This Is (Part of) My Story

Briefly introducing myself to you

Photo by Monstera Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-book-with-blank-pages-6373293/

(An eight-minute read.)

I believe that one of the most important things we can do is tell our stories—and to invite others to tell their stories. This has been a conviction of mine for nearly a decade, as I’ve come to appreciate just how much we, as humans, long to know others and to be known by others.

Thus, in whatever community I lead, I make story-telling an integral part of that community’s life (just as an aside: I prefer to use the term “story” in these contexts rather than “testimony” for many different reasons).

Just recently, my friends Mike and Brittni returned to Portland from a retreat that was highly focused on this very thing. They engaged in what the leaders of the retreat referred to as “story-telling liturgies.”

I love that idea—that telling our stories, and listening to others tell their stories, is an act of worship, and we should organize our corporate worship around telling and learning each other’s stories. It’s something we must intentionally make space for, helping people recognize that their story, no matter what twists and turns it’s taken, deserves to be heard and held with grace (my dad recently shared a quote with me by English clergyman, F. W. Boreham, that speaks to this beautifully: “The person whose biography is not worth writing has never yet been born”).

So I figured I would just briefly tell (part of) my story via this medium.

If you’ve subscribed to this newsletter for any length of time, you’ve picked up bits and pieces of it. Perhaps you’ve even read my most recent book where I talk a lot about the last eight or nine years of my story.

Or perhaps you’ve just started subscribing to my newsletter and you’re wondering who in the world this person is who keeps sending you emails every Tuesday!

You could simply ask ChatGPT, of course—as I’ve done in the past.

But let me try my hand at very briefly—in about 1200 words—sharing the most salient parts of my story (recognizing, of course, that we always tell our stories differently at any given moment—and will tell it differently based on the setting), starting out 2025 with a little more explicit vignette of what makes me “me.”

So this is the way I’d tell my story right now.

Once upon a time . . .

First, some basic biographical facts: I was born in Massachusetts, the youngest of three kids, to wonderful, loving, amazing parents. My dad and his family emigrated from eastern Canada to Massachusetts when he was a kid, and my mother—whose father was also Canadian—grew up in Massachusetts. My dad was a pastor and my mom was a nurse.

Religion was thus an integral part of my identity from before I was born. My dad started a number of congregations outside of Boston, and we were heavily immersed in our denomination—which was Seventh-day Adventism. After our mom homeschooled us for a few years, we also attended Seventh-day Adventist schools, which I ended up attending from third grade all the way up through my master’s degree.

In many ways, being a Seventh-day Adventist—and being a Seventh-day Adventist whose father started new congregations—caused me to feel like I didn’t quite ever belong anywhere.

We didn’t go to public schools; we didn’t play on sports teams with our neighborhood friends (partly because we didn’t do that sort of thing on Saturdays because of our observance of Sabbath); we lived quite a distance from the congregations my dad started, and thus quite a ways away from the few peers that actually attended those congregations; and we always lived quite a ways away from whatever school we attended.

At the same time, my siblings are 4-5 years older than me, and I thus only actually went to school with them for two years before they went off to a Seventh-day Adventist high school.

So I perpetually had this sense of not quite fitting in, of not having a community to which I truly belonged.

The upshot of that is I spent quite a bit of time by myself, which I utilized for creative ends—mostly imagining and writing stories, and honing my athletic skills. I was also hopelessly romantic and wild about girls basically as far back as I can remember, but never skilled or daring enough to enjoy much “success” in that area.

Religiously, Seventh-day Adventism was all I knew—which presented its own benefits and challenges.

As I said above, we always had this sense that we were and we were supposed to be “different” and “peculiar.” I suppose most religious communities feel the same way, but for reasons I won’t explain in detail, I’d say Adventism is one of a handful of religious communities—and especially Christian communities—that really feels this way.

Even to this day, I’m still wrestling with that idea, trying to make heads or tails of it. How do you instill a—perhaps appropriate—sense of calling, purpose, and mission without also instilling a heightened sense of self-importance (and perhaps arrogance)?

