Jason Byassee is a pastor and theologian. He has tried to make a career out of not being able to decide what to do for a living. He has worked as a pastor, an academic, and a journalist, sometimes all at the same time. As a pastor he has led Shady Grove United Methodist Church in Caswell County, NC (2002-2004), Boone UMC (2011-2015), First Baptist Vancouver as an interim (2019), Vancouver Chinese Presbyterian Church’s English-speaking congregation (2020-2022), and Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto (2022-present). He has often quoted Tim Keller’s adage: ‘God does his best saving work in the local church.’ You can only say that so long and so often before you either go and lead one, or you quit saying it. For better or worse, it’s true. He augments pastoring at Canada’s coolest church with a summer gig at the Bay View Assembly in Michigan. That is, for the first time since he was 20 years old, he has a summer job. He has also worked as an academic. He studied at Davidson College, Duke Divinity School, and Duke University, running out of degrees to pursue before leaving the country (AB, MDiv, and PhD). He has been an adjunct professor at half a dozen institutions around Chicagoland and greater Vancouver especially. He was the inaugural holder of the Butler Chair in homiletics and biblical hermeneutics at the Vancouver School of Theology (2015-2022). He does most of his academic work these days at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto. Seminaries and divinity schools remind the church to be a place and people who curate wisdom. His academic books include Praise Seeking Understanding (Eerdmans, 2007), Psalms 100-150 (Brazos, 2018) and Surprised by Jesus Again (Eerdmans, 2019). Academics are not, on the whole, funny. He first learned to be a journalist working on sports for his high school and college newspapers. That surprised him by leading to a career in journalism, first with The Christian Century, where he served full-time as an editor from 2004-2008, and has since served as an editor-at-large. He then wrote and acquired for Faith & Leadership (2008-2011). He finds journalism a salutary excuse to ask nosy questions of interesting people. His journalistic work has included books like Resurrecting Church in the North of England (Cascade, 2020), with Andria Irwin Following: Embodied Discipleship in a Virtual Age (Baker Academic, 2021), and with Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell Faithful and Fractured (Baker Academic, 2018). He discovered theological journalism by accident: a chance conversation with an editor at the Century on how hard it is to find movie reviewers, since people who know about movies don’t know anything about God, and vice-versa. “I’ll review movies for you. I watch too many of them anyway. We might as well make it profitable.” It was never profitable. But it was fun. He loves guest preaching. Seriously, invite him sometime. He’s preached in some cool places (the American Church in Paris, Durham Cathedral, Duke Chapel, various Cambridge colleges). He has even preached in a place with no indoor plumbing. Just an outhouse. That church was not, surprisingly, in the US South. It was in Ontario. He has some weird hangups. He doesn’t like to tie his shoes. That feels too committal somehow. What if we need to kick em off? He doesn’t like to buy swag from institutions he’s studied at. If he’s given years of his life and gobs of money to a place, they should send him merch for free. So he tends to wear gear from schools his friends or kids have studied at. His wife is way better at gritty street ministry and also pastoral care than he is. That may not surprise you. Their kids are studying journalism, theology, and musical theatre. They will be poor but not boring. Their chocolate lab is named Maple. An arborist suggested it. He’d named his kid that. It’s also a patriotic moment in Canada. This entry has gone on too long.