Meet the Minister
My Pastoral Mission:
To do justice, to love with merciful kindness,
to walk humbly with God.
To do justice: I work to equip and empower members of the community to
live out the love and the justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ by:
- Building relationships with existing or emerging community groups to empower members of our faith community to work for justice and equity in our society with special concern for the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered members of the community;
- Seeking opportunities for every community member to participate in hands-on, relational mission work locally and beyond;
- Preaching the good news as it relates to issues of peace and justice;
To love with merciful kindness: I work to create in the community a spirit of welcome that reflects God's amazing and inclusive grace and truth by:
- Fostering the practice of Christian hospitality in every aspect of our common life;
- Providing pastoral care and guidance, including building a network of referrals to professional counselors and therapists who work within the context of faith;
- Building a deeper capacity for compassion, concern and lay-led pastoral care through small group ministries;
To walk humbly with God: I work to deepen the spiritual lives of each community member - including my own - that we might dwell together in the questions of life in the context of our common faith by:
- Teaching from the best insights of the Reformed tradition and its contemporary interpreters;
- Preaching from the breadth of scripture as it speaks to the concerns of contemporary life;
- Leading people into deeper relationships of discipleship to Jesus Christ;
- Creating worship opportunities that reflect the fullness of Christian worship experience drawing upon the best of our tradition and the most inspiring contemporary expressions of worship;
- Developing a community discernment capacity that enables others to hear and respond to God's call in their lives.
In these and other ways I work to advance the mission of Clarendon Presbyterian Church that proclaims:
All are welcome at Clarendon Presbyterian Church. We are a community that tries to reflect the love and justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our congregation has worked hard to honor our history and traditions while successfully bridging differences and valuing the contributions of all our members. We explore important questions of life in the context of faith and we invite all those with faith and with doubts to join us as seekers of God's amazing and inclusive grace and truth.
My work is grounded in the deepest values of my faith as expressed in these core convictions:
The arc of the creative universe is long, but it bends toward God's love:
God created the universe and called it good. In sovereign love, God created humankind in the image of God and called us good. In freedom, we distance ourselves from God and break the bonds of communion with God and with one another. In our brokenness, we suffer isolating alienation from God and human community. In suffering isolation we sin.The arc of the spiritual universe is long, but it bends toward God's grace:
God calls us to reconciliation in spite of our brokenness, alienation and sin. In Jesus, God was reconciling the world to God's self and creating the community of reconciliation. This invitation to reconciliation, spoken in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, is from everlasting to everlasting; for our time and for all time. In and through Christ, wholeness and salvation break into the world.The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward God's justice:
Speaking still, through the Spirit, God invites us to continue creating the community of reconciliation - the Beloved Community. God invites us into a community of Word and sacrament that we might be for the world an exhibition of the Beloved Community, the household of God, the commonwealth of love and justice. In and through the community of disciples of Christ, God's love breaks into the world.The arc of the temporal universe is long, but it bends toward God's kairos:
The fullness of God's time lies always already before us. We live in the time between the already and the not yet, and are called to live faithful lives in the time we are given and exercise a faithful, trusting patience that while the arc of the created universe is long, it rests in the hands of the sovereign God of love, grace and justice. Even as we pray for the presence of Christ, we are called to arise, shine, for the time is come.