Scott Swanson
Joe Medley’s 12½ years of service as a pastor in Sweet Home have been, in a word… well, it’s kind-of hard to explain in a word.
Medley became pastor of Fir Lawn Lutheran Church in September 2009, working as a tile contractor on the side.
In 2014 he was approached by the Sweet Home United Methodist Church, which had been lacking a pastor, and agreed to take on that role as well – at both churches.
In 2012, recognizing that his Fir Lawn flock was aging – “congregations like ours, once blessed with many camp-age members, now find we have none,” he said at the time – instigated an auction to send local underprivileged children to Camp Lutherwood. Over the next eight years, some 240 children earned trips to the camp, located near Cheshire between Junction City and Florence.
Five years later, Medley, also a licensed contractor, decided to start a church project to give local teens, particularly those less privileged, a chance to build their own sailboats, which would then be launched at Foster Lake. That effort continued through the COVID-19 pandemic.
He “has a heart for children,” said Bob Dalton, who joined the United Methodist Church after Medley arrived, and who presented Medley with a Mona Waibel Hero (VIP) Award, recognizing those efforts, in 2020.
Medley also has served on the Sweet Home Emergency Ministries (SHEM) board of directors and helped organize a warming shelter for the homeless, opening the doors at Fir Lawn to host it in 2019.
Now it’s time to step back, said Medley, whose energy and effusive personality belie the fact he’s about to turn 70, in January. He looks and acts much younger.
His two church congregations held a farewell reception following a combined final service on Sunday, Dec. 26, at Fir Lawn.
Medley arrived at Fir Lawn after serving in five other pastorates, all in the Northwest. He’d heard about Sweet Home in the past and was interested, he said, but the previous pastor wasn’t planning a departure at that time and Medley accepted a position in Washington, which didn’t work out because he had a 90-mile one-way commute from Salem and his wife Debra couldn’t move due to her work.
Consequently, he wound up in Sweet Home, making the round trip four days a week while serving both congregations, two days at each location.
“I won’t miss that commute,” he said, adding that he’s become a devotee of audiobooks during his drives back and forth.
But he will miss the people.
Both congregations are small and tend to be older, he said. But they’ve accomplished a lot, though he’s concerned about the churches’ sizes, which have stayed about the same during his time, he said.
“You have to be sustainable. On the other hand, though, one of the things that a church of any size should remember is that whether you exist in a building doesn’t ultimately matter. What matters is are you making a difference in the world?”
He said the theology held by the two churches, United Methodist and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, is “very similar.”
“They both believe that we are saved by grace, that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and there’s one baptism (that applies across denominational lines).”
He admitted there have been bumps, like the time, soon after he arrived at Fir Lawn, that he decided to take down the altar rail, where communion is served at the front of the sanctuary. The Sweet Home Episcopal Church had recently closed, scattering its members elsewhere, including to Fir Lawn and the United Methodist.
“A lot of them came here,” Medley said. “In the first year we did the National Day of Prayer here. I wanted to be as open as possible, so, our altar rail’s just bolted, right? So I unbolted it and took it out. “You would have thought I’d sacrificed a pig on the altar. I mean they gave me so much garbage about it until we put it back.
“Frankly, I don’t like altar rails, because I think they’re, like, barriers. But on the other hand, in a church when you have communion – and normally, until COVID, we had communion here every Sunday. People need communion.
“But there are some times when people are more obsessed with the form than the substance.”
Medley believes pastoring should include some risk.
“You know, if you’re going to be a good pastor, you have to risk being fired,” he said. “If you haven’t risked being fired at some time, you’re probably not doing your job.
“The best things I’ve ever learned in my life were because I stuck my head someplace where it shouldn’t have been. There’s a good pastor friend of mine, who’s in his 90s now, who has a poster on his wall that has that saying, ‘A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.'”
Feet-on-the-ground honesty has been a key focus during Medley’s pastorates in Sweet Home. He spoke of controversies over women in ministry and changing societal views of sexuality since his arrival.
“I’m very open-minded,” he said. “The way I read Scripture, it’s not always black-and-white. I start with the fact that God’s arms are pretty darn wide and when the church at that time was making statements about the inclusiveness of God, I was OK with that. Not everybody here in this congregation was and we lost half a dozen people – who came back over the years. That was kind of a dark time.”
When Fir Lawn decided to host a warming shelter in 2019, neighbors were concerned, he said, directing a visitor’s attention to a mattress left over from that effort in a corner of his office.
“It wasn’t really complaints about what we did,” he said. “It was more of a NIMBY [not in my backyard] thing. I say the biggest false god, his name is NIMBY.”
Then, of course, there’s been the pandemic.
“Over the past couple of years I’ve developed a lot of skills I never had before, like in video production and going online,” he said, noting that he’s been seeking people to fill those gaps after he leaves.
Medley is very concerned about encouraging his congregations to follow Christ from the heart.
“I don’t think the first step in evangelism is antagonism,” he said, earnestly. “Is that a good way, to antagonize people or to mock people for their beliefs? You’ve got to start with respect.”
Noting the Fir Lawn marquee sign on Holley Road – which, he noted, isn’t always posted by him – he added, “My favorite one I ever put out there was ‘This church is not full of hypocrites. We have room for a few more.'”
Referencing the Bible’s account of the prophet John the Baptist, who “didn’t pull any punches” in calling out the religious hypocrisy of his day, Medley said, “There are times when people know there’s something wrong with the world that they can’t get their finger on.
“Some people say, ‘We need to have this trade union over here, or we need to elect this person. And it’s all about what the system needs to do. But then there comes a time when a person knows this problem in the world is right here,” he said, pointing at his heart. “We spend a lot of time, as Christians, praying for God to change everything around us. And what really is going to change us?”
Though he said he’s exiting with an agreement not to continue being involved in the two churches, Medley isn’t planning to quit pastoring as he retires. In March, he and Debra are spending a month in Hawaii, where he plans to serve as interim pastor at St. Jude’s Episcopal Church in Ocean View, which uses itinerant ministers who stay at the church’s parsonage.
“They don’t have their own pastor,” he said. “They never have. They just do this sort of thing. The minimum requirement is to preach, but I have a feeling I’ll be doing more than that.”
Then there’s that Airstream camper the Medleys got “a great deal” on years ago, which they plan to take to North Carolina to visit one of their two sons, who, between them, have three children.
But he’ll miss Sweet Home.
“I love Sweet Home, and the people I’ve met,” he said. “They’re just terrific.”