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Today marks my last day as a Pastor. |
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Over eight years ago I planted a progressive Christian church in the living room of our small home here in San Diego.
Since March of 2014, I've been working tirelessly to try and build a community of spiritual refugees, nomads, explorers and sojourners. With loads of highs (and a balancing dose of lows), the past eight years have been some of the best of my life.
Launching and leading Sojourn Grace Collective was an honor and a privilege.
And today is my final day as its Pastor. |
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(Photo: the early days, when we met in our living room in North Park) |
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Thank you to all the Sojourners near and far, old and new. |
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I hope in the coming days/months to be able to articulate this better, but for now all I can say is THANK YOU to everyone who ever:
- Walked through the doors of Sojourn Grace, courageously overcoming your (well earned) anxiety around church.
- Volunteered to be with kiddos, or greet newcomers, or play in the band, or make coffee, or serve communion, or helped to setup and tear down EVERY FREAKING WEEK.
- Supported our church startup through financial contributions. It still blows my mind to think of all the people who believed in this Vision enough to actually GIVE money to it!
- Prayed for us, with hope that we could be a community of belonging for those who need healing.
- Believed in us (because let's be honest, a post-evangelical, progressive Christian church is NOT an easy thing to be or do).
- Joined our community from around the world. Either through our community Facebook group, or as a podcast listener, or in these past 2+ years as part of our livestream Virtual Church.
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If you follow me on Instagram perhaps you've noticed that I've been counting down the last ten days, leading up to some announcements tomorrow and all week.
(In fact, I apologize ahead of time for the number of emails you'll get from me this week I think I've like got three scheduled? Don't worry, it'll die back down soon :)
In terms of WHAT'S NEXT, I'll share more details with you tomorrow but for now let me just say that while my time as a local church Pastor has come to an end...
...my passion for pastoring people has not.
Specifically, I still feel called to and energized by:
- Caring for the well-being of people's hearts and souls.
- Teaching about the Way of Jesus.
- Inviting people to a life more open, expansive, and grace filled.
- Exploring how the Bible can still be inspiring and foundational.
- Offering a vision for progressive spirituality and Christianity.
- Breaking down complicated ideas into accessible resources.
- Fighting against toxic theology and harmful religious practices.
- Creating resources for those stumbling through the journey of life.
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So keep an eye out here in your email inbox for some of the things I've launching tomorrow, and some of the ways I still intend to embody my calling to be a Pastor.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring. Thank you for being the reason why I keep doing this work.
I love you.
Sincerely,
(Still) Pastor Colby |
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(For nostalgia sake, here's one of the first official Sojourn Grace Collective videos. It highlights our first All Church Retreat, where we invited anyone to join us to help shape the future vision for who and what our community would be. It was also the day we announced our church's name. Good times.) |
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