Get to know Interim Pastor Rev. Dan Hutchinson

Rev. Dan Hutchinson has served at First Church for 11 years, so he is a familiar face. Read his answers to the questions below to get to know him better.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your childhood.

I grew up in Edmonds, Washington, just outside of Seattle with my parents and my two older sisters. For the first twelve years of my life, my dad pastored a small church in Brier, WA, which meant that we were at the church all the time. We did not miss worship unless we were throwing up, and with it being a small church, we also helped with set-up and take-down, moving around chairs, cleaning bathrooms, painting parties, etc.

I really enjoyed baseball growing up, and all of us were also involved in music. I played trumpet in a youth symphony and ended up minoring in music in college. We also spent a lot of time outdoors, and my love of hiking and boating were definitely forged in those early years.

One of my favorite things from childhood was road tripping. This was how we vacationed. We went to the Grand Tetons, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and a host of other sites, usually camping along the way to save money. The most epic trip was when I was twelve. We drove 13,000 miles over six weeks and made it all the way from Washington to Maine, down to Florida, and back, hitting up every major city and every major Civil War battlefield along the way. We all agreed it was a little longer than it should have been, but I am grateful for a family that loved to be together! I still love to travel, and I have had the joy of many cross-country road trips in my adult life.

Q: You are a Wheaton College graduate. What made you decide to attend Wheaton?

Yes, I graduated with a BA in History (minor in music) back in 2007. I ended up staying on another year and did an MA in Historical and Systematic Theology. I initially heard about Wheaton from my parents who both attended. When I was looking into colleges, I knew that I wanted to attend a Christian college that had rigorous academics, and Wheaton was at the top of the list. I was also very interested in archeology at the time and Wheaton had a very strong program. As so often happens, my plans changed, but it was a draw.

Q: So, how did you end up in Tulsa, Oklahoma?

The short story is by the grace and sovereignty of God! The slightly longer story is that during graduate school at Wheaton, my theological journey had brought me to the reformed tradition, and I ended up working at a Presbyterian Church in Seattle for two years doing youth ministry. I had never attended a PCUSA church before, but during those two years, God confirmed my call into ministry, and I decided to pursue ordination within the PCUSA. After much consideration, I decided to go to Princeton Seminary. The last semester that I was there, I took a class on the book of Galatians with Dr. Shane Berg. We connected, and a week before graduation, we were talking after an event and he asked me the infamous question, “Do you know what you are doing after seminary?” I did not. He mentioned that a friend of his was a pastor in Tulsa and that the church was looking to bring on a pastoral intern for a year. He asked if he could pass my name along, and I said, “Why not?” I could not have pointed out Tulsa on a map, but I trusted Shane and knew that if he was recommending it, it was worth looking into.

A couple weeks later, as I was road tripping back to Seattle from Princeton, I stopped by Tulsa and had a brief conversation with Dr. Miller and Rev. Michael Holman. The rest, as they say, is history. I immediately had the sense that I would enjoy working with Dr. Miller and that we were aligned in terms of theology and the mission of the church. I also have to say that on that first visit, Michael Holman pointed me to Double Shot for some coffee before I headed out of town. I won’t say that settled it, but it was a comfort to know there was good coffee to be had in Oklahoma!

The job changed a bit – from a pastoral intern to a designated pastor – but eventually I was offered the position, packed up my car, and headed out.

Q: You met your wife, Hanna, at First Church. Most of us know her as your wife and Edmund, Rosie, and Elanor’s mother, but she is also a gifted artist and author. Tell us about her latest book.

Hanna is incredibly talented. She had her own Etsy shop for a long time, selling hand-painted mugs, but her true passion and calling is writing. Her latest book is called Our Divine Mischief. I won’t give any spoilers, but it is set in an alternate version of Scotland, and one of the main characters is a dog. If you have ever had a dog that you loved (or really any pet for that matter), this book is definitely for you. If you don’t like dogs, just read this book, and then you will want one. When Hanna and I met, she had a very strange and beautiful dog name Ophelia. Ophelia wandered into Hanna’s life when Hanna was working at New Life Ranch during college, and the two truly became best friends. The dog in this book is very much the Ophelia that I came to know and love as Hanna and I dated and got married.

The book is a very fun read, but it also gets into some more serious themes around belonging, community, and love. It also tackles questions around religion and the silence of God in a manner that I would compare with C.S. Lewis’ work Till We Have Faces.

Q: As you take on the Interim Pastor role, what do you see as your biggest challenge?

Part of the role of Interim is to help the congregation grieve and process Dr. Miller’s retirement. Any time you have someone who has served as long as Jim did, who is well loved, who has poured themselves into a community as Jim did, and they leave, it is hard. His are some big shoes to fill. And I am not Jim! I have picked up a number of Jim-isms, but I have different gifts and skill sets. It is going to be different, which is part of what this season is about, but change is hard.

Q: Give us a brief look into the heart of Dan’s Theology.

I could talk a long time about my theology and things that I am passionate about, but for me, it all begins with Jesus. I mean this in a few ways. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” I think Lewis is spot on. Christianity rises or falls based on whether or not what we read about Jesus in the gospels happened. Whether Jesus was truly God incarnate in time and space who lived, died, and bodily rose again from the dead. Everything else flows from this central claim. If this is true (and I believe it is), then I am confident of God’s love, a love I cannot comprehend and that is more wondrous and glorious than anything I could ever hope to fathom...that the great and good God who created all things would come and lay down his life for me

It is beyond imagining and yet, if Christ died for me, then I know it to be true. If the gospel is true, then I have hope. We live in a world that is an absolute mess. Things are broken. And yet, the cross and the resurrection give me concrete assurance that God is at work and that what we see is not the end of the story. If what we believe about Jesus is true, then I also have a Lord and King to whom I must submit. Which is, honestly, really good news. Have you ever tried to control everything around you? It is utterly exhausting, and it never goes well. There is a God, and I am not it! That is part of the good news! Jesus Christ is Lord, and if he is Lord, then he governs my ethics, he governs my view of the world, of myself – there is no arena of life that is outside of his authority.

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the pastor transition at FirstChurchTulsa.org/PastorTransition. There you will also find a transition roadmap that identifies the current status of the process.

Have questions? Send an e-mail to FPCTransition@FirstChurchTulsa.org.