(September 21 WSB photo, Pastor Andrew on the podium at Peace Day event)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

West Seattle’s highest-profile pastor won’t hold that role for much longer.

Admiral Church‘s Rev. Andrew Conley-Holcom is headed down the highway – joining a church in the Tacoma area, where he lives.

But rather than a tearful farewell, he hopes you’ll join him at a joyful party one week from tonight.

“I want people to come on November 15, I want people to roast me and make fun of me, come be playful and continue the energy …” He’ll even welcome the memories that lead to critiques. “I also want to hear about how i missed the mark … I want to say ‘thank you’.”

His gratitude is for 11 years with Admiral Church, the youngest pastor ever called by West Seattle’s oldest church.

“They helped form me into the minister I am today.” And the formation has included lessons in humility, as he recalls a church member joking after his departure announcement that “I was full of myself when I got there.” He was, and is, of a generation that “isn’t interested in church,” believing that “it’s not doing anything that matters to us.”

So how and why did he become a minister, then?

“I thought I was going to be an elementary teacher,” he reveals, inspired by a teacher in fifth grade who saw something in him. He went to college to seek a teaching credential, majoring in anthropology, but always “had a heart for the disenfranchised … a call to address violence, and people who were being victimized.”

He went to Bosnia for the 10th anniversary of the truce signing. Conley-Holcom subsequently realized that “being a teacher won’t address all this” – so he changed his educational direction and went into genocide studies, but eventually “got disenfranchised with academia … a lot of posturing and performance.”

Another life-changing event helped him reorder his priorities: A ‘bad car accident.” After recovering, he worked at a rape crisis center, and then a crisis resolution center. Then he met his wife, whose Christian faith inspired him to investigate yet another direction. “I started attending this evangelical outreach on campus [in Bellingham], but some core theology stuff didn’t sit right.” He checked out a Unitarian church, but felt there was “not enough God.” He then went to United Church of Christ, “the denomination I grew up in.”

A realization dawned: “What if all this stuff is the same thing?” As in, all the “stuff” he’d been doing – advocacy, youth work, teaching, fellowship – “what if all this is actually ministry?”

With that, he went into seminary, without a certainty of what would follow: “I wasn’t sure I could go to parish ministry.”

But – he did. Coinciding with his wife getting into a doctoral program at UW, he learned that Admiral UCC had an opening. “They originally discounted my application … but then something moved in the room, and they pulled it back out.”

Despite an uncomfortable “clandestine” visit to the church, in which he and his wife were pointed out as visitors – “we thought we’d never go back” – he was offered the job. “OK, God, you got something planned for me,” he remembers thinking. He accepted and was mentored by Rev. David Kratz, former pastor of Fauntleroy UCC. “You gotta love people,” he says Rev. Kratz told him – “and I was like, ‘you gotta radicalize them, get them in the streets’ …” while, he says, his mentor wished him “good luck with that.”

Over time, Rev. Conley-Holcom admits, “I’ve come to believe that being saved really means you’re loved and you’re lovable and capable of loving others and that’s the way you can do social change … you can resist tyranny and violence – such a big part of my call.”

He also learned that being a pastor doesn’t mean you have to be angelic: “People trust me because I swear! I said to a friend, ‘can we just admit that’s a really low bar?’ … (Churches do) a really sh–ty job of meeting people where they are. (But) I showed up and Admiral already knew how to welcome, how to greet the stranger, how to be present and curious about each other … they just needed help scaffolding that. … This congregation has existed for more than 125 years. They’re the original church of West Seattle!”

If you’re wondering about the fate of the church’s project to develop its campus into housing – plus a new home for itself and the community organizations it hosts – Conley-Holcom says that will be just fine without him: “They already had a vision for this redevelopment project … One of the reasons I’m glad I’m leaving now, I want the project to flourish as one of the core commitments of the congregation.” (Ground could break in the new year; Admiral Church already has moved its services to temporary quarters at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church.)

