The Rev. Martin Thielen in the Brentwood United Methodist Church sanctuary on Thursday. BHP Photo.

One-time Baptist minister Thielen surfs, bicycles and loves movies

By CAROL STUART
For Brentwood Home Page
Brentwood United Methodist Church’s new pastor, the Rev. Martin Thielen, is learning his way around the large church complex – the 14th largest congregation among 38,000 Methodist churches in the U.S. – as well as learning his way around the community.

On just the third day of his new job Thursday, Thielen said he was going to take some deliberate care to assess things at BUMC and get acquainted with the staff, congregation and city. Thielen, 54, who’ll be installed and deliver his first sermon this weekend, spent the last 10 years at Lebanon United Methodist Church, where the congregation was revitalized under his leadership by doubling in size, growing in ministries, renovating facilities and strengthening finances.

“I think there's a genuine enthusiasm, an excitement about things are going well, but we can do a lot more,” Thielen said about his new post. “But I don't have a game plan and (that's) on purpose. I want to come in and learn the culture of this church and this community and kind of take some time to figure out where we're headed.”

Thielen arrives at BUMC at a time when the church is about to begin a 12-month consultation process with Spiritual Leadership Inc. (SLI). The group will work with about “a dozen folks in the congregation for a year to kind of see who are we, where we are going, what are the next steps,” he said.

Retired Bishop Joe Pennel, the congregation’s pastor from 1988-96, served as interim pastor the past six months after Cliff Wright resigned last year following a short tenure. The previous pastor, Dr. Howard Olds, was senior pastor at Brentwood UMC for a decade but resigned in 2008 after his third bout of cancer. He died shortly afterward.

Unlike some of his most recent churches, BUMC isn’t having growth or financial issues.  At his previous appointment to Lebanon, the small-town UMC in Monterey, Tenn., tripled in worship attendance and expanded ministries. Prior to that, he also found the Mt. Juliet UMC in conflict and bankruptcy when he arrived there, and helped it merge with another church to create a large, vibrant and growing congregation, Grace United Methodist.

“I think Brentwood is probably on a healthier keel than some of my past experiences, which is good news,” Thielen said. 

Thielen acknowledged the past few years for one of the city's largest and most visible churches hasn't been easy. "Howard Olds was beloved and died. And then they had a short-term pastor after that. And so they've had their issues as well," he said. However, “I think overall it's a pretty healthy congregation,” he added.

Thielen said Pennel brought him to the conversation about the SLI program. Key leaders in the church had initiated it so they could “take a pause" and seriously reflect on what the church is and where it's headed.

“This church has incredible resources. The verse that comes to my mind is, 'To whom much is given, much is required,' ” Thielen said. “And we've been given much with competent people, fine facilities, financial resources, and we need to figure out how we give that back."

He acknowledge that will be "a huge task."

"It's not like we're starting from scratch – this church does a lot of things I don't even know about it,” he said. He mentioned the inner-city ministry in Nashville called Harvest Hands, for one. Olds was instrumental in the church's formation and support of the Community Development Corporation that is helping to renew a south Nashville neighborhood. Thielen also knows there are other missions and outreach such as the church's Career Transition program which for years has offered support to those out of work.

“I'm in an assessment mode, and in two days (there’s) not been too much assessment. So I'm going to spend a lot of time just getting acquainted with the church, the community, the staff," the new BUMC pastor said. He plans to hold listening sessions throughout the congregation and with staff. He hopes that together the church can come up with three or four areas to focus on.

Pennel says the challenge for Thielen – or anyone – in leading BUMC “will be to understand the importance of working through the laity and the staff in order to carry forward the mission of the congregation.”

“When I left the church, it had 4,500 members,” said Pennel, currently a professor of practical theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School. “Now it has 7,800 members, and both the staff and programming have grown in ways that I could not imagine when I was the pastor there.”

Learning more about the man in the pulpit 

When asked about personal things about him that might surprise people, Thielen came up with a quick and surprising list.

“I traveled with a carnival once,” he said, “and I worked at a mental hospital for a summer as a chaplain.

“I'm an avid surfer, although there's not any surf in Middle Tennessee. I was pretty good when I lived in Hawaii. ... I ride a bicycle. I'm a lover of movies; about half of my sermons will have some kind of movie illustration,” he shared.

In fact, his introductory sermon at Brentwood UMC this weekend takes its name – “What’s the Point? – from a line in a recent movie, he said.

“It's on the Great Commandment,” Thielen said. “It's going to be little bit autobiographical, about how I started taking seriously the Great Commandment of loving God and neighbor. And my hope is this church will always be a Great Commandment church.”

Thielen, who met his wife of 34 years and got married while in college at Ouachita University in Arkadelphia, Ark., originally studied as a Baptist minister at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky. He then worked at the Southern Baptist Convention and initially pastored the largest Baptist church in Hawaii early in his ministry.

“What I tell people is that I am profoundly grateful for my Southern Baptist background,” he said.  “I was in no church until I was 15 years old, and Southern Baptists introduced me to Jesus, loved me and educated me. They gave me incredible opportunities of service, working at national denomination headquarters, teaching seminary, and publishing right and left.

“And I have no animosity toward the Southern Baptist Convention. But they did go in a fundamentalist direction, which was their choice, and that's not who I am. I am a centrist mainliner. I'm not a liberal, but I am certainly not a hard-line fundamentalist conservative. For example, I'm a huge advocate of women in ministry, that's just one example. So, as a matter of integrity I needed to make a change. I was still very young.”

After some exploration, he “landed Methodist,” he said. (Click here to read Thielen’s writing about becoming a Methodist).

Thielen said he respects all different faith traditions, both Christian and non-Christian, but says he wants Brentwood UMC “to be known as a vibrant, alive, mainline church. We have a motto in our denomination called ‘open hearts, open minds and open doors’ and I would like to be known by that actually.”

Says Pennel of the church he formerly pastored full-time: “I would say that Brentwood United Methodist has become the strong church that it is because of the exceptional lay leadership, because of its openness to receiving new people and because of its strong commitment to children, youth and missions.”

Thielen hasn’t had a chance to meet other clergy in town in just three days on the job, but said he had “received a really nice letter from a pastor down the street.”

Pennel hasn’t known Thielen personally because he became bishop in Virginia around the time Thielen was getting started in the Tennessee Conference.

But he said he believes Thielen’s “pastoral life has prepared him to serve the spiritual needs of this congregation. He is a gifted preacher, a perceptive writer and a good theologian.”

Thielen, who has a Doctor of Ministry from Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., and studied for a Ph.D. (homiletics and liturgics) a year at Vanderbilt, is a prolific writer who has written five books and published about 200 articles. His most recent book is What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? A Guide to What Matters Most (Westminster John Knox).

But he said has gotten ahead on his two monthly columns for clergy publications until February and put some projects on hold. (He has a contract for a sixth book, If Money, Success, and Beauty Don’t Make People Happy, What Does?)