Letter to a Pastor

Dear Pastor Brewer and Carolyn,

I don't know how to begin this letter. Go grab yourself a coffee; it's probably going to be a long letter. I feel so much sorrow and sadness over your leaving but I know that sorrow will be turned to joy in knowing and seeing the impact you will have on the current and future clergy. I know I will miss your preaching from the very bottom of my heart and in my future trips to LA. The sorrow I feel over knowing that you are leaving comes from the idea of walking back into Bel Air without "my" pastor. It's like when you go back to your favorite grade school teacher's classroom, but you know that time has passed and the grade school teacher is no longer there. There is nothing constant outside of God other than change right :) God called me to LA in 2003, 2 years after I had become a Christian, and I thought it was for other reasons but it ended up that he wanted Bel Air to be my church and you to be my pastor and my friends to be the worship team. How unbelievably blessed am I?!

You are my first preacher as a Christian and Bel Air is my first church. It was and is my home. It was my grade school classroom for the last 9 years as I have continued to visit Bel Air yearly and listen to your sermons online every week for years after I moved back to South Carolina. When I moved to South Carolina from LA I felt like I was going through a divorce (not that I have been through one of those, so maybe I am talking out of my butt with that metaphor) because my heart hurt and yearned so much to be with my church. It did not help that it has been so hard to connect with a church here in the South and/or have that same assurance that God wants me in a specific church here.

Every year I come back to revisit LA and my life there the highlight and priority of my trip is always Bel Air Presbyterian. A year ago I came to LA after my church split and my priority was to come to Bel Air to experience the safety and comfort and encouragement of your sermons and sit in my first "home," my church. You and I spoke about my church splitting back in Charleston, dubbed "The Holy City." The ironic "Holy City" of "The Bible Belt." Being able to fly back to my home church in that difficult time and to have you speak with me and pray for me was such a blessing and gift that I didn't expect above and beyond the wonderful comfort of the sermon, the band and the message. I remember just being blown away that somehow you remembered me and even characteristics about me. As you prayed you thanked God for specific characteristics about me, your sister in Christ, and it overwhelmed me with joy, encouragement and a sense of belonging that I so desperately had lost and needed with the fracture in my Charleston church.

Because I value your advice and wisdom, I believe that had I not spoken with you I wouldn't have had the strength to find another church and get back involved as soon as I did. My rebellious nature has a tendency to want to give up on the Christian community (even without the pain!). I don't think I will ever forget or be able to rationalize away that God does want me involved in His community because of all the many sermons and the emphasis you placed on Christian community and small group. You showed me that God does desire me to love his church even if I would rather run outside, grow dreadlocks, become a hippie and commune with nature and call that my church, leaving the American church behind. I get why people do that. You have instilled in me the importance of a local church and community in addition to my own personal relationship and time spent with God (in nature as a dirty hippie or whatever.ha). My life, my faith, my boldness and my perseverance has been shaped by your messages and leading. I do not know if I would have become the Christian I am today or have the relationship and passion for God that I do without those messages and your leading. Certainly I would be a Christian and have a relationship with God, but what would I look like without your leading and Bel Air? Praise to God for Bel Air and your leading; He knows me so intimately well.

I feel like a chapter is closing in my life that I loved so dearly; but I have to hope, as do you, that our most fruitful and closest moments with God may lie ahead of us. I think everyone grieves the ends of different chapters in their life. Even in joy, I know I will grieve the loss of my Bel Air pastor as you will the loss of your flock at Bel Air. I guess we never really lose anything as Christians. That is so comforting.

