How can our church and my ministry in particular be a healing presence within the oil field, perhaps offering a model for other congregations? To study this question, I will read extensively on ecotheology, travel to other oil-related communities, and learn more about the churches and people within the Permian Basin. I have unique access to leaders and workers in the oil industry and surrounding economy, and I will interview them in person, using questions developed from my research. My aim will be to hear the underlying theology at work that allows the investment of their lives in the oil fields. I will also research our church’s history and that of our sister church in our area, as well as churches in Stavanger, Norway, and Casper, Wyoming. I will be looking for ways the church ministers within the oil fields in three ways: as resistance against the oil economy, as acquiescence to it, and as healing balm within it.

As a pastor serving a church in the heart of oil country, I will also use this time and the insights I receive through my research for self-reflection and reintegration of my own pastoral theology. I will share results of my study with my congregation in a sermon series, with my community through the column I write in our local paper, in a lecture at our art museum, and potentially with the wider church in a book. During my three months of study leave, the Permian Basin will have produced approximately 360 million barrels of oil. My goal is to produce 360 pages of reflection about whether and how God is involved in that, what our church is called to do within it, and who I am called to be as a pastor alongside it.