“Good morning everyone and welcome to Christ Restoration Church! My name is Doug Cooper and I have the honor of serving here as our Pastor.” That’s essentially what I say every Sunday morning when we gather at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, NH. Our church got its start over 11 years ago now and we represent the first church plant of Christ Redeemer Church of Hanover, NH. Also, for the last three plus years now I’ve also had the privilege of serving as a Small Town Summits Partner representing the state of New Hampshire. Now, if you had told any of this to my twenty-year-old self, I likely would have laughed out loud or looked at you sideways.
Thinking back on that time period, it was in the summer of 1997 that I first heard the gospel of Jesus explained to me. I was nearly 21 at the time, and in the midst of my fourth summer following the Grateful Dead. They’re a band for those of you who might not know. They formed in the mid-sixties in the San Francisco Bay area. Among other things, they’re known for their infectious, improvisational way of collaborating. Contributing to this, their musical backgrounds were and are wildly diverse. One cut his teeth on bluegrass and folk. Another on the blues. Their bass player was studying avant garde classical before dropping out to join the band. They had two drummers, one well versed in jazz and the other in exotic world music. Their youngest member rounded things out with equal doses of country and rock and roll. And so collectively, they were an unlikely, but delicious musical gumbo.
By the time I caught up with them in the early nineties, they had an unprecedented cult following. Many have referred to it as a traveling city. It consisted of a strange, varied and multi-generational caravan of characters that numbered in the thousands. We traveled from town to town and city to city to see the band and to participate in the communal life that had formed around them. And the community was truly profound! We possessed a common set of codes, ethics and lingo. We had a vast economic strategy and market. And most importantly to us, we had a shared passion and purpose that united us: the music was our muse.
The first time I went to see them play was in Orchard Park, NY near my childhood home. I was fifteen years old, very adventurous, and deeply impressionable. Both outside and inside the stadium, what I encountered left me dumbstruck and totally enamored. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the people, the culture: it all felt a bit like entering a magical foreign country. In a strange way, this traveling city seemed to represent a way of life within America that somehow embraced and defied the American dream all at once, and I wanted to do both of those things. It seemed as close to a Utopia as my young mind could imagine.
At the time, it all felt like an invitation to enter into a spiritual pilgrimage of some kind, and I very much wanted to accept that invitation. I wondered if this just might be who I am? If these might just be my people? Somehow I sensed that I’d been longing for these very things without even realizing it. Less than two years later I would drop out of high school, and as Deadheads (the nickname for their followers) like to say, “I got on the bus.” I drank the Kool-Aid. I ate the chicken. I was all in! I had become a fully committed disciple and follower of the Grateful Dead. Legit. This had me on the road at least 3 months of the year. The other 9 months generally involved me getting further connected with localized pockets of this new community and making preparations for the upcoming summer tour circuit. Rinse and repeat.
I may have half understood what I was actually doing. I had joined a tribe, and I was forming an identity within that tribe that provided me with a sense of value and belonging. Functionally speaking, I believed that it was the way, the truth and the life for me. For awhile, anyhow.
Eventually, the utopian bubble began to burst. Not everyone was as kind and altruistic as I had first thought. The more that I attempted to worm my way into the inner circle of this fellowship, the more I realized that it was fraught with all of the sorts of human flaws that I had known in other circles. There were cliques and schisms. There was scheming and posturing. There were parasitic pursuits. And I too was a part of it. With time I felt that I was losing more than I was gaining. Whatever identity and belonging I thought that I had was slowly beginning to fade. Hadn’t I done this before? It was around this time that I began to notice the people from “The Prodigal Project.”
They hailed from the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco. The majority of them were my peers. They looked like me, talked like, and smelled like me, except that they weren’t like me. They were devoted disciples and followers of Jesus. Most of them were called by Christ up and out of the very same scene that I was embedded in and were now committed to calling others to do the same.
After four years into this pilgrimage that I had set out on, a new one was beginning. Somehow, I found my way to their home, affectionately called “The Prodigal House.” I witnessed their lives, their worship, their work, their friendship. I saw their faith and I heard their stories, and I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but I was both impressed and intrigued. I left a week later with a copy of the New Testament and began to travel east to New York. As I read the Gospel of John, I was altogether surprised by Jesus. He was not what I was expecting. His encounters with people were radical in a myriad of ways. His followers seemed unpolished and unlikely. His words were penetrating. They were unfamiliar and yet they were ringing my bell. To my surprise, I liked Jesus. “I would follow Jesus,” I thought to myself. I kept reading.
About a month later, I did it again. I “got on the bus.” I was all in! I had become a fully committed disciple and follower of Jesus Christ. Legit. And what a journey it’s been! I’m still surrounded by deeply flawed people. In fact, I’m one of them. And we too are strange and varied and multi-generational. That said, we are also wonderful, and we belong together, because we have a shared and lasting identity in Christ!
I can still remember becoming a Chistian and thinking two things: that I wanted to spend the rest of my life serving Jesus, and that I didn’t want to be a pastor. And so, when my fellow elders at Christ Redeemer Church suggested that I become the pastor of our first church plant, I laughed out loud and looked at them sideways. I felt unpolished and unlikely. They must have made a mistake. Clearly, they don’t really know me.
But this seems to pair well with all that I’ve come to understand about the gospel of Jesus. That it’s not what you think it is at first. That it’s full of wonderful surprises. It comes with grace and power that aims to accomplish unlikely things. And this has been my experience as a pastor so far. A small group of us began to gather for Sunday services in July of 2014 and an unlikely thing began to happen: as we centered ourselves upon Jesus and His Gospel, slowly but surely our church began to grow and take shape.
Over the course of time, like the bloom of a flower slowly opening, God has brought about something beautiful among us. It’s not perfect. We’ve experienced many twists and turns. We’ve had some ups and downs. We’ve shared the gospel of God’s grace with many, baptizing some. We’ve celebrated new marriages and new births! Likewise, with heavy hearts, we’ve had to say farewell to dear friends, burying some. As these same joys and sorrows continue, please pray for us.
Jesus continues to surprise us at Christ Restoration Church. Like the apostle Paul, it’s the same thing that keeps pulling us in again and again: the reality that Jesus loves us and gave himself over to death for us (Galatians 2:20). Together, we’re an unpolished collective on an unlikely pilgrimage. And by God’s grace, slowly but surely, we’ve become much like a savory gumbo as a result. I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it. Rock on Christ Restoration Church family!
Doug Cooper serves as the Pastor of Christ Restoration Church in New London, NH. Doug completed a two-year program at Word of Life Bible Institute, as well earning an Associate Degree from River Valley Community College in Occupational Therapy, a BA in English Literature and Religion from Liberty University, and is currently working on a Master of Theological Studies degree from Westminster Theological Seminary. Doug and his wife Leah have four children, one dog, one cat, and five chickens.