Pastor Sean Janssen and his family will be leaving Big Sandy to answer a call to pastor Grace Lutheran Church in Port Townsend, Washington. Sean was called to Big Sandy to pastor Christ Lutheran Church in May 2018, though he was not able to start his work here until the end of the summer. "Because I was in a one-year contract to serve as a chaplain resident at Banner University Medical Center-Phoenix, and that contract would not be finished until August, I did not get ordained until September 2nd. I had my first day in the office September 6th. In the meantime, the parsonage was vacant and the parish was generous enough to allow my family to move up here in advance. I used some vacation time to help move them in July 5th, and then I flew back down to Arizona a day or two later to wrap up my 4th unit of clinical pastoral education there."
The Janssen family quickly made themselves at home in Big Sandy with their children participating in sports, attending the local school, and making friends throughout the community. Vanessa participated in all sorts of community activities, notably acting as co-director of several community theatrical productions. Sean took up writing sports features for The Mountaineer, an especially welcome development, because as he put it: "I'm a sports fan so I loved watching my first 6-man football game with the backdrop of the Bear Paws and the grain elevator with "Pioneers" scrawled across it and kickoff right at golden hour. I'm always going to remember those Friday nights fondly."
Sean notes that he was particularly moved by the community's culture of connection and close relationships: "I was struck right away that people have to have bonded together and supported each other as a community to be able to maintain all of that. There really is a strong commitment to helping each other out in times of need."
The Janssens will be moving to a town smaller than Havre in Washington, just a ferry ride away from the the community where Sean and Vanessa grew up. "Port Townsend is directly linked to Whidbey Island by a state ferry route and it's a 35-minute sailing. My new church building and the parsonage next door are less than a mile from the ferry dock, and we could walk down the hill to it if we wanted. So it's kind of ideal ... very close to home but just far enough, no one can drop in unannounced." The close proximity to their hometown is an especially exciting development for the extended family, who eagerly look forward to spending more time with their grandchildren as they get older.
The congregation they will be serving was planted by German immigrants, meeting informally for many years before organizing into a body and constructing a building in 1955. Though the membership is mostly older, they are still very active. Sean explains: "Most of the older folks, though, are very active and the congregation is involved in ministries like an ecumenical food bank, visits at the nearest state prison, meals for the unhoused in the winter months, decades-long support of a Ugandan orphanage, hosting fundraiser concerts, lectures on the intersection between faith and science and an intentional relationship and exchange with Bremerton Emmanuel Apostolic Church, a predominantly Black congregation about an hour down the highway."
Christ Lutheran Church in Big Sandy will be meeting with the assistant to the Bishop later in June to plan out their next steps in calling a pastor.
Sean offered some parting pastoral words for his church and the community: "The church universal is in the midst of a major transition right now. It's not just Christ Lutheran in Big Sandy or even just the ELCA or Lutheranism in general. It's hard because the church grew over the centuries to become this large and powerful, but slow-moving, institution. There is a lot of anxiety about the future and the decline in attendance numbers in the Western world, but there's a lot going on in the world beyond. God measures by standards much more important than cold, impersonal numbers. The church is about relationship and its people, not buildings. God has given people all the tools necessary to bring about the Kingdom, but people have to discern how they are going to respond to God's love, Jesus' gift and the Spirit's encouragement. God is at work in Big Sandy and needs people not so much to help others find Jesus but to better recognize where the image of God exists, where Christ is already present, in the people God already knows and loves because they are created and valued as the children of God."
