Teaching Core Pastor
In August of last year, we began a process of hiring our new Teaching Core Pastor. It was a time of evaluating our needs and confirming our values. We wanted someone who resonated with TNLC’s value on shared leadership, longing to serve inside of a team. We wanted someone who embodied TNLC’s values – a person who lived a communal, transformational, missional, and holistic life of faith, not just someone who could teach the ideas. Roughly 150 people applied for this position, and through a process of sensing God’s leading, we’ve found the person we believed he was bringing to our community – Chip Anderson.

Chip Anderson
Chip and Debra have lived in Portland for the last five years with their three sons - Jacob, Benjamin and Samuel. Chip served as a teaching elder at their church, the Evergreen Community. Unable to find a teaching position he wanted to pursue, he provided for his family by managing a Target in the area. Yet all along, Chip would say of teaching, “I was created to do this.”

He received two Masters Degrees and his Doctorate of Ministry, with an emphasis in preaching. In his words, his passion and purpose in life is “to make the gospel of Jesus Christ as simple to understand as possible.”

As you read some of our interview dialogue below, you can clearly see how Chip’s values resonate with those of TNLC. His heart beat and that of our community makes this partnership a natural fit and an answer to our prayers.

Q&A with Chip Anderson
(Excerpts from Chip’s questionnaires from the Teaching Core Pastor search process)

What about the position of the Teaching Core Pastor interests you?
The biggest draw for me was the Vision, Values and the Core areas that TNL holds. They are very similar to my own and those of the current church we are involved in. What you have said about your community resonates with my heart and tugs at my soul. Your views of how the church is and should be also reflect the hopes I have had when musing about starting a church. 

The other aspect of the position is the position itself. The Teaching Core Pastor seems to be a natural fit for me. Feeling gifted as a pastor/teacher as well as having experience as business leader, the Teaching Core Pastor position is what I have been hoping to find.

What are some of your leadership strengths?
I enjoy relating to people of all walks of life, not being intimidated by those who are different from me, but intrigued to find out their story. Being organized is a way for me to create calm in the chaos of life, particularly with three young sons in the home. Learning new knowledge and sharing that knowledge with others is something that is life-giving for me. I am glad to serve others when they express a need. Finally, level-headed problem-solving is something that comes easily for me as does discernment. 

Please describe your interest in a team / plurality of leadership model.
One of the reasons I am so excited about the possibility of joining the team at TNL, is because it is a team. I currently work with people to achieve a common goal, but we are not a team. We are not intimately connected, we are forced to protect our own interests first, and then seek to help others and we lack cohesion. What I have heard in my conversations with you about the team at TNL, is you seek the best for and in each other (even if it is hard and uncomfortable), you share a deep passion for a singular goal (transformation through Christ), and you are transparent and collaborative. This is the kind of team I want to work with.

How would you describe your contribution to a team?
The unique perspective I bring to a team is all wrapped up in the twists and turns, baggage and battles of my story - my adoption, family, up-bringing, being dyslexic (which always adds some fun), my education, successes, failures, marriage and passions. I am an easygoing, good-humored person who thinks analytically. I love serving people and am intensely loyal. I am driven and motivated and yet I love to hang out and play too. I guess you could say my contribution to the team will be sometimes funny, sometimes profound, mostly rational, while seeking to be always be scriptural.

Each of the Core Pastors and Elders has a way in which we best connect with God. What are rhythms and practices of your devotional time with God?
My devotional life is pretty straightforward and yet, sometimes, messy. When I have to work early in the day, I normally read and meditate on a passage and typically work my way through whole books. I am a detailed person and enjoy studying Scripture. More recently, I have been trying to not be so detailed. I am trying to soak in Scripture without digging into it. I want to enjoy the story line; to embrace the mystery of redemptive history, resist the need to catch it all cognitively and allow it to just wash over me.

Every Tuesday we tell people, “You are accepted here just as you are.” What does caring for a community that is made up of people who are “accepted here just as they are” look like for you?
I think the right word you hit on is “community.” Community is built around care and concern for each other. We hold each other up, we hold each other back and we hold each other accountable. This means valuing people over tasks, scheduling one’s week and expecting interruptions, and setting aside resources in order to help when it is needed.

Acceptance of others “just as they are” requires love, honesty and transparency. We enter community knowing full well others are going to complicate our lives with their baggage and junk. In turn, we admit we will complicate the lives of others with our baggage and junk. Those who wish to share in a deep sense of community must give and take. This is not limited to the pastoral staff or paid staff, but is the function of every member of the community.

