It started with an email:
Hi Steve
Jason O’Neil here – it was nice to meet you on Sunday, thanks for the friendly welcome. For whatever reason I chose small talk instead of sharing something I wanted to, but you said you’re a pastor who loves the story, so here’s an introduction to mine.
It’s a complete surprise to me that God is doing something in Anna and she’s feeling a pull back into church. That’s her story to share. But she’d encouraged me to listen to your message from last month on Humility, the “building bridges, tearing down walls” one, and at the end I felt challenged to reach out to you (not sure if this counts as building a bridge or tearing down a wall? 🤷‍♂️)
But then when I met you on Sunday, I’ll admit I was feeling relatively anxious being back in the building at Riverview. The community there was home for me for some 15 years, I was very much an insider. But I’ve consciously rejected that and chosen to stay on the outside after we returned to Perth 4 years ago.
When you talked about building an inclusive community, a welcoming church, it reminded me of everything I loved about this community, and I want to be part of that. There’s two stumbling blocks for me at the moment.
One is that by most evangelical standards I’m a bit of a heretic. I’ve variously described myself over the past few years as “an agnostic christian”, “a christian mystic”, “I grew up religious”, “a god-fearing gentile” and “it’s complicated”. Unlike a lot of my friends on similar journeys, I still believe in God, even still try to be in relationship with God. But my beliefs and my language around that have really shifted. My mind doesn’t know what to believe. And yet, the Philippians 2 story you preached on, of incarnation, self-emptying, is the most compelling story I’ve encountered. I don’t know if it’s literally true, but its powerful, and its good, and I’d want to live my life following that way. Protestant churches have so emphasised correct belief and correct doctrine that when you question it all, its hard to stay in the community. And I don’t blame the churches, when you unravel your worldview like this the most common response is to call it all bullshit and walk away. Too many people asking too many questions won’t be good for the health of the community. But in your picture of a big inclusive church… where do heretics that are still interested in discipleship fit?
The other stumbling block is the churches exclusion of the LGBTQ community. Riverview was founded by a pastor who later came out as gay, and so long had a softer stance than the surrounding evangelical culture. The first time I had a friend come out as gay, it was a friend from Riverview, and I’m still grateful to him for loving me through my prejudice. But at some point (2015-ish?) the church took a stance that those in gay relationships couldn’t volunteer. When we moved back to Perth in 2018 we tried to return to Riverview for a while, but I silently took a stance of only getting as involved as a queer friend would be allowed to. (If I wanted my protest to be meaningful, I probably should have told someone 🤦‍♂️). Anyway, it turns out feeling connected at a megachurch is hard when you’re not involved in a team. The challenge in your sermon to protect the unity of the church challenged me to be less hostile towards those Christians who are hostile to the queer community – can I make space for them? But reciprocity would demand they also make space for those whose life choices they think are wrong… I have no idea what that looks like in a community in practice. I’m bored of the debate about if homosexuality is sinful (to the point about me being a bit of a heretic, I have a non-standard definition of sin anyway). But I am interested in how to build a united church when the divisions are so deep. And given the Australian church’s history of stoking division (burning bridges?) in this area… I want to hear about how you think about rebuilding bridges with this community.
I hope you don’t mind me putting all this in an essay-length email. Like I said, don’t feel like you have to respond. Me sending this is just a way of forcing myself to open up my story, rather than stay polite but closed off. If you’re interested we can pick the conversation up some other time. This is me reaching out and responding to something I felt in your sermon. Thanks for preaching it so passionately.
See you soon,
Jason
I figured I would get back to church at some point, once the kids were a bit older, but going anywhere with a one year old and three year old felt impossible. And I didn’t know where to go. It’d been five years since I left Perth, and the church I’d grown up in – Riverview – along with it. I’d tried lots of churches since then – in Melbourne and Sydney and Perth, Anglican, Church of Christ, a home church, even two separate Hillsong churches. There was a small community of about 30 people in Melbourne that felt like a spiritual home and a community where I belonged, but after it wrapped up, nothing felt quite right.
I knew enough to know that there would be no perfect place, and that if I wanted genuine community it starts with messy community. But the thought of starting over somewhere felt overwhelming, especially at this stage of life, and so I just had stopped trying. For a while anyway.
