Saving St. Savior’s

Saving St. Savior’s is a satirical novel about an ultra-liberal pastor serving an aging church. His enthusiasm and ambitious ideas for the church include relocating its ministry to a nearby conference center, located in a beautiful setting by a river. Not everyone supports his plans or vague theology, however, and tensions arise over the move to the conference center, whether or not to save the church organ, and an unwarranted accusation of sexual harassment. The pastor’s strong ecumenical orientation leads him to plan an inter-faith conference on the Emerging Church, to explore what churches should be like in a post-modern society. He seeks to bring in international participants, including Muslim, Jewish and agnostic representatives. He doesn’t invite evangelical representatives, however, because the pastor sees them as being intolerant.He moves ahead with the planning despite the church’s serious financial problems. He hopes to resolve these by selling the downtown church building, which needs extensive renovation. In addition, he discovers a long-forgotten church endowment, which helps fund his goals.One of the many flaws in the church building is the wiring, which triggers a small fire. The fire marshal closes the building until the wiring can be replaced. The closing fortuitously expedites the pastor’s plan to relocate the church’s ministry to the conference center.The church’s riverside property includes a defunct shooting range. Following a fatal shooting in a nearby town, a conservative church revives the shooting range’s lease, to help the community to protect themselves. This development embarrasses St. Savior’s and its pastor. He seeks legal advice to find a way to break the lease. He writes an anti-gun column in the local paper, which leads the conservative church to hold protests outside the St. Savior’s building-unaware that the building is empty.With a growing number of attendees to the Emerging Church conference dropping out, the pastor decides to postpone the event for a year.Meanwhile, the pastor is automatically suspended because the mentally unwell church organist brings a baseless charge of sexual harassment against the pastor, who takes a sabbatical. While temporarily relieved of his duties he is invited to teach a course at a local college; the professor scheduled to teach it was injured in a skiing accident and he takes her place. Despite a shaky beginning, their interaction leads to a romance. He learns that she attends a small church that meets on the conference center property, in a long-abandoned boathouse next to the river. The pastor has never visited the boathouse but begins doing so, finding himself drawn to the setting and senses that God is speaking to him. As their relationship develops professor presses him on his relationship with Jesus, resulting in him coming to a genuine faith in Christ.The church moves ahead with its plan to sell the aging downtown building, via a closed bid auction. The winning bid takes everyone by surprise and the St. Savior’s church building gets a new lease on life, matching the pastor’s new life in Christ.