Parish

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.


""A beautiful, humorous, and insightful love story using a collection of real, broken, but endearing, people who are a means of grace. Through Elijah, an authentic Presbyterian pastor, he seeks to use faith to understand the ways of a loving God as he, and the people he loves, affirm faith in the midst of real stories of pain, tragedy, and loss. You will love the people and love the God who remains faithful.""
--Jody Welker, pastor, Kirk of Kildaire Presbyterian Church, Cary, NC

""Elijah Lovejoy Parish is a faithful, compassionate, wise--and wisecracking--pastor whose persona is an antidote to the frequent literary portrayal of ministers as knaves or fools . . . or both. His approach to his calling is as admirable as it is real. And his sermons can make a believer out of you.""
--John Kuykendall, President emeritus, Davidson College, Davidson, NC

""Through the mouths of characters that will be recognizable to many, Parish speaks to the sin and grace that ever marks the pathway of the church. Matthew Brown's poignant storytelling and continual expositions of the Reformed faith weave together the lives, backstories, pain, and hopes of genuine persons of faith living under the promise of God's providential care.""
--D. Mark Davis, pastor, St. Mark Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, CA

""It's easy to tell a compelling story about evil. What's hard is to tell a compelling and convincing story about goodness. In Parish, Matt Brown tells a story about a Presbyterian pastor, Elijah Lovejoy Parish, whose life and work rings true to the foibles of the church and the world, yet embodies the grace that is active in both. This is a story that is seldom told, or told well. As such, it is cause for deep gratitude--both by those who have lived their lives in a town such as Edinburgh, NC, and those that wish they had.""
--Richard N. Boyce, Dean, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte, NC


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.