Gratitude to Providence Church on the Occasion of Celebrating the Completion of My Doctoral Work

Thank you all for being here celebrating the completion of my doctorate! The Brito’s are humbled and honored by your presence. I want to offer a few words of gratitude:

First and foremost, I thank the Triune God for his goodness to me. When I began my work in January of 2016, I thought that academic work was just academic work that I had to work through. Little did I realize in my first course that a bunch of grown pastors could cry so much. We did a lot of good pastoral theology, but the parts I will most cherish was the intimacy of laughing with fellow pastors when Sinclair Ferguson told a joke no one understood and crying when he would begin the class in those biblical saturated prayers. Studying books about the ministry, theology, and practice encouraged me through various seasons of my pastorate these last five years.

I remember coming back from a week of classes where we devoured over 2,000 pages of Puritan literature and someone came to me and said, “Your preaching has changed.” Theology that drives men to piety and purity must change the man and his actions.

My entire work for my dissertation narrowed down to the role of three rituals in pastoral life: friendship, learning, and leisure. Under friendship, I explored the biblical theology of relationships in the Garden of Eden and how relationships after the Fall departed from the idea of pure relationality. God is man’s true friend, but man needs another to manifest the two central features of genuine friendship which are service and mission. I spent a considerable amount of time on Augustine and Bonhoeffer’s theology of friendship and how their definitions of friendship helped their pastoral efforts. Both Augustine and Bonhoeffer were surrounded by friends in monasteries or imprisonment and those communal forces strengthened their service to the kingdom.

Additionally, I spent a substantial amount of time focusing on what it means to be a pastor/theologian, and how learning rituals of priests in the Old Testament carry on to the liturgical calling of the New Testament pastor. To pursue education in the ministry and to always pursue learning is a biblical route of refreshment for pastors.

Finally, I delved into leisure practices in the Bible. The Sabbath is made for man, which means God created the Sabbath to play with his children. In the Sabbath, we discover what true leisure is. Pastoral theology is incomplete if a man cannot play with his flock in eating, drinking, laughing, and singing with them. I had the inimitable task of contradicting one of my favorite writers, Josef Pieper, and then arguing for what I call “holistic leisure.” But probably most enjoyable was delving into Martin Luther’s practices on leisure and concluding that Luther’s theology of play shaped much of his criticism of the Church of the day. For Luther, the Church in Rome was wrong theologically because practically they understood God as a God who is not fatherly in his interactions with his children. A God who does not play with his children produces a theology that is saturated with sad works instead of joyful and exuberant works.

Of course, everything I wrote, I wrote it in the context of Providence Church. This is the Church that befriended me when I was a fresh-out seminary pastor at 28 with a 6-month-old. This was the Church that encouraged me when I wanted to pursue counseling certification to help me shepherd more effectively and when I came with the idea of pursuing this doctorate. It is also the church composed of people from whom I have learned so much about life, love, and laughter. And this is the church that I have had more fun as a human being than a human should be allowed to have in a life-time. This community is the embodiment of friendship, learning, and leisure. Anything I accomplish, any selfie I take, comes with the Providence photobomb in the background.

Thank you for your support financially and prayerfully. Thank you to Pastor Stout and Elder Gilley for being flexible, supportive, and full of hearty amens these last five years. I thank God for a wife that has the capacity to move mountains if she could for a living, but chooses rather to tolerate a husband who missed birthday parties and Friday and Saturday activities for almost five straight years and who in a twinkling of an eye would take the kids to the mountains in Georgia so daddy in all his glorious grumpiness could finish one more chapter. When I passed my oral exam, it was a realization that my wife was with me every step of the way. I owe Lego-Land trips, 150 gallons of ice cream cones, and a lot of daddy time to my five children who have been puzzled why Dr. Daddy is always in his office working on something else. I love my little Burritos more than they will ever know.

Finally, I am grateful– down in the hierarchy of gratitude– for gifts of creation, especially Ethiopian coffee beans and pipe tobacco from Guatemala. My many thanks to all those who provided abundant coffee to me over the years and supplied a farm’s worth of pipe tobbaco.

God is infinitely good to me in the completion of this project, but he is also infinitely kind to allow me to shepherd a congregation so loving, patient, smart, hospitable, and full of grace. Your friendship means the world to me, your life and commitment to truth has taught me so much, and your ability to party every week like it’s Resurrection Sunday never ceases to surprise me.

Thanks for being here and enjoying this special moment with me.

I would like to ask my dear brother, Rev. Mickey Schnider, who has mentored me and who is in many ways the embodiment of a faithful ministry, to pray for us before we eat.