|
St. Andrew Presbyterian Church Shreveport, Louisiana |
|
Meet the Pastor |
|
Barry Chance came to serve as SAPC’s pastor in September 2005. His first Sunday was the Sunday after Hurricane Rita and he had to give his sermon by flashlight because the electricity was out! Barry and his wife, Katie, moved to Shreveport from Richmond, Virginia where he attended Union Theological Seminary and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. Barry is also a graduate of North Carolina State University where he received degrees in Business Management and Religious Studies. Katie teaches Gifted English at Captain Shreve High School and directs the Drama Club after school. They have one child, a son.
Barry’s Statement of Faith
All of creation, every rock, tree, squirrel, and human being, sings the glories of the Creator who conceived each and knew each before the foundation of the universe. This God is the same God of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel and who redeemed the people of Israel from slavery and oppression. Our God is both surprising and predictable—predictable in faithfulness to the promise to raise up prophets, priests, judges, sages, and kings to vindicate the offended, defend the defenseless, deliver the oppressed, and bring good news to the brokenhearted—yet God continues to surprise us by doing this old thing in new and unexpected ways. God raised up Rahab, a prostitute to deliver the promised land to Israel; Ruth, a Moabite to mother a royal lineage; Cyrus, a Persian King to be the savior of Israel; Matthew, a tax collector to preach repentance; Saul, a persecutor to spread the Gospel to gentile lands; and Jesus, a humble Galilean to be the savior of humankind.
Created in the image of God, we human beings have abused the good gifts instilled within us and chosen to pursue ego and desire instead of fellowship with our Creator. Even still, God loves us and initiates communion with us; God wrestled with Jacob; God cut a covenant with Israel; and God walked as one of us in the person of Jesus the Christ. God’s willingness to be vulnerable to Jacob, to Israel, and to the pangs of mortal existence in order to enter into communion with humanity teaches us how to love both God and neighbor. In the person of Jesus, God, the offended one, paid the price of our offense, suffering pain, death, and humiliation for our sake and in his death we are redeemed from the strangling grasp of sin, evil, and corruption and set free for service and discipleship. Yet Jesus could not be contained by death, God raised Jesus from the grave forever shattering its power and giving us hope in our own resurrections and the life and the world to come.
The Spirit of God that hovered over the chaos of the cosmos continues to hover over the chaos of our world. This same Spirit who emboldened kings and judges and inspired prophets and sages continues to call to us today; calling some to be teachers, some parents, some pastors, some mechanics, some police officers, some politicians, some farmers—to all walks of life. The same Spirit that enflamed and emboldened the Church on Pentecost calls us out for a discipleship of vulnerable love and constitutes the community of the faithful to be the Body of Christ participating in God’s mission to the world. But the Body does not go out into the world alone and unguided; instead, it follows the saints on the well-worn path illumined in scripture and finds there that the Spirit who inspired those scriptures continues to speak through them today. Neither do the faithful go out uncertain or malnourished for as the waters of baptism flow and the bread and cup are shared God’s eternal promise of grace is made fresh and new and the faithful are strengthened and emboldened to go into the world to pour out grace onto a grace-parched earth.
|
|
Barry’s Links |
|
Barry has served on the Board of Directors of Evergreen Presbyterian Ministries since 2006. Evergreen has been providing services to people with developmental disabilities and their families since 1959. |
|
Barry occasionally writes for the weekly preaching blog “Join the Feast” that was started by one of his seminary classmates and contributed to by students, faculty, and alumni. |
|
Barry has served on the Board of Directors of Friendship Ministries since 2008. Friendship provides consulting services and produces appropriately graded curriculum to help churches share God’s love with people with intellectual disabilities. |
