MORGANTOWN — It’s a new day at the First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, but it didn’t happen overnight.
The Rev. Zac Morton will begin his ministry at the church Sunday.
John Bolt, chair of the Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC), explained The Presbyterian Church operates a PNC to search for new pastors and comes up with a candidate who will be elected. It’s a collaborative process between the congregation and the presbytery.
It can be a long process finding someone to lead the church who also aligns with the mission of the church. The process took about 14 months this time.
Bolt said Morton “checked all the boxes” needed to lead their church into the future.
Being involved in church at a young age, Morton is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan. He then received his Master of Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 2011. He’s been an ordained minister in Presbyterian Church USA for seven years.
He served three years at a church in Kansas and in the past 3 1/2 years he did a church plant, which he said is “church speak” for starting a church from scratch — in Suwanee, Ga., north of Atlanta — for people who were not previously religious.
“Which was quite an awesome experience and a big learning curve for me since it was not working with anyone who was a church type of person in any way, shape or form. It was a lot of fun to look at faith through a different lens and work with different people in the community,” he said.
Morton, 33, said it’s important to build relationships with those in the congregation. It’s not just “Sunday duties” but taking care of people through the week and letting them know you’re there for them — he said that goes a long way.
He said being involved in church is interesting because the culture has changed. Many denominations have been on the decline, but he said it’s important to view it as an opportunity and not something negative. He said the Christian tradition places a pretty heavy emphasis on resurrection and bringing things back from some pretty terrible circumstances. When things get away from people it can be when the most incredible things happen.
“That’s kind of how I approach doing ministry in the modern world where the church institution is not what it used to be,” he said.
Carving out a little more space to ask questions and explore faith more honestly is important. What he tries to do is make space for people to explore their faith creatively and honestly, more than just being a pastor who simply dispenses answers.
What excites him about serving the First Presbyterian Church in Morgantown is the congregation has a very clear sense that they want to be involved in making the community better. The future of their church doesn’t lie solely in the walls of the church, which he likes.
“I think the future of vital Christianity and Christianity with integrity means going to the places in our communities where Jesus and the gospels would have gone. To places that are not the first places that people normally go. To care for people that most folks wouldn’t necessarily care for,” he said.
Bolt and the rest of the congregation saw the same vision. The church is very much about inclusion and issues like social justice. Bolt has been involved in the church at many levels for a long time, and often says the church is looking for someone God has already selected. He said it was clear that Morton was the one meant to be the pastor at their church.
Bolt said when they were looking for a pastor, they knew they wanted one “who is visible in the community. Who is active. You know, it’s not just internal, it’s external.”
There is an excitement among the people of the church that Bolt described as powerful, saying there is a real anticipation for the good things yet to come. He said too much as a society people believe being a Christian it means being judgmental, and that’s not what their church endorses. With the arrival of Morton they are excited for his approach.
To Morton, being chosen is a humbling experience.
“I’m honored they would give me the opportunity to do that. At the end of the day I’m just grateful they did see something in me and recognized a lot of potential and at the end of it all it’s about God bringing us together and that the fit was good, our values lined up,” he said.
