In today’s chapter I resume the story of when, at 17 years old, I experienced the call of God on my life to go in to ministry. In the previous chapter, I shared about attending a conference in Southern California called SEMP [Students Equipped to Minister to Peers] in which we were trained to do street witnessing. You can read here about how I randomly approached people on the beaches of LA with the question, “If you died today, do you know where you’d go?”

Broken on the Bed

At 17 years old, months before starting my senior year in high school, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I remember crying.

There was that time when I was maybe 8 or 9 and my mom sat next to me on my bed, oversharing things about her and my dad and why they were getting a divorce.

Then there was the time at 16 when I was sitting on my girlfriend’s bed and she told me that, while we were together, she had gone back and cheated on me with her ex-boyfriend.

Maybe there were other times, but also, maybe not. I simply was not connected to my interior world. The gap between my conscious self and my emotions was significant—a gap generated in childhood as a necessary survival technique to protect myself from the chaos, instability, and unhealth of our home.

It’s interesting to me that as I typed out those two memories above they both happened while I was physically on a bed. Which, if you recall from the end of this story, where I’d returned to my temporary dorm room after a day of harassing (I mean, evangelizing) unsuspecting vacationers on Huntington Beach, was precisely were I found myself.

On a bed.

Sobbing.

Utterly broken for reasons I didn’t understand at first.

And then, with a rush of insight the likes of which I’d never experienced before, a truth so clear and piercing bowled me over and immediately explained why I felt ripped in two.

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The drive from Albany, OR down to Biola University (where SEMP would be hosted) is 915 miles.

The internet tells me that’s about a 13 hour 12 minute drive. But I can’t imagine Google takes in to account how long it might take if you’re driving a church van full of angsty, fidgety high schoolers.

Jeremy (the Associate Youth Pastor I mentioned in this post) was the sole driver, responsible for the eleven of us high school kids who made the choice to spend a week of our summer in Southern California training in the art of apologetics for the sake of proselytizing our peers (more on that exciting premise later). Obviously, with only one driver there was no way to make the drive in a single day, so we planned to break up the trip with a stop in Bakersfield.

While I knew the ten other kids in the van, I wouldn’t say they were friends of mine. As I mentioned, the only reason I agreed to go to SEMP was because Jeremy wanted me to. However, one guy in particular, Dennis, quickly moved from “random kid I knew from school” to “best friend for my final year of high school.”

Dennis was a fascinating sociological specimen. On one hand he nicely fit into a handful of predictable stereotype boxes, while at the same time obliterating molds and creating a character all of his own.

Was he a stoner kid who rode a skateboard and spoke with a slow, half-smiled, non-southern accented drawl? Yes.

Did his dry sense of humor and quick wit ensure that he could comfortably weave in and out of multiple social circles, making it so that not only did everyone know and like Dennis but they assumed he was their friend? Yup.

And yet, simultaneously did he harbor a deep spirituality that generated in his spirit a constant tension between “drugs and alcohol” on the one side, with a sincere desire to “get clean and do better” on the other? Entirely.

He was, as they say, a troubled spirit, who’s heart was as big as they come.

I hadn’t had more than but a few conversations with him prior to SEMP, but when you’re crammed in a church van for two days straight you end up bonding at a pace that skips most of the intermediate relationship steps.

Dennis brought a handheld camcorder with him to document the trip so that our Youth Pastor, Rob, could put a promotional video together and share with the larger church—“Look at how amazing our youths are!” Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the footage we got was all that helpful toward that end. Two examples come to mind of things we did get footage of.

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While technically the internet did exist, and I could’ve used our 33.6k modem—in conjunction with the 150 free hours we just scored from the AOL disc they were giving away at the supermarket around t…

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WHEN PASTORS GO ON A “LEAVE OF ABSENCE”

Yesterday in a Dallas suburb an evangelical megachurch called The Village welcomed back to the stage their famous preacher, Matt Chandler.

If you don’t know this story (which is for the best), Chandler has not been working since back in August when a law firm, investigating DMs sent to a woman in their community, found them to be unfitting of Chandler’s pastoral position and determined that he should be put on a “disciplinary and developmental” leave of absence.

What exactly were the nature of those messages? We still don’t know. Chandler himself says they were neither “sexual nor romantic,” and only describes them as “unguarded and unwise… coarse and foolish joking that’s unbefitting of someone in my position.”

Though much could be said about the topic of evangelical pastors and their propensity to eff-up because of things such as:

• lack of accountability,

• theology that represses all things sexual and creates a culture of shame,

• the unwitting damage caused by male-centric leadership in churches,

• the ignorant (at best) and malicious (at worse) misuse of power,

• the ways in which pastoral power goes to men’s heads (both of them)

• and more,

this article today is not about that.

Rather, I want to share what came up for me while reading about this story. Specifically about how the church leadership handled Chandler’s “leave of absence,” and how the congregation then welcomed their pastor back with a standing ovation.

Because that’s exactly what happened at a church I worked at nine years ago.

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In the last two entries in this Series I reflected on the two most formative pastors in my life growing up.

Pastor John showed me what compassionate caring looked like, and how a pastor can show up for people right where they are without judgment. And Pastor Rob showed me how one can apply their intelligence to the world of Biblical studies and theology, and how a pastor can be someone that other people admire and look to for answers.

I loved (and still love) both these men for different reasons. And they both planted seeds in my heart that would one day bloom into my own desire to become a pastor.

