emotions and fears, the reality of our longings and desires, the reality of our joys and celebrations, and so I felt called to be a pastor because I learned that there was still hope. There is still hope that we could be the kind of humans, the kind of Christians who really loved each other, who suffered with each other, and who celebrated with each other, even if we did not know exactly how to do it.
Since then, one of my favorite verses comes from 1 Peter 3:15: "always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." Becoming a pastor is my accounting for the hope that is in me, not just with words, but with my very life. It is my prayer that we all will hold strong to the hope that we have in Christ, a hope that carry us through and accent all the realities of our life together.
Adam holds degrees from North Park Theological Seminary (M.Div.), Yale University Divinity School (M.A., Religion), and Seattle Pacific University (B.A., Music).
