In January, I struck out from Atlanta in a Honda Civic loaded with road-trip snacks, a heavily medicated cat, and a robust collection of pandemic-hobby house plants, headed towards my new home in Omaha.

I felt like I was living out my middle school days of playing Oregon Trail, an adventure into the unknown west after spending the bulk of my life on the east coast. The Chick’s song, “Wide Open Spaces,” punctuated my mental soundtrack across that initial thousand miles, and I have found myself humming it over and over these past two month. I know I am no pioneer, no traveling evangelist bringing the Good News to the frontier. Churches and pastors and faithful congregational leaders blazed that trail long ahead of me, and yet I can feel it — a vast sense of possibility even across what might appear barren.

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream’s no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out West
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the highest stakes

(“Wide Open Spaces”, The Chicks)

OPSF serves thirteen states in middle America, and I have set a goal of visiting each state in my first year. This blog will offer glimpses of those travels — the people, the common ministry threads, the glimpses of God here, there, and everywhere. Right now, I can tell you that the terrain is different out here. It’s not just the difference between cityscapes and country roads (because the OPSF region has its share of cities); it feels less hemmed in. I have zipped highways and country roads through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma — past countless fields that are resting before the wheat comes in, beyond bridges where cattle are driven over the interstate, along backroads where the only change in the landscape is the occasional tiny cemetery, beside windmill farms that dazzle me every time. The horizon is further out across a level landscape I haven’t known before, and that feels freeing with space to breathe. But it also feels exposed and maybe a little vulnerable.

I have zipped highways and country roads through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma — past countless fields that are resting before the wheat comes in, beyond bridges where cattle are driven over the interstate, along backroads where the only change in the landscape is the occasional tiny cemetery, beside windmill farms that dazzle me every time.

I feel that the mainline church is experiencing its own wide-open-spaces moment. The terrain feels unfamiliar. Our pews that once were packed like an Atlanta highway at rush hour are less trafficked. Our leaders are driving through a sense of the unknown, cruising on fumes and wondering when the next filling station will come along. Many of our congregational leaders feel exposed in their ignorance over how to navigate this post-Christian cultural shift, with pandemic ministry as a fresh, mind-bending detour. We (our pastors, our churches) are vulnerable, but we are also unhemmed — freed to a creativity many of us have never know in our ministry lifetime.

[We] needs wide open spaces
Room to make [our] big mistakes
[We need] new faces
[We] knows the highest stakes

When you’re cruising a wide-open landscape on a terrain you’ve never navigated before, you see God’s world and your place in it in fresh ways. Maybe you’re smaller than you’d like, but you may also be more nimble. On the wide-open highway, I can sing at the top of my lungs without embarrassment. In our often scarcity-focused ministries, we suddenly find ourselves flush with opportunity, with the freedom and courage to try things we’ve never tried — like Zoom worship or commissioned pastor training. Sure, we’ve made mistakes, but we’ve also shaken off some chains to days of yore that long have limited us. I have visited four presbyteries over the last few weeks (in Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Kansas). All have fifty percent or more of their churches without installed pastors (some seeking pastors, others with pulpit supply, commissioned pastors, etc.) Two of the presbyteries have installed pastors in only one-third of their churches (about 15/50). The terrain that may at times feel barren has both forced and freed us to think about church vocation in fresh ways.

I am excited to zip the highways and byways into Utah and Minnesota, Montana and the Dakotas (and all the places OPSF serves). I know that the landscape won’t always be so wide open. I know the plains will curl up into mountains and dress themselves in forests and carve themselves into valleys. But I want to remember these first days when I could see the horizon, and sing at the top of my lungs without embarrassment, and feel bold and pioneering as I step into God’s fresh calling. I hope and pray the same for each of you, that in the barren uncertainty of these days you may feel a blank-canvas freedom, that the opportunity to make mistakes frees you to fresh attention to the never-stagnant Spirit.

I am holding God’s words to the prophet Isaiah as an intention for my first year of my OPSF presidency. It is my benediction for today’s blog as well:

Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.
It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
There it is! I’m making a road through the desert,
rivers in the badlands. (Isaiah 43: 19, The Message)

May you trust that when our hemming-in is fraying, God is already out there, welcoming us into the unknown. Amen.