A New Kind of Christian? Or an Old One?

Being a pastor in Siskiyou County is different than San Francisco, Portland or Seattle in many ways. There are less people here, so few that this county is considered frontier by those who study demographics. We have more cattle than people. We have mountains that contain the largest stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail anywhere. The trail winds from the McCloud river wilderness, down to the Sacramento River up to the Castle Craigs, up over the moutains that look across to Mt. Shasta for miles past lake after lake, along the edge of the Trinity Alps, through the middle of the Marble Mountains and north to the Siskiyous before it enters Oregon. There are more acres on end than your eye can take in, more backwoods, and open range than you will find anywhere in California. There is a rain forest, or should we call it big snow country to the south of Mount Shasta where I pastor in McCloud but where I live north of the mountain there is a rain shadow.

I pastor two churches in post-everything America, the one in McCloud and one in Weed! Yes, I spelled it correctly, and we appreciate you laughter it is the name of our local brewery too which is know for its "Legal Weed". I look out the window from my home at that massive Mt. Shasta and to the west Mt. Eddy, a view that will always take my breath away.

The people that live here are just as varied as the landscape. This land where my wife grew up, defined what it meant to be "red neck". I moved here for the first time in 1974. I worked first for my father-in-law on the Grenada Cattle Ranch and then in Scott Valley on another ranch. The people that grew up here before MTV came on cable television had two kins of music: country and western. Now you will hear the Grateful Dead in the grocery store and Randy Travis in the restarant. You might see a Buddhist monk walk the streets right next to an old cowpoke, loggers and punks in baggie sagging jeans. The racial mix of the population is just as diverse African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Italians, Scot Irish, Portuguese and a mix of northern Europeans that have been here for over a hundred years. We boast of being the first county to have a black sheriff the USA. His name was Charlie Byrd and he was a friend of mine. After the war in Vietnam and because of the kind bigheartedness of Christians and hippies Laotians and other Southeast Asian add to the mix. Picture a Buddhist monastery, little white churches, environmentalists store fronts, liberal Democrats, Republicans, Independents, ranchers, hunters and suburban transplants and you get a picture. It is weird and getting weirder all the time. Pastoring here is an adventure. Join me in the conversation.
Blessings, PJ Pastor Jim