Please share some of your thoughts on developing a talk or teaching series.
I have come to believe preaching is 50% knowing what to say and 50% knowing how to say it.  Without understanding what God is trying to communicate through the authors of Scripture, all our relevance, our creativity and our humor is wasted. The flip side is I can understand the meaning of a passage but still not communicate it in a way that connects and affects those who hear it. Long ago I stopped asking whether or not a sermon was “good” and began asking if it was clear, scriptural and impactful. I mostly want to know if God (either through me, the text, or some other way) spoke to the community or if I somehow got in the way of its ability to transform lives.

We are intentional about maintaining relationships with those who are not yet followers of Jesus. What do relationships with non-believers look like in your life?
At this time my relationships with those outside the church are primarily concentrated at work. I choose to live missionally and take every opportunity to care about those who work with and for me, and to gain their trust, respect and loyalty.

It is through the lens of my faith that I lead in my workplace. In fact, my leadership position at work is not unlike a pastoral position to the wife who’s husband has had a heart attack and can’t come to work, the unwed mother of two teenagers who finds herself pregnant again at 36 years old and needs reassurance, the 83 year-old husband who needs the day off to take his sick wife to the doctor or the 22 year-old hipster who can only work at night since he cares for his aged grandmother during the day. These are not just bodies that fill payroll hours, but people (none of whom knows Jesus) I work with, laugh with, cry with and pray for.

We moved recently and I miss the interactions we had with our neighbors in our old neighborhood. We lived in a cul-de-sac where we got to know our neighbors pretty well. One neighbor, a Muslim, even asked us to break the Ramadan fast with them at their mosque. So, in our new neighborhood I am praying and asking God for ways to interact with three households in particular: the lesbians next door, the Latter-day Saints across the street and the empty nesters next to us to us.

Describe a time that uniquely prompted your spiritual growth.
After moving to Santa Cruz, California to volunteer as a part of the beginning of Vintage Faith Church, we needed to leave after only 5 months. The money we had set aside for the adventure was gone and I was not able to find a job that could sustain our family in this beautiful, but expensive beach town. We were so convinced that God had led us to Santa Cruz. The community we were building, the things we were learning about worship and ministry, coupled with God’s provision for this adventure were all confirming signs that Vintage Faith is where God had wanted us. But it was not to be. This started a journey to continue to this day.

I have learned many things about myself and about God through this experience.  The foremost in my mind is God is faithful even when I am not. Even though we were one step from being homeless, God provided for all our needs. This meant living life out of a sense of constant dependency on God and not on my education, experience or good looks. (Ha!) Trusting God is not easy, but necessary. Out of all the times I yelled at God, cursed him and gave him the finger he never left me, he still loved me. In this I am compelled to return his love and trust him with my life.

Recently, because of this journey, I have discovered I have been trusting in a functional savior who is impotent to save me from my pain. For years I have been telling myself, “If I can just get back into vocational ministry again my identity, self-worth and purpose will be restored.” I was expecting a job to do for me only what Jesus can do me. I must be content and serve him no matter my external circumstances. Along with this I am realizing the passion I have for the local church, for teaching and preaching and for the Scripture which drives me to keep seeking the place in which I can use these gifts to their fullest. If I were not truly, deeply convinced by God to use these gifts, I think I would have quit looking, found a good job, started making good money and been happy serving God as layman. Up to this point I have had to be satisfied with giving my spare time to our church community in order to support my family while I wait for God provide to guide me once again.

What intrigues or excites you about living in Colorado and the Denver Metro area?
First and foremost, we are excited about moving to the Denver area just to be a part of TNL.  Because the Church is central to the purpose of our lives we determined many years ago to first find the right church and then move to be a part of it. We make ourselves students of the new culture around us in order to transition from one way of life to another. We always find that we need to “get outside our box” in some unexpected ways and it’s exciting to see life with fresh perspective.

It helps that we see some intersecting points of interest between Denver and our current home in the Pacific Northwest. The political slant in the Denver metro area seems very similar to that of the Portland metro area. The fact that Colorado as a whole seems to ebb and flow from blue to red in elections indicates that there is room for meaningful, respectful conversation in this forum. We love that.

We’ve been involved with the Salvation Army and Portland Rescue Mission as a family and have looked a little at the Denver Rescue Mission which reports that on any given night 10,000 people sleep outside. There is plenty of room for us to continue our efforts in this area of need.