Parish () von Matt Brown

There are unexpected, beatific moments when Rev. Elijah Lovejoy Parish is swept up by the divine intrusion into the ordinary. Yet, he knows he cannot tarry there, for his calling also compels him to resume his shift as the traffic cop down at the intersection of Pathological and Whine. Told from the perspective of a deceased brother, freed from life's bondage to autism, Parish introduces you to the family of a young pastor and invites you to laugh and cry through the seasons of a year laced with everything from a redneck funeral that becomes a DEA sting operation to a grandfather's honorable relinquishing of his mind to senescence to an act of violence that impales the community and challenges easy Easter answers.Dismayed by rock-star-skinny-jeaned preachers preening and self-righteous demagogues decreeing, Elijah Parish balks when strangers ask him what he does for a living. Yet, he keeps at it. Why? Grace: undeserved and unsurpassed, ineffable and irrepressible. Living with the sinners and saints of St. Martin Presbyterian Church in the North Carolina foothills community of Edinburgh, Elijah and his family keep stumbling into grace as the seasons pass and as chaos dances with mercy.

Matt Brown is the pastor of South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC. A graduate of the University of Missouri and Union Presbyterian Seminary, Matt and his wife, Donna, live in Charlotte where they write checks for college tuition and dare to hope that their sons, Noah and Seth, will call them. In the meantime, Matt pledges his fealty to the St. Louis Cardinals and the Mizzou Tigers.