The Pastor

Emerson Webb has been the pastor of Trinity Church for twelve years. Lately, Emerson has started hearing a voice in the church basement.

It speaks at a quarter to seven most mornings, from somewhere near the furnace, and it knows things it has no business knowing. Is Emerson losing a mind, or being found by something that has been waiting a long time to be noticed?

Upstairs, life at Trinity goes on. There are doughnuts at coffee hour, a vestry that wants answers, a bishop with a tempting offer, and a Tuesday night recovery group that keeps coming down the basement stairs one week at a time. There is also Rowan, a teacher who will not settle for the polished version of Emerson the congregation has always been given.

Told across a year of Sundays and shaped around Psalm 139, The Pastor is a tender, funny, and searching novel about the difference between performing a life and living one. It is about grief and ordinary faithfulness, and about the strange mercy of being fully known by God, by a community, and by the people who refuse to let you hide.