I've found the only thing that the only thing that leads to life is Christ. I've experienced death, spiritually and physically. I was definitely as close as you could get to it many many times. In fact, I am sure that the only reason I sit here and write today is because God intervened on every one of those deadly nights. I desperately, stubbornly and out of complete necessity desire to follow Christ. I also desperately have a heart for the lost, particularly those in my friends and family. They are still in the dark with their eyes unopened. "Making LA the greatest city for Christ" was something I wholeheartedly believed in and I was able to understand and apply that mission on a smaller scale starting with my everyday life in LA and with my lost friends and family. Do you know how rare it is for the congregants of a church to know what the mission of their church is? Your messages encouraged me and gave me the strength and instruction I needed to to walk out into the world and live my life for Christ with boldness especially when I was looking so hard for fellow people to support each other in our everyday missions. I had always stubbornly refused to be someone else in church than I was in life, and Bel Air still accepted me and spoke right into my life and my mission. If I could spout off at the mouth and be bold in who I was before Christ, then I sure as heck could do the same thing after. I don't think God expected anything less, although I think it surprised the heck out of others. He certainly has a sense of humor about those he chooses. Sometimes I felt alone in how boldly I wanted to live my life but your teachings and encouragement from the pulpit were used by God to shape me into the boldness with love that I have today. That last part, "with love," is sometimes the hardest part whether it is because of frustration, judgment, self righteousness or pride and it gets the best of us sometimes. I am so grateful for your emphasis on loving God and others as our ultimate priority. I always felt like you spoke the truth, you didn't compromise the Bible, but you spoke it in love. I hope to emulate that in my life. Your messages and example have taught me not to compromise my faith or fit the Bible to rationalize my own sin. Your messages delivered with love and compassion helped me not to fear the Bible and to see it as the word of God and His best for me.

I realize this letter makes me sound like a saint. Like I have never fallen short, backslid or rebelliously and knowingly sinned or walked in a way God did not want for me. Unfortunately I have. When I go through those times, your teaching reminds me of how much God loves me, that I am His daughter and He is always running out to meet me. So when I finally learn my lesson; be it from sinning once, or more than once in a particular area, the devil has not been able to condemn me or show me a skewed version of God's love with conditions mostly because of Bel Air or your sermons. Satan was not able to condemn me too much further than I had already condemned myself :) I want to obey God because I love Him. You showed me a God of love. I had been so burned by the church and pastors words before I became a Christian. God is so crazy. He knew me so intimately well that he brought me to Bel Air because He knew you were the perfect pastor to show me who He really was. Other than my salvation experience, there have been few times that God has given me a certainty and absolute knowledge about something. When I walked into Bel Air the first time in 2003, I experienced one of those times where I knew it was where I was supposed to be.

I hope you do not worry that by showing me God's love, mercy and forgiveness that I am one who feels I can and should do whatever I want. That is not what the Bible or you has taught me. Everything is permitted for me but everything is not good for me. You fostered the biblical principle of obedience by helping us learn more about God, ultimately causing us to love Him even more. God used you to open my eyes to the Bible, my forefathers in the faith, other faiths tenants, Greek and Hebrew and who I believe God really is. I think He has given you insight into that balance of love and strength and Lord that our God is. I have told you before that I think God made you to be "my" pastor. You may say, "Well, that is quite narcissistic Jane Ann." Why yes, yes it kinda is :) But I believe I am just one soul out of thousands who feel that way about you. Just like how each person can sit through a sermon and think God intended that message just for them . More than one ends up feeling that way. Isn't God amazing?! How does He do that? Sometimes He makes you feel like you are the most special child of His. Like you must be His favorite. How great and intimate is His love.

