From Potlatch to Kumamoto: How a small-town lad found his spiritual path with ELCA in Japan
Guest Column by Steffen Riley
Born in the Gritman Medical Center and raised in the small North Idaho town of Potlatch, I am writing this at the bequest of Walter Hesford, FāVS columnist. He was interested in how a “Potlatch lad ended up working with the ELCA in tropical Japan!” So here follows a short record of my “spiritual journey.”
My spiritual journey has been a very ecumenical one. It started at infancy with my baptism into the United Church of Christ.
It continued at Saint Rose’s Kindergarten, a Catholic preschool/kindergarten, in the hands of the Ursuline sisters that had a convent attached there. According to my parents, when one of them asked what I wanted to be, I responded that I was going to be “an a**hole!” Seeing as I have since joined hands with the Lutherans, they would probably agree that I had achieved the aspirations of my youth.
However, the sisters berated my parents into taking me to church. They decided on Elmore United Methodist Church. I was not the most attentive churchgoer in my youth, and not much had sunk into me by the time I left the church in high school. Later in my spiritual journey, I was able to appreciate the beautiful hymns, the concern for practicing Christian holiness and the joy of making popcorn balls every Christmas.
My maternal grandparents took great concern in my spiritual health when I was growing up. My grandfather was a former ELCA minister, and both had gone on missions to Tanzania and Zanzibar. In their later years, they moved to the Palouse and became members of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Moscow. When I stayed at their house on weekends, they would bring me, too.
My time as an atheist
In high school, I was an avowed atheist. My parents no longer forced me to go to church, and so I immediately stopped going. Though an atheist, I was a very dogmatic one. I must confess that for a while I carried a copy of Steven Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” on my person and held it in the same esteem as one might holy scripture. The only product of my atheism was a puffed-up ego and an incredibly shallow understanding of physics.
My puffed-up ego was thoroughly torn down thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. I graduated highschool in lockdown and left for college at its very height. Atheism did not serve me particularly well my freshman year, and my chance to rectify it came in my sophomore year.
Through my part-time job on campus as an audio-visual technician, and due to my boss’ decision to schedule me for Sundays, I was given the task of setting up the chapel for the Christian student fellowship’s Sunday morning devotionals. Through the students and especially the Baptist minister I met there, I was converted. And since I attended the devotionals for work, I was for a time getting paid to go to church!
When I came back for college during the breaks, I would attend the combination Lutheran-Presbyterian church in Potlatch. At the time I considered getting rebaptized, but the Presbyterian pastor talked me down from the ledge. I still call him regularly.
Studying abroad changed my life
In the spring semester of my junior year, I studied abroad in Hokkaido, the northernmost major island in Japan. While there, I joined an ecumenical student-run Bible study and a Lutheran church. Both of my pastors in Hokkaido have connections to where I am now, which is how I found out about ECLA’s J3 (Japan 33-month) missions program. I went back to America for a year to finish school, and then returned.
Since arriving in Kumamoto, I have enjoyed how small the Lutheran world is here. I’ve met one of my pastors’ younger brothers (also a pastor), ran into a pastor by coincidence at the airport who had the same flight and met my other pastor’s mother at her home church.
The tight-knit network the Lutheran church has built has let it make great contributions to the local community in spite of its relatively-small size. But that’s a whole other story!
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.
