Go Big Or Go The Hell Home

A pastor and a writer meet on the way to becoming

There are a few people in my life who I would call “fast friends,” but my friend Andrea comes to mind immediately when the phrase pops up. We met at Calvin, years after we’d been college students. We were wives and mothers and we’d been flirting with writing - both of us in what I’m calling the crush stage of the vocation - when we met.

A mutual friend introduced us through our blogs, so I didn’t technically meet her for the first time at Calvin. I got to know her through her writing which was bold and hilarious and convicting. When we met face-to-face she was just as vivacious. In fact, I don’t remember either of saying hello. I just remember finding each other and starting a conversation.

We were at Calvin for the Festival of Faith and Writing conference. I remember we sat next to each other and listened to Anne Lamott. We had a cup of coffee in “Johnny’s” the then snack shop on campus. Andrea introduced me to Traverse City Pie Company and over slices of cherry pie I told her I was starting graduate school in a few months and would be working with Lauren Winner.

“I’m scared,” I told her.

“Go big or go the hell home,” she said back.

It was in Sarah Arthur’s breakout session that I remember the most. Sarah was leading us through Lectio Divina using an excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. We were in the same classroom where, close to fifteen years ago, I sat as a student and Don Hettinga busted through the room with a picture book in his hands and read it to us with the same passion as a Baptist might give a sermon.

“Now that’s how you read a book,” I thought.

At that semester’s end, I would stand in the classroom after class and tell him that I am a horrible student, but also, I love to learn. I would tell him I don’t want to write (yet another) term paper and instead I want to try to write my own children’s story. He said OK.

This was the kind of thing that happened at Calvin, and I’m sure everyone would say the same thing about their college campuses, but there is something wonderful and unsettling that happens when Christ integrates into every aspect of the world - not to condemn or punish, like so many us believe and spread around - but to suggest the goodness in it.

So it wasn’t surprising when Andrea looked up from Gilead and said for the first time what it was she wanted to do with her life. I want to write precisely what she said, but I can’t remember - this moment too was over 15 years ago. I know she spoke about wanting to bring people together through stories which manifested into becoming a pastor. Had she said, “pastor” or “preaching” that day? I don’t know. I don’t know if she remembers, either. It was one of those “Here I am” Isaiah moments when a pinch of passion startles and “Here I am” is a shaky whisper responding to a still, small Voice.

Pardon the Hamilton reference, but I was grateful to have been in the room where it happened and I’ve been glad to have kept in touch with Andrea as she and I made our way into the literary and pastoral worlds.

About two weeks ago, I sent her what probably was a scattered, fragmented email telling her something along the lines of, “remember the Festival of Faith and Writing where we met and I told you I wanted to write and you told me you wanted to preach and here we are and so listen there’s this story……”

I’d been given an assignment by my editor at The Banner to write about Classis Grand Rapids East who had its last communion together before 10 churches and close to 65 pastors were dissafiliated from the CRC. What I learned quickly is that this isn’t a story about taking sides, as I assumed it would be. This is a story about heartbreak and loss and I didn’t realize that until I started talking to the pastors who made up the Classis.

I needed an even amount of pastors - those who were disaffiliated and those who were not - for the story. Four agreed to speak with me. One of them was Andrea.

I asked Andrea because she is my fast friend, because of the significance of my role as a writer and her role as a pastor in this specific time in history, and because many in the CRC (and in other denominations, I’m learning) believe women have no place at the pulpit. I know Andrea fought against that belief, and I wanted her voice in this story whether she was disaffiliated or not. My plan was to write the story so that Andrea had the last word.

I came close. I needed to explain a bit of the aftermath, but I think Andrea has the most evocative lines of the piece: “Our lives overlap in countless ways outside of classis meetings. For me, I think that added to the gravity of the moment. It felt like we were losing a limb. This meeting felt like an embrace within the departure.”

I’m proud of this story. I’m proud because my editor thought of me when it came up because she knew I’d be willing to write it. I’m proud because I had a chance to use a bit of what I had to bear witness to the world, even if the witness is sorrowful. I’m proud because Andrea is a pastor and I am a writer and for a moment our talents intersected.

I believe we are both going big, and I believe we are finding ourselves at home.

You can read the entire story here.