We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenelle Holmes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jenelle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had started sooner?

Many people might not consider a pastor to be a creative endeavor, but every week my working materials are pen, paper, words, and relationships. I’m helping people sort through their lives and find meaning, wholeness, and community. But I took almost a decade to truly commit to this work. Multiple road bumps got in the way.

First, this field is male dominated. Being a pastor is almost synonymous with being a man, and I still startle people when they arrive at the building looking for the pastor and I reach out my hand to shake theirs. Women are spiritual beings too and require wise spiritual leaders who know their context, experience, and priorities. Often women sustain the care-giving practices of a church but are left out of the leadership and this turned me off for a long time–so I dawdled at pursuing this career full time. However, my creative use of words to reclaim experience, love, and power is exactly the kind of work that pastors do to care for and lead people. I decided to do what I do best, even in a field that is sometimes hostile. The more women we see in the pulpit, the more women are empowered and able to be their full selves, spiritually and otherwise.

Second, I had babies early. This was a blessing and a struggle. Children demand creative activities and creative problem solving. They connected me to nature consistently as we played outside. They offered a range of amazing artwork through the storybooks we read. I still miss that smorgasbord of drawing and painting from the library each week. And in some ways, the pace of working from home and care giving slowed down my time and priorities. I read more poetry. Journaled more. And just had open spaces of non-engagement with the world (this was before smart phones when our brains had free rein over downtime). However, raising kids meant that I couldn’t pursue the education immediately that I had intended on pursuing to become a professional in my field. I exchanged book smarts for family and relationship smarts. I don’t regret this and I actually believe it makes me a better, more relatable pastor, but the me of my twenties felt deeply the forced “pause” of pursing the career I really wanted. I wish I could comfort her that it would all be worth it. Creative endeavors require creative starts and stops.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a Christian pastor in southeast Atlanta. One of my son’s middle school friends asked me, “With all due respect (so southern), what do you do on days other than Sunday?” I laughed. I’d describe the work I do almost as a midwife in many ways. And I’m speaking for myself here; there are about as many ways to be a pastor as there are ways to make a potato salad.

We humans are all attempting to be who we were created to be–when we get it right, that’s where the joy, peace, and other desirable human experiences emerge for us and around us. That’s where love explodes! I believe that God has a lot at stake in our living out our lives as us, as you and me.

But obviously this is hard. Family systems, experiences, trauma, race, gender, poverty, or any hardship ask us (if we’re lucky) or force us (more likely the case) to adjust, deny, and harm ourselves in order to survive. But who just wants to survive? We want to thrive and live fully. That’s where I get to assist people in birthing a life that is truly theirs. As a pastor I have the honor of walking people back to themselves and to a life that fits and maybe even heals.

Now, I am a Christian pastor so my creative endeavors at this often reflect that tradition. Prayer, listening to wise people, being in community, and participating in acts of care are all ways I creatively invite people to live their particular and authentic life God is calling them to live.

Here are some more grounded examples: Are people going through a hard and damaging divorce? I will listen to them tell their sacred stories and gain back their power. Is something politically difficult happening? I will read scripture and preach about ways our narratives of faith call us to engage in love and activism on behalf of our neighbors. Are people experiencing a mental health crisis? I will hold space in prayer and also offer new pathways to care through counseling or Spiritual Direction. People lives have been given as a gift by God; I’m a partner in unwrapping that gift, especially when people get stuck.

But in my heart of hearts, I love to write and communicate, so Sunday morning sermons are where the more technical skills of my call and creativity play out. Every week I am presented with a piece of scripture to wrestle with. While I’m reading scripture, I’m also reading the lives around me and finding where they intersect, challenge, and enlighten the life of faith. In the end, I hope to offer my community a faithful and thoughtful creative work of words that will encourage, stretch, and accompany them in their own lives each week. I hope they have an encounter with the living God in one of the places I have often found the Divine: in words.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I know I am not alone when I say I struggle with perfectionism. Whether you describe yourself as creative or not, perfectionism seems to know no limits to who it pesters. Each week I help create a space and a spiritual experience for people in my community. That means each week there is an opportunity for something to go wrong, whether its the gluten free Communion bread collapsing, a musician getting covid, or the AC calls it quits. Every creative Sunday endeavor will be met with something going off the rails. Usually its small (we do this 52 weeks a year so we’ve eliminated some of the blunders through much trial and error), but sometimes it’s big. The volume of a week-in-and-week-out creative project just makes perfection utterly impossible. Then add the fact that much of the spiritual community of a church is volunteer, and you are inviting all sorts of variables. This can be exhausting for those of us who want a clean execution to all the creative endeavors that have our name stamped on them.

But a Sunday worship service that is offered, even curated, in creativity, curiosity, and kindness makes all the imperfections worth it. On a Sunday where the Communion bread looks wonky, we also all drew pictures of flowers and created a garden taped up on the Communion Table. When our lead guitarist called in sick, we got to hear the amazing a cappella voices of a Grady midwife mom of two and a newly married Gay graduate student who studied classical piano in his previous life. If the head pastor starts to cry (not that this ever happens to me), the community leans toward the pain, not away, because that’s what makes us whole, healthy, and honest people of faith. I have had to learn the hard way that perfection is actually quite limiting. The creative endeavors that people remember, the Sundays that always ironically stick in people’s memories, are those that gracefully embraced the hiccups as worthy pauses and the blemishes as points of unique interest.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I believe that almost all of my resilience is second hand. In other words, I resource myself well, and most of these resources are relational resources.

When I was trying to decide whether to start this new church in southeast Atlanta my supervisor at the time called me up and said “Come over. We need to make a pros and cons list. I’ll pour some wine.” She proceeded to list pros like “You get to set the tone and expectations of a new congregation” alongside cons such as “People will look to you to make all the big decisions.” The con that really stuck with me, however, was that just like starting a restaurant, the odds of failure are extremely high. Like, we’re talking 99%.

And yet, I still said yes. I still packed up my office and relocated and said, “let’s try this adventure!” Why? Because I knew that I had people like my supervisor who believed in me and supported me. I like to think of them as roots to my tree. I can only go as far up and out as I am rooted and grounded in good relationships. I have an amazing therapist. A professional coach. A creative and hilarious partner. A Leadership Team. Solid text group texts.

I am resilient because my ability to thrive and try new things is intertwined with the endeavors, inspiration, and mutual affection of other solid folks.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ormewoodchurch.org
• Instagram: @ormewoodchurch or @jenellerholmes
• Facebook: @ormewoodchurch
• Other: Podcast “From Your Pastor” on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4QRShWcLY2mSRKnUq3raft) or Anchor

Image Credits
Courtney Anne Henry