Steve’s response cut through that.
He took a walk around the park next to the church and sent an initial response. He engaged with my questions, offered no judgement, shared some of his story, and some of how he views his role. He used the word “missionary” rather than “pastor” or “leader”. To my question about where there’s a space for a heretic in church, he returned the question “what is church?” to deepen the conversation. Then he talked about how that afternoon he was going to visit a young man dying from Huntington’s disease, as if answering his own question. And then he invited me to grab a burger with him to talk more.
It was a style of pastoring I hadn’t experienced before. And definitely not at that level of leadership in a large church. The start of a friendship.
I want to tell all the stories of all the other times it cut through. It would be a long post! Instead I’ll share the message I wrote for him now that he’s heading back to Canada. (Today is his last day as senior minister at Riverview). I hope it gives you a picture of what his pastoral work, and his friendship, has meant to me:
Hey Steve,
There are many things I want to thank you for. For taking a walk around G.O. Edwards park and responding to my email and inviting me for a burger. For paying for that burger. For seeing my pastoral gifting and calling it out over that first lunch, even when I wasn’t sure about anything about church. For reading a blog post I sent you, and then reading some more, and encouraging me to the point I started writing again. For the vulnerability to share some of what was frustrating or hard for you and your family in the move to Perth. For the smile and honest-to-God “it’s good to see you” when I’d walk in late and sit a row or two behind you on a Sunday morning. For holding space for me and Anna the day after our sister attempted suicide. For calling us friends. For visiting me when I was in hospital because I had bladder problems, and not making it awkward. For being only the second person to subscribe to my blog, and the first person who is not my mum. For communicating a vision for the church that resonated with me so strongly that it shapes my own hopes and goals and plans. For helping me chart a path to nurture my preaching gift, then seeing where my family was at, just being honest that that 100% had to be the focus for the next few years. For seeing me broken and crying in the foyer, at a time you couldn’t stop, and at least making sure someone else was with me. For that walk around Heirisson Island / Kakaroomup and enjoying nature together. For hearing me as I tried to tell you how hard it was without telling you what was happening. For being at my house less than an hour after I told you what was happening. For immediately speaking hope: that you have always felt like God had better days ahead for me. For calling every couple of days. For encouraging me every time you saw me at church – I felt like you understood how hard it was. For being the first to ask, with a glint in your eye, if anyone new had caught my interest. For when you met her for the first time and, without making it weird, named the calling you see for my life.
So thank you, for all of these things.
But most of all, I want to thank you for a moment you weren’t present for. It was in the darkest point in this whole story when I was not coping at all. Visiting Anna in hospital every day. Trying to solo parent special needs kids. Carrying the weight of the start of a marriage break-down but having not told anyone yet. And in there, I took a day off, and went for a hike in Mundaring. And on that hike, God showed up. There were three key moments, each with images that shifted how I understood God to be holding me, in this situation, and in all of my life. And the second of those, I think I could only understand because of what you most love to talk about. The trail rounded a corner and hit a breathtakingly beautiful spot, and I had to stop. I felt like the Spirit was reminding me it was holy ground, so I deliberately paused, stepped off the path, and acknowledged the moment. And in that moment, I noticed that it wasn’t just a sense of God as spirit/breath, or God in Heaven over everything sense… my sense was that it was Jesus. The person, my friend. Nearby, walking along this same path, looking at this same view, with me in this. All of this. The Jesus I knew when I was young. You speak about it so often – that he calls us friends. I knew it when I was young, but in de-constructing / re-constructing my faith, I’d lost it. And in that moment, with your constant encouragements, I found it again. I’m still learning, but in that moment, something shifted.
Whether you saw your work here as being a missionary or a pastor or a friend… whatever it is, I’ve felt your love, and through that, I’ve re-discovered Jesus’ friendship. And for that most of all, thank you.
My faith is in a very different place than it was three years ago. To make it through that season and to where I am now I needed a pastor, and I needed a friend, and Steve was both.
Thanks Steve ❤️ Can’t wait for the day I make it over to Canada to visit you and the family!
