Pat Bailey has been pastor at the Christ Church here in Telluride for the past 15 years. This winter, he announced Easter Sunday would be his last leading the congregation. 

Bailey stopped by to chat with KOTO’s Gavin McGough; they touch on his years as pastor, his spiritual background, and his time working as a chaplain in the army. Bailey begins recalling his first time he came to Telluride — the day he and his wife moved.

Pat Bailey: I was still in the army as a chaplain. We were living up in Alaska at Fort Richardson, and so we flew down and rented a car in Durango and drove up. It was October. The story I often tell is we, as we were driving up, we stopped at Lizard Head Pass and got out and Deb and I were both crying. It was so beautiful. And so our first impression of this region and of Telluride was positive and it's been positive ever since. 

Gavin McGough: So you've been working in the army; how'd you find Telluride? How'd you come to Colorado and what was it like to kind of do the interview? 

PB: Actually, I was in Iraq at the time. So I was in a telephone tent full of soldiers talking to their lovers and I'm doing a job interview for a church to be a pastor! At that point they [Christ Church] had already been in the search process for about a year and a half, and it was still going to be about a year over a year before I'd retire from the army. So they said that they couldn't wait that long, you know? 

Then when I got back [from Iraq], I started applying at different churches while I was still in Alaska, and I saw that this position was still open. So I gave ‘em a call and they invited me down. And we – Deb and I – came and interviewed. You know, they're more, much more of a progressive congregation and I'm very much a progressive minister and an inclusive minister. So it's just been a great fit for.

GM: Could you talk a little more about that? Just the church community and this tradition of inclusivity. 

PB: You know, we're not against anybody. We're for folks, you know, and a lot of our folks grew up in very conservative places like I did. A lot of them had given up on religion and they found that in our community they could have a conversation, and nobody was going to tell them this is exactly how you have to think or do or be. And so, they found a place where they can reinvigorate their spiritual life. 

GM: On that note, take me into your spiritual background.

PB: I got involved with the Christian community actually in Spain. I was in the Air Force before I was in the army. And I was part of a Christian serviceman center, but it was very fundamentalist. It was very evangelical and it was also Pentecostal,  but it did offer me a new…a new kind of look at faith and a new surrendering of myself.

Around that time, Bailey suffered an injury during training which sidelined his army career. In the meantime, he recalls:

I went to Germany and there was a set of books that a Catholic chaplain had left a couple of years before, and they had not been able to get in touch with them or anything. They said, ‘if anybody wants these books, you can have them.’ And so I took all the books home. They were all the great classics of the Christian spirituality. St. John of the Cross; Teresa of Avila; Thomas Merton. It was just amazing. And, you know, I was in a kind of funky place because of my injuries and all that kind of stuff.

Those texts really reassured me that this was part of the spiritual path that often proceeds out of injury or hurt. And so from there I began studying the Christian mystics and the Christian spiritual teachers. And that's when I went on to pursue further degrees, post-graduate degrees related to those things.

GM: And once you were fully an army chaplain, how was that? What was that work like? 

PB: I really felt a call to that and I really, — I thought it was a great ministry. You know, chaplain ministry is mostly a ministry of presence. It's just being where the soldiers are, being willing to share their hardships and share the danger, and be present to them. And that's very much my sense of how God is present; you know, not intervening. 

GM: So for people who are hearing this and going: ‘Oh no, Pat's leaving, what can you tell them; what lies ahead for you? 

PB: I have to stay away from the church for a period of time, because we gotta – the next person needs a chance to establish themselves without the old guy hanging around, you know? But eventually I'll be able to come back and we'll certainly continue to participate in the church community here.

And we're gonna be in Rico! I've had a house out there for 14 years, and it's a cozy place for Deb and I to settle down and so I'm looking forward to that. 

That was Pat Bailey, reflecting on his spiritual life and career. Bailey's last day leaving the Telluride Christ Church will be March 31st, Easter Sunday.