A Pastor's Journey - Part 1

Curiosity will cure your soul, but it might make you miserable first

Welcome to my first substack post! I’ve been a pastor for 32 years. In my first 6, I was a campus minister at the University of TN. For the last 26, I was the Founder and Sr. Pastor of City Church San Francisco. Why create a substack? 

Most ministers are either writers first, preachers second (I think of Nadia Bolz-Weber as a writer first, preacher second, although she is brilliant at both) or preachers first, and writers second. My ministry has depended on my preaching much more than my writing. And I never wrote out my sermons word for word for most of my preaching ministry. So, this substack is an attempt to lean into a neglected form of communication. Plus, I have a few things to say and need an outlet to say them. :)

I’ll meander about my experiences of being a pastor. I’ll talk about Christian spirituality, spiritual direction, and starting new communities of faith. I’ll post an occasional sermon. But for now, a little of my story. 

Part 1

“The Latin root of curiosity means “cure,” which makes me wonder if it isn’t a way to heal some of our oldest sicknesses.”

Mayfield, D. L. The Myth of the American Dream (p. 25). IVP

Central Florida is a curious place to grow up.  The haunted (to me at least) orange groves around every corner, the invasion of a giant Micky Mouse being built a few miles away, and a small town filled with deep South southerners, “snowbirds” from up north, and the segregated realities of the early 60s was a lot to ponder for this little curious white boy.1  My home life was very much a part of this segregated milieu, but also one that presented challenges to it in small ways.  My dad’s curiosity led him to listen to the lived experiences of those black employees that worked for him, and it wasn’t lost on me that he was one of the only white men I saw doing this. 

I gladly blame my curiosity on my dad. My dad modeled cognitive flexibility, which means he had the ability to change his mind in light of new information. This, organizational psychologist Adam Grant says, is a "mark of wisdom," in which you refuse to "let the fear of admitting you were wrong stop you from getting it right." When we begin to live out this kind of wisdom, "the joy of learning something new eventually exceeds the pain of unlearning something old."

Along with curiosity in my childhood came simplicity. My church upbringing was simple: God is love. Love people in need.  Welcome the stranger.  There was no fear-mongering about immigrants. We needed them, they needed us. Our reflex was simple: Love people. Of course, as I grew older I began to see how that church failed to love one another, but the message was ingrained in me: God is love. Before God is anything else, God is love.

I was 4 or 5 in this picture, the last of 4.

Speaking of love, I married a Cuban immigrant with a strange name: Terely. This was my first foray outside of the expectations of family and friends. In what he would probably recall as ‘not his finest moment’ my dad reminded me that if I married her “our children would possibly be brown-skinned”. I choose to believe Dad didn’t see that as a negative, but just something he wanted me to be sober-minded about. Of our 4 children, our eldest is delightfully brown, so much so his Abuela calls him “my brown boy”. 

Her family and their story became fertile ground for my curiosity. I began to see the world through a different lens and it challenged how I understood the world. Turns out, you can eat dinner at 11:00 at night. Beans that are black are actually really tasty. Bananas that look rotten taste like banana candy when cooked in a skillet. Hospitality means people show up at any time of night expecting a meal. Cafe con Leche with toasted Cuban bread and butter is sublime. Dominoes until the wee hours of the morning is a community-building event.

Interacting with her dad, who lost everything to Castro, was heartbreaking. As a privileged American, I had never encountered anything like this. I tried my best to listen and be shaped by their experiences. Listening is both how curiosity begins and how it develops. 

7 months before our wedding.

Through my parents, I learned to listen to the experiences of others.  Through my church, I learned the simplicity of Jesus’ ethic of love.  In the midst of all the diversity and changes of those formative years, listening and loving served me well.  

Those early chapters set a foundation for who I would become in my life.  It's vital we each become students of our own personal stories.  My story is long and full of both joy and trauma, and I've found that the work of untangling and unraveling my life story has been critical in developing my own vulnerability. I've learned that my vision is limited. But the first step for me in becoming a more expansive and generous person has been in learning to become generous with myself. I hope the same for you. 

I think most of us are terrified of ourselves. Alan Jones describes saints as those who “have been allowed to see into themselves and have not refused to look.” Once we peel back the layers of our false self that has served us so well what will we find in its place?  Or as Richard Rohr puts it (loosely quoted here) once we spend the first half of our lives building our container, what will we put in it in the second half of life?  For me, at the ripe old age of 24, preparing to enter Seminary, I was interested in doing one thing: succeeding. I wanted to build the biggest church, with the biggest platform, with the biggest impact. I told myself I was doing this for God.  Let’s just say it was a little more complicated than that.  

Think about your 24-year-old self.  The ego is fully in control. (For those seeking to type themselves in the enneagram, think of yourself at this age.) What would you tell that 24-year-old today? Have you allowed yourself to change, evolve, and grow?  What are the forces keeping you from doing so? I think pastors have a particularly hard time doing this because we have to maintain (or at least we think we do) a posture of having our ish together at all times.  But as I like to say, Pastors get to be humans too.

God made me curious.  I’m thankful for this trait.  Most days. 

Part 2 in a few days: The power of listening to a thousand stories.

Meanwhile, would love to hear your reflections on your 24-year-old self and the ways you have evolved over the years.