Winn Collier - Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church

This book is a tour de forcean angle on understanding the life of both congregation and pastor that exceeds anything I have ever read. No directions, no programs, just an immersion into what really takes place in the life of a congregation and a pastor. Winn Colliers writing is alive.

Eugene H. Peterson

author of The Message and The Contemplative Pastor

This is ultimately a love letter to the church not just for what she can be but for what she already is.

Mandy Smith

pastor, author of The Vulnerable Pastor:
How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry

Shatters all of our idolatrous addictions to big and growing and oversized franchised Christianities. Faithfulness absolutely must become the churchs new big. What Collier pens here is nothing short of miraculous. These letters demand to be read.

A. J. Swoboda

pastor, professor, author of The Dusty Ones:
Why Wandering Deepens Your Faith

In the venerable epistolary tradition of Saint Paul and Franois Fnelon, Winn Collier brings us glowing spiritual letters for today, wholehearted meditations on friendship, grief, hope, doubtand faith in a loving God who is near. Love Big, Be Well is a beautiful book for strugglers and seekers, written by a compassionate pastor we come to love.

Karen Wright Marsh

author of Vintage Saints and Sinners:
25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith

Love Big, Be Well is a welcome mat, a handwritten invitation, a gigantic wrap-around porch, a warm night filled with fireflies. There may not be a surefire formula for living a wide-open, hope-filled life, but this collection of earnest words comes very close.

Deidra Riggs

author of Every Little Thing:
Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are

Winn Collier places a bundle of letters on our doorstep to remind us how to live good lives together in this one place weve been given. These are truths we know but have sadly forgotten. And we need a good pastor to rouse our memory.

John Blase

author of The Jubilee and Know When to Hold Em

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive NE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

www.eerdmans.com

2017 Winn Collier

All rights reserved

Published 2017

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 171 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ISBN 978-0-8028-7413-9

eISBN 978-1-4674-4834-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Collier, Winn, 1971 author.

Title: Love big, be well : letters to a small-town church / Winn Collier.

Description: Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017025198 | ISBN 9780802874139
(softcover : acid-free paper)

Subjects: LCSH: ClergyFiction. | Rural churchesFiction. | Interpersonal relationsFiction. | GSAFD: Epistolary fiction. | Christian fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3603.O452 L69 2017 | DDC 813/.6dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025198

The poem The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, which appears in the letter Sabbaths Everywhere, is from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, and is reprinted here with the permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

To the good people of All Souls Charlottesville.

Together, were making beautiful stories.

THE LETTERS

H ANK PIERCE AND AMY QUITMAN WERE NEIGHBORS on Rural Route 28. Their mailboxes shared a weathered post at the end of the gravel lane. This seemed fitting, since their families also shared a weathered pew at Granby Presbyterian Church. Hank and Amyalong with Tom, the tire salesman, and Luther, the countys public defendermade up Granbys Pastoral Search Committee. Though a thankless job, their assignment did mean that every Thursday night theyd sit in the churchs empty manse, drink Folgers, and enjoy a few minutes shooting the bull. Then theyd return to the pile of resumes that represented the fleeting hope for their beleaguered flock.

This Thursday, though, after the coffee and the gossip, they sat quietly, staring at the stack. Over these last several months, theyd endured phone interviews with four candidates and visits from two more. After confirming the towns modest population or seeing the churchs humble clapboard building, three candidates quickly exited the process. One candidate turned out to be an ex-con and abruptly stopped answering their calls. Last they heard, he was back preaching in the pen.

Another of the candidates had only been in the room with them ten minutes before commencing his pitch on how necessary it would be to change the churchs name. Two leadership books and a weekend conference had convinced him that Revolution Tribe would attract folks by the truckload. The final candidate, after an hour of meet-and-greet, pulled out his MacBook to cue up a presentation on the exponential growth curve of satellite campuses. Somehow this aspiring clergy missed the miles of farms and the Blue Ridge tree line as he drove into town.

The process had become a circus show. Now Amy and Hank and Luther and Tom were exhausted. The silence stretched on, and no one had the energy to break it.

Im bone-tired of interviews, Amy finally said, as she set her frost-blue mug on the table and reached into her purse. Unfolding a sheet of cream stationery, she continued. Id like to just send a letter to our candidatesand make them actually write back. With a pen. And real paper.

Luther leaned forward. What kind of letter?

This kind of letter. And Amy began to read.

Dear Potential Pastor,

Thank you for your interest in Granby Presbyterian Church. Were a pretty vanilla congregation, though we do have enough ornery characters to keep a pastor hopping. If youve got a sense of humor, youre not likely to get bored. We pay as much as we can, though its never enough. Your job is hard, and we know it. I think youd find us grateful for your prayers and your sermonsand even more grateful for eating apple fritters with us at the Donut Palace.

We do have a few questions for you. Perhaps were foolish, but Im going to assume you love Jesus and arent too much of a loon when it comes to your creed. We want theology, but we want the kind that will pierce our soul or prompt tears or leave us sitting in a calm silence, the kind that will put us smack-dab in the middle of the story, the kind that will work well with a bit of Billy Collins or Mary Karr now and then. Oh, and we like a good guffaw. Ill be up-front with you: we dont trust a pastor who never laughs. Well put up with a lotbut that ones a deal-killer.

Here are our questions. Wed like to know if youre going to use us. Will our church be your opportunity to right all the Churchs wrongs, the ones youve been jotting down over your vast ten years of experience? (Sorry, Im one of the ornery ones.) Is our church going to be your opportunity to finally enact that one flaming vision youve had in your crosshairs ever since seminary, that one strategic model that will finally get this Church-thing straight? Or might we hope that our church could be a place where youd settle in with us and love alongside us, cry with us and curse the darkness with us, and remind us how much Gods crazy about us?