But today I want to add another layer to the Colby Cake of how and why I became a pastor.

Specifically, the layer of “being good.”

BE THE BEST AT BEING GOOD

Last week I wrote about my obsession with being smart (or at least, feeling like I was smart).

Such feelings of intellectual superiority (warranted or not) gave me a sense of identity. It provided a target for me to aim at, one that offered me a sense of validation. You might say that I came to believe I had value to people because I had something to offer them.

Likewise, in addition to aiming at the target of Smart, I also spent untold hours woodshedding being Good.

My developing brain as a kid believed that a “Good kid” was a “Lovable kid.” And since most Enneagram experts think we develop our primary type pretty early on, as a Type Three I was determined to be the best at being Good.

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I like being smart.

Well, let me rephrase that: I like feeling like I’m smart.

Smartness is obviously relative (in one context you might be top of the class, but move to another zip code and suddenly you’re below average). Plus, there’s different ways to think about the concept of smart: book smart, street smart, smart mouthed, etc.

So when I say that I like being smart, what I’m saying is that historically I have felt good about myself when I feel as though I am book-smarter than most of the people around me.

And those feelings get rocket fueled when people come to me seeking answers.

This theme will come up again in later articles (the idea of “feeling better than people”), but for now it’s enough to establish that for as long as I can remember I have found extreme levels of validation in believing that I am smart.

My quest for self-actualization via superior levels of knowledge began for me in school. For example, I can recall…

• The not-so-subtle feeling of superiority in third grade when I was identified as TAG (Talented and Gifted) and would be visibly removed from the rest of the class to go to a different room for more advanced education. That’s right, suckers, watch me walk out and leave y’all dummies behind. Oh the high!

• The endorphin hit in fifth grade when our teacher started having us bring our tests up to the front of the room to turn it in when we finished, and I quickly realized that I was first to finish every single time. Both smart and fast. What a rush!

• The self esteem boost in middle school when other students would rush to be my partner because they knew it would increase their chance for success. I loved it!

(🤮I hope you’ll excuse this nauseating self-indulgent reflection of weird humble-bragging of my childhood brilliance… don’t worry, it’s almost over).

I’m trying to paint a picture of just how much energy I derived from feeling as though I know more than other people. In order to fully appreciate all of what drew me to the calling of being a Pastor, I want to honestly unearth the less-than-flattering parts of myself that might’ve seen pastoring as a way to scratch certain itches, even if not in the healthiest of ways.

I’ve heard it said that instead of asking kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” we should ask, “What problem in the world do you want to solve?”

When I think back to my academic years growing up, and I reflect on just how much of my self-worth was wrapped up in feeling smarter than other people, I wonder if part of my decision to become a Pastor was motivated by my desire to solve the problem of people not being as smart as me? (Blech, gross, I know).

I tell you all of this not only so that you know more about me and my origin story (both the good parts and the cringe 🥴), but because it was this particular aspect of my personality that made my high school youth pastor, Rob Nelke, such an allure to me.

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WHAT (or WHO) IS A PASTOR?

As I begin this Series on becoming and being a Pastor, it seems fitting to go back in time to see how, when, and where the seeds of my… what, calling? vocation? … first got planted.

But even before the how/when/where, I want to start with a couple “whos” because, as with any profession, one has to have not only a general understanding of what a particular job is, but also a specific idea or example of what it means to do that job.

As I look back I can recall two pastors who left an indelible mark on not just my sense of what a Pastor is, but also in terms of shaping the kind of Pastor I would go on to become. While my decision to go in to full-time ministry was one of those out-of-nowhere moments (which I’ll share about in the coming weeks), I can look back now and see how these two men shaped my conception of what a Pastor is in ways that not only revealed that such an occupation was a positive one (for me, anyway), but might also be one uniquely adapted for my own personality, skill set, and passions.

CHURCH IS LIFE

Like many who grew up as I did, church was life as a kid.

I’m the middle child of three boys and virtually my entire childhood was shaped around church world. My dad comes from a long line of Baptists, whereas my mom was a first generation Christian—converting to (Baptist) Christianity in high school and meeting my eventual-dad in the youth group. When they married and started having us kids they still attended the church they met in—the very one my dad had attended since childhood. Both my parents were active in the church, so as a result our family was downtown at First Baptist Church multiple times a week.

I can still remember the massive exterior brick walls taking up nearly an entire block; the outdoor playground with old metal monkey bars shedding years of chipped paint; the basement level fellowship hall that served juice and cookies after service; and the massive sanctuary with rows of pews, a sloped floor, and an impressive choir loft. Every single Sunday we’d sit in the same pew, boringly enduring the service and and anxiously awaiting the aforementioned juice and cookies.

At some point (maybe I was six? Or seven?) my parents decided to switch churches. I’m sure they’ve told me why, but I don’t now recall. (Maybe something to do with wanting to be in a different community than the one you grew up in? The one your parents/in-laws still actively attend and serve in as well?)

We ended up at North Albany Baptist Church (still a Baptist church, obviously 🤪) and, while the setting was fresh, the routine remained much the same: choir rehearsal on Wednesdays, church on Sunday mornings, usually something Sunday evening, and year round events such as Harvest Festivals, Easter cantatas, and Christmas pageants galore.

That’s when I met Pastor John.

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INTRODUCING “TRYING”

Recently I said goodbye to a twenty year career pastoring in the local church (though hopefully you also saw my recent announcement about transitioning to a new role of Digital Pa…

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