Scott, Becca, and their family moved to Ireland in November of 2019 in order to work alongside, support, and care for local Irish church planters. Shortly after they moved, the world entered the unprecedented and wholly unexpected Covid lockdowns. In Ireland, these lasted the better part of two years. In the midst of that time, Scott and Becca were committed to their local church contexts of Donabate and Balbriggan, the latter of which, a church plant out of Donabate, started weekly services just 6 weeks before lockdown began. In the two years of lockdown, Scott and Becca sought to serve faithfully, often through a screen, the place that God had called them.

In the spring of 2022, as lockdowns finally lifted, Scott found in himself the disembodiment and fragmentation after long months on screens and in isolation that many of us felt. The first years of ministry and fostering relationships in Ireland in the context of a global pandemic had worn him thin, like so many others. In need of deep refreshment and restoration, at Becca’s encouragement he took some days away to the west coast of Ireland at Spanish Point in County Clare. There, Jesus met him. After two fog‑softened days of little visibility and internal frustration at his lack of joy and hope, the clouds parted and the wild Atlantic opened before him. Through that revealed beauty, it felt as if God had drawn him back into his body and Scott could feel God’s nearness again. In that time on a bench looking over the Atlantic Ocean, two questions from Jesus:

“Am I enough? and do you love me?”

When asked by the creator of the universe, it’s an easy enough question to answer, but Scott was left with a deeper question. He had been a Christian for most of his life, and knew how to love Jesus as a teacher, and as a master, and as Lord. But Scott learned that he didn’t know how to love Jesus as a friend, and his new and deep longing that came from experiencing the nearness of Jesus was for friendship with his Savior. He began meeting with a spiritual director, and through small, ordinary practices, a simple embodied friendship with Jesus started to take root. Even amid hardship and suffering, joy began to grow, quietly and steadily, through the regular practice of the presence of God. This drew him more deeply into the reformational contemplative tradition through gentle, patient ways of training attention and affection toward Christ.

At the same time, in conversations with pastors across Ireland and the US, Scott heard the same ache. Many longed for the intimacy with Jesus he was rediscovering. He wasn’t alone in feeling the burnout of working for Jesus instead of with him. The work of ministry, ironically, can make friendship with Jesus shockingly difficult to cultivate.