Ephesians 2:10 says that your life is God's artwork. You have a good and beautiful purpose. I write and speak to help you find belonging, redemption & growth as you discover the life God has designed for you. My name is Marc Alan Schelske.
I'm a reader, a thinker, a writer, and speaker. Sometimes I'm a chef or a songwriter, always a dad and husband. I'm the teaching elder at Bridge City Community Church in Milwaukie, Oregon, where I bang the drum for inside-out living and have the privilege of inviting people into a life of following Jesus more and more.
In my writing, I focus on what it takes to nurture a healthy inner life, something found at the intersection of grace and growth. Jesus' teaching in Luke 10:26-28 shapes my view on what a whole, integrated spiritual life looks like where we love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind.
I've served as a pastor full-time since 1995. In that vocation, you get to fill a staggering array of roles: coach, mentor, spiritual guide, babysitter, event planner, HR professional, public speaker, building manager, mediator, marriage counselor, and even CEO. I turned 50 in 2021, and I've learned that I'm not good at all of those things. Because I want to make a dent in the universe, I want to spend the days I have left doing the things I'm wired up to do.
My life experience provides the fertile soil for what I communicate. A snapshot of my influences would probably include some of these things:
- I'm an adopted child. A PK. The child of a conservative, even at times fundamentalist, Christian community.
- My dad died unexpectedly when I was 11, forever shaping my heart and my emotional reality and leaving me alienated and isolated from the church.
- I attended art school, pursuing a career in architecture, looking for a creative way forward in my life, where I got derailed by God's call to ministry. I packed my whole life into the back of my Chevy S-10 Blazer and headed west, like so many before me, seeking a new life. I got a degree in Theology at Walla Walla University and started making my way in youth ministry (The R&D department of the church.)
- I was hired as a hotshot new youth pastor at a large, influential church and promptly experienced the worst church split I have ever seen before or since, in many ways shattering my image of what church should be.
- I was invited to be on staff at a new church plant and hung on for the ride of my life. There I've experienced some of the worst tragedies that can happen to a church, as well as some astounding victories. I led for years out of my own performance-driven needs and have seen how destructive that is.
- I've come to the very edge of burnout, lived with depression where I couldn't drag myself out of bed in the morning, and been in counseling for more than a year.
- Along the way, I married Christina, an amazing, strong woman who has graciously stayed close to me when I spent most of our marriage unavailable to her. Together we're working to rebuild a new kind of marriage on top of our painful ruins. Today we have an adult foster son, a 16-year-old daughter, a 15-year-old son, a co-dependent mutt named Jackson, and a vicious people-hating cat named Bellatrix.
- All of this happens in Milwaukie, a little community in Portland, Oregon -- one of the most interesting, challenging, and weird places you can be a pastor.
For fun I cook, listen to music (live music is especially good for me), play guitar, and read. I'm a voracious reader, from the Church Fathers to Science fiction, from theology to neurobiology--and all of it shows up in my thinking in one way or another.
Whether through a book, a blog post (www.MarcAlanSchelske), or speaking, I hope to interact with you and support you on your quest for an intentional and life-giving spiritual journey following after the way of Jesus.
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