I am thrilled to announce that I am pastoring again!
For approximately the next year and a half, I will be serving as the part-time pastor at St Luke’s Lutheran Church in Bellevue.
While I will still be teaching at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, I am so grateful to be welcomed into this faith community for this season. Lots to navigate and learn.
So, I have to tell you that I was not actively seeking another job… but in the late Fall of last year I was having lunch with Mark Griffith, a long time friend, and the pastor at St Luke’s. Over a bowl of Vietnamese bún (if my memory is correct), Mark told me about a possible opportunity to take his family on a pilgrimage of sorts.
He’d learned of an opening as the village pastor at Holden Village. There are literally not roads leading to this remote village, most get there by water, and the brave few hike. The isolation of the village creates room for a unique way of life which Mark and his partner desired to experience with their kids, yet he really didn’t feel like his work at St Luke’s was done.
“Well, if it does all come together,” I said, “and St Luke’s commissions you unto pilgrimage to Holden, add me to your preaching supply.” Well one thing led to another. And here we are. I began serving at St Luke’s at the beginning of the month. This Sunday, January 23rd, 2022 will the commissioning service where some members of Holden Village and the St Luke’s congregation bless the Griffith’s unto their season of pilgrimage. And the following week I will be presiding at St Luke’s.
So its all come together. I’ve never heard of this kind of thing happening before, but here we see a local church community commissioning its pastor to leave for almost two years, and then to come back and resume leadership. And during this season of pilgrimage, the church is bringing in a person from a different Christian tradition as a part-time pastor, specifically to engage the congregation in a practice of deep listening to its own story, to the ways in which its neighborhood, city, world, and climate are changing.
I’m so excited to be both pastoring and training emerging spiritual leadership at the same time.
Peace, dwight
