Epilogue

About 4 years ago, I started writing a book about my spiritual journey, and by draft #3, it was obvious that the heart of the story was the 3+ years I spent at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Certainly, the funniest stories emerged from those years, so I began cutting my manuscript down to a series of tales about my life as a Baptist seminarian in Marin County—material that forms the basis of this blog.

And now we’ve reached the end of the story. Sure, I could carry on with more recent anecdotes, but I have concluded once again that it is best to limit my musings to those few seminary years that shaped all the rest. Which means that this blog has run its course. But before I sign off, it seems only fair to offer a brief epilogue that tells the rest of the story—at least in part.

After graduating from seminary, Mimi and I remained in Marin to continue serving the churches that had become home to us, and I kept working at the environmental company to make ends meet. Eventually, Mt. Tam and BayMarin merged (under the latter name), and after a new senior pastor arrived on the scene, the church entered a period of steady growth.

Within 3 years, Mimi and I had two daughters, and I had joined the staff of BayMarin as an assistant pastor. For the next 6 years, I led the small group ministry (ironically), preached occasionally, and helped the church launch a transitional housing program for single mothers. But I also continued to struggle with some basic questions, such as whether the resources devoted to high quality musical/video presentations should have been channeled to ministries like the housing program. (Or to pastors’ salaries. One of the two.)

Sensing a fresh start was required, we moved north to Sonoma County to start a new church with some other BayMarin families, and I also became executive director of the housing program—now a stand-alone entity. The new congregation got off to a good start, and on the outside, everything seemed fine.

Internally, though, I felt increasingly torn. Maybe it was the new surroundings or some midlife deal, but for the first time, I gave myself permission to reexamine my faith from the ground up—no holds barred. And I soon realized that the professional ministry is a poor context for such a process. So, long story short, after 2 years I left the ministry and found another job in the environmental field.

That was over 5 years ago, and while the reexamination process is probably not complete, I do feel more settled as a person. My views have changed considerably, though the process has not been as simple as replacing Belief A with Belief B or Position X with Position Y. In fact, the biggest change of all may be my growing disinterest in having the right answers—the settled, orthodox theology I can cling to forevermore.

Of course, if you’ve read this far, you’ve probably already figured some of this out already. So I’ll simply close by thanking you for coming along for the ride. I hope you had a few laughs along the way, if nothing else.

Graduation

On a cool December evening, my seminary education concluded with a simple graduation ceremony held at the Golden Gate chapel. During the commencement speech, I gazed through the chapel’s floor-to-ceiling windows to the lights of San Francisco glimmering across the Bay, and I remembered arriving on campus as a callow 23 year-old, unsure if I really belonged at the seminary or among the ranks of professional Baptist ministers. But, despite ill-advised encounters with felons, a small arms arsenal, two stoned construction workers, and a licentious retiree, I was about to walk out as a newly minted Master of Divinity.

Of course, the chapel afforded me no views of the future, so it was impossible to perceive how the course of my life would be shaped by a handful of years spent immersed in two very different worlds. The terms were not in vogue then, but studying Red State religion in a Blue State world had changed me. I had brought a host of questions to Golden Gate expecting ready answers, but my professors had, for the most part, shown a vexing reluctance to provide them. If anything, my seminary education had ended up raising still more questions that I couldn’t answer.

These doubts and struggles were more or less set aside for a long time, but eventually they came to bother me very much, as you may have gathered by reading various posts in this blog. In recent years, some of my faith issues have gotten resolved, others haven’t, and I have come to the overall conclusion that questions aren’t so bad, and answers aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. No, that’s probably not what my old seminary professors were trying to teach me, exactly. And, as such, they should be held blameless for my present spiritual and mental state.

Of course, it must be admitted that during my seminary years, I was also influenced by the various denizens of Marin County who crossed my path. If the seminary gave me a broader view of my faith, then Marin and the Bay Area gave me a broader view of humanity in general. It struck me as a place where you got to be more or less whatever you were, and no one would make too much of a fuss about it. Even if what you were was a rather goofy Southern Baptist seminarian.

I kind of liked that open stance, and over the years I began to wonder if there was something almost Jesus-like about this easy, come-as-you are acceptance. It doesn’t take much reading of the New Testament to see that the main gripe people had with Jesus was that he was too inclusive—too ready to hang out with women, children, cripples, and assorted riff-raff. Maybe you can read too much into that tendency, but then again, maybe you can’t.

Perhaps that’s why I’m still in the Bay area almost 17 years after that graduation ceremony. My, how time does fly.