And how do you avoid spiraling people into shame when they feel like they’re not living up to that gigantic mission?

At the same time, Adventism has some pretty unique practices and beliefs that, in themselves, I think make a lot of sense and are wonderful (and can be quite appealing to people who’ve been turned off by other forms of Christianity).

The challenge is that those practices—and especially one’s failure to perfectly observe those practices—can also be sources of great shame. This is particularly true for young people, since they are naturally more inclined toward black-and-white thinking.

For example, Adventism places significant emphasis on healthy living and eating. That’s great. And it’s an appealing feature of our faith to people and cultures that have become increasingly skeptical about Christianity.

But it can—and has been—a source of shame for many people within Adventism, including myself, because of how the messaging has somehow come through that one’s worthiness, one’s “salvation” even, is predicated upon their ability to lead lives of perfect health.

I could multiply the examples, but the point I’m trying to make is that, in many ways, if I were to summarize my emotional development growing up, I’d say that the feelings I experienced throughout much of my life were that of loneliness, guilt, shame, wanting to feel significant, and, oddly enough, a strange sense of certainty that—looking back—was probably actually insecurity masquerading as certainty (which tends to be the case with these things).

I also experienced plenty of happiness—but it was always tempered by a sense that there was something missing.

Fast forward to 2016 (as I almost always do when I tell my story). After years of trying to be a good kid and then a good adult; after getting married to my wonderful wife and having three awesome kids; after years of fruitlessly trying to straighten out my religious community so that it lived up to its divine mission (or my perception of that mission); after wrestling with what it meant to be a pastor—I had (what I refer to as) a “missional rebirth.”

Again, I’ve written a whole book on this part of my story, so I won’t go into great detail on it—but the upshot of it is that, in many ways, I (somewhat reluctantly) began a process of “deconstructing” my faith, my ministry, and my life. I wouldn’t have used that sort of language at the time, but that’s what it essentially was—and still is.

(As a brief explanation of “deconstruction,” I just saw Chuck DeGroat beautifully explain it this way, quoting C. S. Lewis: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. And God will do the shattering.”)

I busted out of my religious bubble, stepped into the world outside my door, and started to recognize where my security really resides.

That security doesn’t stem from being infallibly right; it doesn’t stem from my ability to perfectly perform my unique calling; it doesn’t stem from being a part of the “right” religious group.

My security comes from being infinitely loved—and infinitely loved by the triune God of love (as most beautifully and wonderfully and winsomely embodied in Jesus). I’ve found a place I really belong: in the fellowship and community of this triune God.

Throughout this journey, I’ve not left behind all my prior religious assumptions. I’ve definitely discarded some of them, but I’ve actually come to a greater appreciation for a number of them—and become increasingly frustrated that many of those have been crowded out by other distractions by a lot of people in my religious community.

I still have lots of questions. I may have a few doubts. But I’ve committed myself to a grand story that has love at the center of its plot-line, and I want to embody and invite others into that story of love.

I’m still not quite sure if I truly belong anywhere in this world. I sometimes feel like I’m an alien in whatever circle I’m in—whether that’s my extended biological family, my religious family, or my broader geographical community (which is now Portland).

What I do know is that I want to love my wife and kids well, learn how to allow myself to be loved by them and others (and the triune God), and just hang out with and love my neighbors (meaning my literal neighbors).

Really, at the end of the day, that’s what I want my story to be about—all climaxing in a grand crescendo of eternal, face-to-face fellowship with the triune God of love (and any others who’ve decided along the way that they want to be a part of that story as well).

So now here I am: I’m 43 years old, pastoring a Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Freeport, Maine, and living in and starting a new congregation in Portland, Maine. I’m also pursuing a DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford—ultimately trying to figure out, in an academic context, whether there are, or should be, “boundaries” for religious belonging (that’s what is truly driving my academic research at the end of the day).

I have a wonderful and beautiful wife, Camille, and three awesome children—and many wonderful friends and extended family who I nevertheless frequently wonder if I truly “belong” to.

But I’m on the journey—hoping, believing, trusting that it will all someday lead somewhere (transcendent).

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Shawn is a pastor in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.