At Admiral, he’s served a congregation largely made up of “hard-left elders.” He’s doing a 180 for his new job, serving as children, youth and families minister for “a more politically diverse community.” That community is Mountain View Lutheran Church in Edgewood, founded as a “Scandinavian immigrant church,” in a community that’s “become a richer place, but (has) also a lot of poverty.” He says Mountain View has “walked the walk” as much as “talked the talk,” building and “giving away” facilities/programs including a food bank and community center.

It’s not just politics – he’s expecting to grapple with big questions such as, “how do you keep the faith in a time when there’s more austerity, more fear … how do we equip the youth of today” to deal with all that and more?

He’s also undeniably excited – maybe even relieved – to finally be working closer to home, which has been in Tacoma for eight years. “It’s going to halve my commute.” And it means more time with his 7 1/2-year-old son, who is growing up fast, and will be able to come to Dad’s church – “Admiral doesn’t have a kids’ program … I’m worried he won’t know what ‘church’ is, a special cultural human institution.”

And one that is “in a reformation time,” the sort he says scholars believe happens every half-millennium or so. “If (the church) is alive, it should be changing and growing … too many Christians acquiesced to the politics of the country and stepped out of alignment … (to put it) kind of broadly, Christianity has been hijacked by a white nationalist narrative.” But he says the way to take that on is the way espoused by the ACLU … rather than trying to silence, “you speak more … (we) need to gather more people who believe in humility, generosity, and welcom(ing) because that’s the way … that’s His way. We need to be addressing the fear – there’s too much self-righteousness and certainty; incompleteness is one of my core values!”

(2024 photo, Rev. Conley-Holcom and WS PFLAG co-founder Cori)

His time with Admiral Church has had many highlights – helping launch a PFLAG group – “that looks like ‘church’ to me, people coming together to care for each other” – and working what was for a time an active Moms Demand Action group, which dovetailed with one of his key questions, “how do we have a conversation about keeping kids safe?” He has also ministered to residents at Brookdale Admiral Heights almost weekly for a decade plus, and led Bible study at Aegis Living‘s Admiral complex.

(WSB photo, 2017: Rev. Conley-Holcom with Anti-Hate Alaska Junction’s Susan Oatis)

He also has taught anti-racist workshops and book discussions, and Bystander Intervention workshops. But the church’s work overall goes far beyond what he does, Conley-Holcom stresses: “There’s so much love coming out of and through Admiral Church.” He thinks he’s leaving at a good time because “they won’t have to [simultaneously] grieve me and the building,” which will likely be demolished next year as the redevelopment project proceeds. The church is also, he notes, starting a strategic-planning process: “What do the next years look like?”

As that proceeds without him, he wants “everybody to know I’m humbled and honored, blessed to (have been) part of the West Seattle community.” He was particularly moved at the West Seattle Indivisible International Day of Peace event in September, when he was introduced simply as “our Pastor Andrew.” That was “the biggest compliment I could have gotten.”

But bring those jokes as well as compliments and fond memories, to next Sunday’s party. Here are the details, provided by Admiral Church’s Anita Shaffer:

Saturday, November 15, 6:00-9:00 pm, program at 7:00. St John the Baptist Episcopal Church Parish Hall, 3050 California Ave SW. Plenty of parking in the West Seattle High School parking lot, follow the balloons to the party. Pizza baked fresh on site by Elemental Pizza; cake, appropriate celebratory beverages. FREE, donations accepted. Open to the community. Anyone who has had a connection to Pastor Andrew and his wide-ranging ministry and justice work is welcome. Come say goodbye!

As for the church’s next pastor, Shaffer explains that UCC churches choose their own, and the search process is under way, with a new pastor potentially coming on board in mid-2026. “In the meantime, Rev. Allysa De Wolf, a fine local UCC pastoral colleague of Andrew’s who has subbed for him in the past will be Admiral Church’s interim.”