Chapel Stories: Nathan

This fall, the Chapel will celebrate its 16th anniversary, and there are so many stories of God’s faithfulness here worth telling. A few weeks ago, we heard from Pastor Steven and today we wanted to share Nathan's story. Hear it in his own words: 

I was invited to the Chapel by my manager at work in the fall of 2022.

I had just told him that I was going through a divorce and would occasionally need to miss work for the various daytime meetings involved in that process. I had always known him as a logical, “by-the-book” manager—which, of course, he was and still is. But when I shared the news, he looked visibly heartbroken.

What happened next has always stayed with me. He gave me a hug and asked if I had a church to attend.

He didn’t know that I had once been deeply involved in a church but had not found a new one since moving to Southern California. Since then, I had been living on spiritual “granola bars”: podcasts, sermons, and phone calls with other Christians. I was searching for something more substantial, and God connected us at precisely the right time and place.

When I began attending the Chapel, I was extremely guarded and suspicious. I had been raised as a Christian, attending church and Christian schools, but my most recent experience of Christianity had been marked by deep legalism. That experience contributed to a long series of emotionally and spiritually blind decisions that resulted in estrangement from my immediate family and, ultimately, my wife.

In God’s mercy, I did not lose my connection with my children, although at times even that felt only moments away.

I had begun to recognize that the problem was not simply what had happened around me. My own faith had been shallow—like the seed planted in rocky soil. That shallowness was particularly evident in my emotional understanding of myself and of God.

As I searched for a new church, what I watched for most carefully was authenticity: authenticity in doctrine, in action, and in ordinary life. I wanted a faith that took seriously how emotionally and spiritually complex it is to be an ordinary human being.

Over time, I began leaning into the life of the Chapel. I joined a community group and served alongside others through building maintenance, children’s ministry, and music ministry. As I did, I discovered a deep authenticity driving the faith of the Christians around me.

Each person had a story. They vulnerably shared the ways God had transformed—and was still transforming—their lives. Those transformations had cost them something: a cherished vision of the future, closeness in a relationship, or the daily experience of pain and humiliation.

Yet in each person, I saw the kind of faith I had read about in the Bible: a dependence upon the providence of God and confidence in his love for us as a Father. I did not find legalism or nominal faith. I found a church where God was actively reviving believers, reaching friends, and reflecting Christ throughout Pasadena and in the extraordinary spaces of ordinary life.

I often tell people that the Chapel feels like a halfway house. It is a place for people who are deconstructing or reconstructing, questioning or hurting, blinded by life or simply feeling lost.

There is a deep well of support and understanding here—a kind of medicine like the one Jesus describes in Luke 5:27–32. All are welcome, and all are called to be changed by the gospel of Christ.

Life can be filled with heartache and disappointment. Yet each Sunday, and through every interaction with the Christians around me, I am reminded that entrusting my heart and mind to God has satisfied—and will always satisfy—me more deeply than the “something else” I once sought.

My hope and prayer is that God will continue to bless our small church and amplify the big faith of the Christians he calls through the Chapel’s doors.