Ministerial Musings: “In the beginning…” by John Tamilio III

Once I accepted the call to be the new Senior Pastor of the historic Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ in Tremont (a Just Peace and an Open and Affirming congregation), my wife and I began looking for communities in which we would raise our three children.  It did not take us long to select Lakewood.

Many issues weighed heavily into our decision. Most importantly: the quality of the public schools and the sense of community in which we were raised. Susan and I were reared in Beverly, Massachusetts — a city twenty minutes north of Boston. Having spent the last five years in Overland Park, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri), we were longing for a town populated with mom-and-pop stores, yet rich with diversity — as opposed to the white-bred, cookie-cut, franchised suburbia from which we emigrated.

Once we settled into our west-side home, one of my parishioners, friend, and Lakewood pillar Bill Grulich introduced me to Jim O’Bryan and I was given this opportunity: to be the new religion columnist for The Observer.

So here is what you can expect from me every other week: a column of spiritual depth, but not rooted in the sort of exclusivism that popular culture has come to associate with Christianity due, mainly, to a growing fundamentalism that seeks to eradicate the line between church and state by legislating its beliefs; a bi-weekly article informed by the best theological scholarship, though not so erudite that it is inaccessible to the average lay person; a forum that merges the practical and the theoretical and remains connected to issues that concern residents of Lakewood; a piece that ultimately seeks to engage the mind and touch the heart.

If there are any topics that you would like to see me address in this column — issues that are important to you and your spiritual formation — then please send me an e-mail: johnt@pilgrimalive.org.  Each submission will be prayerfully considered, whether or not it is tackled.  One rule, though — no communiqués bashing my other religion, The Boston Red Sox…that includes you, Charlie Bango.  Otherwise, we should become old friends pretty quickly.