By Erik Cave, Director of NextGen Ministries, PacNWC
Enjoy this interview with Chad Glazener, the new Lead Pastor at First Covenant Church in Portland, OR.
What is your personal and ministry background?
I come to pastoral ministry after a long and winding road. After experiencing a call to ministry in early high school, my sense of calling began to wane in college. Instead, I pursued a vocation as a theater artist, working in Orange County and Los Angeles theaters. It was a thrilling time, and I found myself at an impasse: how did my love of theology and the church fit together with my creative and artistic self?
I spent the next several years working on the intersection of theology and the arts, and it was after spending time with Eugene Peterson, Frederick Buechner, Madeleine L’Engle, and others that I began to see that pastoral ministry is, inherently, a creative vocation. I began to see that my life of creativity, of working to tell the truth, and soaking my imagination in Scripture all fit together. They all make up the work of pastoring.
Most recently, I was serving as a bi-vocational pastor at Redeemer Church in La Mirada, CA. During those years of ministry, I held a few other positions. The first job was in the non-profit sector, working for an incredible mission: re-imagining youth ministry that has adulthood as its goal (shout out to: www.wheatstoneministries.com). After my time at Wheatstone, I worked as an adjunct professor and admissions director for the Torrey Honors Institute, which is the honors college at Biola University. Both jobs were rich complements to my pastoral work.
What are you passionate about in ministry right now?
For the past several years my ministry background has centered on two themes: reminding us that God’s love is deeper than we have strength to swim, and that we can courageously seek the truth together. The ministry practices I’m most passionate about orbit those two themes. I am passionate about building communities where we see that questions aren’t opposed to faith; they’re in service of faith. I am passionate about the ways in which Jesus uniquely transforms us as he teaches us how to live in the kingdom. I am passionate about the creative art of hospitality and welcome. I am passionate about deepening in prayer, and helping others cultivate a life of prayer.
How can we pray for you?
Would you pray that God’s Spirit would speak to the community at First Covenant as we discern new ways to be the church? It’s a prayer common to all of us, but I want to join in. I want Jesus to lead us into a new way that none of us imagined.
Would you pray for my wife, Rachel, and my children: Madeleine, Lucy, and Henri? Pray that we would continue to settle in our new home and that God would bring us into new friendships.
Would you pray for your sisters and brothers at First Covenant? They have been walking through a season of transition and loss for a long time, and we are weary. But we are also renewed by the hope that God has been present to us, won’t leave us, and that we are part of the story God began here 133 years ago.
Five things you didn’t know about Chad:
1. Where is the best place you’ve traveled to and why?
In high school I had the chance to take an 8-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. That trip changed my life. It gave me a sense of humility and wonder that I’m still trying to follow.
2. What would you do (for a career) if you weren’t doing this?
I would want to work as a doctor, nurse, or other medical professional.
3. How do you define success?
My answer is one to which I aspire. Success in the Christian life is cruciformity. Whatever ways yield to the way of the cross are success, because they are the way of Jesus. His way of humility, weakness, vulnerability, and dependence is the kind of success I want to want.
4. What is the best book you have ever read?
I’m an avid reader, so this is like asking me to choose my favorite kid. I think I’ll answer by telling you about the book that changed my life the most. When I was in college, I took a class where we studied an epic poem called The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.
Part of the reason it is the best book I’ve ever read is due to the fact that I studied it with the best teacher I’ve ever had. Her guidance and the book itself opened my imagination and united it to prayer in unexpected ways. The book was integrative, showing me how beauty and poetry are part of a holy life.
5. Tell us something that might surprise us about you.
At Universal Studios in Hollywood, I once competed in and won a live audience version of the show Fear Factor. Those crickets were disgusting.
[Click Here] to visit Chad’s Instagram page
[Click Here] to visit First Covenant Church of Portland’s web page