I hope and pray I am able to come out to LA Nov 4 to hear your message and send you off. I address this letter to Carolyn as well because I am super into the marriage relationship and I know that I owe her a great deal of thanks for being the woman beside you. And as you like to say, "Behind every good man is a shocked mother in law." ha. I'm sure there were times when her support was the thread holding you in place so you could be our pastor in the hard times you must have experienced and the times when the devil threw everything he had at you and our church. I pray and hope one day that I am able to be a part of a unity in marriage. I am going to go on a bit of a rabbit trail here. When I thought about my wedding, one of the biggest desires I had for that day was to have you preach at my wedding. I would have gotten married in a shack and rags just to afford to get you to SC, or all my friends to LA. I am sure you are dying to know why this was so important to me. When I gave my life to Christ I had no Christian friends. No one. I prayed God would never let me forget where I came from. I believe He took away my desire to use drugs and alcohol because he wanted my friends to see His strength through me. And they did. They could not believe the change in my life. They were stunned to see me before them clean and with a light and joy they couldn't describe (because it was of the Shekinah variety of course :) ). I have been completely open about my relationship with God and shared my faith with them in love. My heart breaks for their souls. My best friend, then agnostic, now an atheist, even told me that he got on his knees and tried to give his life to Christ shortly after my incredible and miraculous salvation. But he said nothing happened, so that was it for him. He was done with God, and it breaks my heart. I have yet to see one of my friends give their life to Christ. That has been a struggle for me to accept and sometimes Satan uses it to attack my faith and cause me to doubt or worse get angry with my friends and think they must not have done something right. But in the end, I do not know the reason they are still lost. I just have to trust God with their souls and be the light he has called me to be. I trust in what I believe so much that I don't have to force it down their throats. I am so blessed to have these beautiful lost friends still in my life. So, that is the long explanation of getting to where you come in. I was determined to get them to sit through at least one sermon with an altar call and everything and the best way I knew how to do that was to get married. Since you were so important in my walk with God, I really wanted them to experience that. If I only had once chance to get them to hear the word of God then you were my choice. I desperately wanted you to be the pastor that would get the chance to talk to the people I love so much. It's amazing how many times I hope for that scenario! I also planned for my dog to be in the wedding party but unfortunately he passed away this year after almost 18 years. That dog was a miracle! I'm getting seriously offtrack here. But I do hold on to the promise that God 's plans are bigger and better than my own. I also told my parents that if I died young I wanted you to be the pastor to speak at my funeral. Such a light topic right? If I didn't get the chance to share God through you with my friends in a wedding, that seemed to be the only other option. As I write this letter I realize its not up to me or you to save them and I should probably take half a chill pill. For the record, I am not a fan of my own death, so I hope the latter doesn't happen. Well, I think I have told you everything I wanted. Rest assured, if I have forgotten something, I am not averse to writing another 10 page letter. I have no idea where my letter writing gene came from; it has perhaps been over utilized here:) One of my favorite things used to be writing these big honking letters to God. That is actually what I was doing when out of nowhere I had a spiritual experience and gave my life to Christ. You encouraged me to write you if I needed to after we talked and prayed about my church split in Charleston, SC. Do you know how incredible it is that out of a church as huge as Bel Air you gave me that option?! I have the tendency to really worry about Bel Air and the pastor that might come after you. I worry that they will not be preaching with the Bible as the authority because of some of the struggles the Presbyterian USA has wrestled with. I think our church was a light in a denomination that was starting to compromise. I pray and hope against that. You are a beacon of truth no matter how popular or unpopular. My goal in life has been truth first; I know it is not loving others if I hide the truth out of a fear of rejection or losing them. I pray that Bel Air continues on the path you have led us down. I will pray for you and Carolyn and your family. Colorado! God must really love you. Los Angeles then to Colorado. Is Hawaii next? How blessed this school and clergy will be to have you. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for letting God use you. I thank God for pastors and fathers with a good sense of humor. It is so great to see that characteristic of God in my first pastor. This next chapter in life could be your greatest yet! It is so exciting to know that you will be working with clergy considering your past experiences with your father and brother. You are uniquely gifted, with just the right amount of love, honesty and compassion to make a huge difference as a result. You know perspectives and the struggles that clergy face that I am sure seminaries believe are too taboo to talk about. You may know the dangers and difficulties that clergy can fall into and their struggles like no one else. I am so grateful you will be bringing an honesty to them. I remember seeing the HBO documentary about Ted Haggard and it broke my heart. I pray you will be a light in the darkness for many clergy before a problem consumes them. Thank you with all my heart.