Chapel Stories: Pastor Steven

This fall, the Chapel will celebrate its 16th anniversary, and there are so many stories of God’s faithfulness here worth telling. I thought I would start with my own story because, before I became the pastor, I was a member for a number of years.

My wife and I moved up to Pasadena shortly after we got married in May 2015. At the time, I was employed by a Christian parachurch organization that worked with college students, helping them develop their faith during college. I had been working at and living near USC since 2010, but after getting married, I wanted to move to a more family-friendly area than the vicinity of a college campus, and so I found myself in Pasadena.

Now, my job was a ministry job—I was more or less a pastor to college students—but there were a lot of important differences. We met during the week, only during the school semester, and everyone in my “church” was a college student. Campus ministry is a very important and vital ministry, but it isn’t a replacement for church—something I was careful to preach to my students.

Unfortunately, I was less careful about preaching it to myself! My church attendance was consistent, especially during my first few years in LA, but as my ministry work got busier, I did not always make time for church. I started attending a large church where I knew no one would miss me if I didn’t come every week. No one really knew me at the church, and I didn’t really know anyone.

When I got married, I continued to go to that church for a while, but Tanya and I really wanted to connect more deeply with our church. Her only experience with church had been in a small church, and so we started to look around closer to home. But our search was not very urgent. We would check out a church for a week or two and decide it wasn’t for us. After nearly a year and a half in Pasadena, we still hadn’t found a home.

My parents came up to visit us near the end of this period, and we shared a bit about our church struggles. What happened next can only be described as a good old-fashioned parental talking-to. My mom told me I needed to get serious and get plugged in because we needed a church family to support us. At the end of the lecture, I felt a bit abashed—she was right. I didn’t really feel like I needed church, and so there was no real urgency in our search. My parents decided to take us to church the next day and picked one they had read about.

Now, the real cinematic version of that story would involve my parents taking us to just the right church, but that’s not really what happened. Almost immediately, I knew it wasn’t the right church for us. But during the “greet your neighbor” portion of the service, we talked to a couple next to us who, it turned out, were also visiting that week. Unlike us, however, they had a church home, and they invited us to visit it with them the following weekend. Friends, that church was the Chapel. After our first service, we felt at home.

The postscript to this story shows how God was at work. A few weeks later, I learned that my organization was going through some changes and that I might be asked to step down from my position. I had worked my entire adult life for them, and this news threw us into turmoil. Over the next six months, I went through the long and painful process of separating from a job I loved and an organization I had been with for 10 years. My future was very much up in the air. I had no job lined up and no new career trajectory. I was at a loss.

And who do you think was the biggest support for me during this season? My church family. Even though I had been there for only a few months, the church—led by our former pastor, Chuck Ryor—rallied around us. Their love and encouragement were invaluable. God knew that we needed the Chapel and brought us to it at precisely the right time. That is what I have always wanted our church to be for others!