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CAPITOL HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH WELCOMES NEW PASTOR Rev. Rachel Vaagenes Marks New Beginning for the Church
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by Sarah Cymrot
children about their own ingation, it was instead strengthened through discusterests all while connecting sions about their values and priorities in searching it to meaningful biblical lesfor a pastor. They were looking for a candidate that sons. “I like to build bridges could lead them to build their internal church comand I like to synthesize, and munity, reach out to the local community and find I like to bring people togeththeir place in the current environment of the couner,” she said. try and world. After an extensive search, the comVaagenes finds humittee decided Reverend Vaagenes was the perfect mor in all the ways that fit for their community. she breaks free of the ste“I would never have chosen to have our pasreotypes of Presbyterian tor quit in the middle of COVID,” said Deziekan. church leadership. She is a “But I feel like the outcome is that we found someyoung woman, married with one who is just going to be great for our commuRev. Rachel Vaagenes preached her first sermon at Capitol Hill two children, who identifies nity and already feels like one of us and already is Presbyterian Church (201 Fourth Articulating Her Faith as part of the LGBTQ comexcited about all of the things that we are excited St. SE) August 1. Courtesy: CHPC Vaagenes brings a tradition of love munity. She draws on her about doing.” to Capitol Hill that she first found at background in home, in California. As a young person growing improv comedy to make people feel conRev.Vaagenes with her up in Los Angeles, she struggled to articulate the fident and loved in church. husband and children love and meaning she found in church compared You are likely to meet Reverend in Arches National Park, 2021. Photo: with the judgement and rejection that many of her Vaagenes riding her bike around the Rachel Vaagenes friends felt. Capitol Hill neighborhood or sitting out “I could see that there was a way to be rigorfront of CHPC with a “free prayer” sign. ous and faithful and true to Christ’s call while not “When I first thought I was going to having to choose that judgment,” she said. Despite be a pastor, it took me a while to realize that personal clarity, she searched for the words to that I could be a pastor in my own way,” express what she knew church should be. Reverend Vaagenes reflected. She began the process of finding this expression while in graduate school at Princeton where CHPC: New Beginning she received her Master of Divinity. Seemingly a deCOVID-19 has posed a particular chalparture from her undergraduate degree in math and lenge to church communities as they philosophy, Vaagenes says her graduate work was a have struggled to maintain conneccontinuation of her fascination with connection and tions and navigate virtual platforms as a understanding how the world fits together. replacement for in-person worship. “You could think about math as the buildThe Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church ing blocks of life,” the pastor said. “Once you start faced what Ami Dziekan, co-chair of talking about how reality fits together, it’s a beauthe Pastor Nominating Committee, detiful thing.” scribed as “a double whammy” when Reverend Vaagenes spent the last ten years as their former pastor, Reverend Keys, anan Associate Pastor at the Georgetown Presbyterian nounced her departure just months into Church (3115 P St. NW) where she was particularly the pandemic. focused on the youth program. She re-envisioned While this had the potential to imSunday school, engaging church elders in teaching pair the closeness of the CHPC congreitting in the pews at Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church (CHPC, 201 Fourth St. SE) on August 1st, the congregation felt an indisputable sense of a new beginning. They were gathered in person for one of the first times since the COVID-19 pandemic began. But the day marked another exciting next step for the church—the first sermon of their new pastor, Reverend Rachel Landers Vaagenes.
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