True Confessions of an Interim

Sep 5, 2024

By The Rev. Dr. Carl Grosse

By the time you read this, Denise and I will have returned from a trip to Montana. My older brother’s kids arranged a family reunion for their parents’ 50th anniversary. We all gathered at a Baptist church camp near Gallatin Gateway, south of Bozeman. After that, to mark our 40th anniversary Denise and I went up to Glacier Park where we first met (returning to the scene of the crime I guess). We also visited my hometown of Great Falls. It’s a long chunk of time away from here, thank you for that kindness.

Much of my history happened in Montana. In addition to my growing up years, Denise and I ended up there after seminary. My first church in Belgrade was the setting for several scenes in A River Runs Through It (no, I don’t have anything like Gail’s Brad Pitt story). That tenure was about as traumatic as the movie. We then spent a little more than a year on the Fort Peck Reservation where I was an interim pastor in Poplar. It’s a dirt-poor town with a big supply of hopelessness, but we were so appreciated there that the whole town threw a farewell party at the Legion.

Of course, Montana has boomed since we left in 1991. The Bakken and Hell Creek oil fields still pump millions of barrels, but there are few people in Eastern Montana. It’s places like Bozeman, Kalispell, Missoula, and anywhere within a hundred miles of those cities, that have all the tourists and rich outsiders buying up real estate and building expensive homes. People do as much celebrity spotting as wildlife viewing. Natives can hardly afford to live there. 

Now, after living in and travelling to many different places, Montana is still special to me. But I realize much of that feeling is tied to my history there. Other places are beautiful and wild, other people are friendly and helpful; other places are harsh and tragic, other people struggle. If we hold on to disappointment and hurt, everything filters through that, even in a “beautiful” place like Belgrade; if we emphasize love and gratitude, everything filters through that, even in a “desolate” place like Poplar.

I hope our time together at Fountain City Presbyterian Church, however long that might be, will lean toward love and gratitude. That’s what makes the Smoky Mountains truly beautiful, and the people of East Tennessee truly warm and dear. Perhaps that’s something of what Jesus had in mind when He said, “I am come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”