The Finding Faith columnist has now published his own book – West Central Tribune

DETROIT LAKES – Devlyn Brooks, faith columnist for Forum Communications Company, often didn’t truly believe in the love of God or even in the existence of God in his younger years.

“I wasn’t in church for a very long time,” he says. “My parents divorced when I was very young, and we belonged to a small church in a small town.”

“And as small churches and small towns do, they can choose sides, can’t they? I always felt that our little church had chosen a side, and my mother, who had taken care of all nine children, was not on that side. At least I I didn’t feel that support from my religious community and so I left the church at the age of 12. I made a very conscious decision, along the lines of: “If God is like that, if he has something like that to offer, then I’m out.”

The Crookston, Minnesota, native noted that if someone had told him back then that he would become the ELCA-ordained pastor of a small Lutheran church in the equally small northwestern Minnesota town of Wolverton, they probably would have called him, shall we say, a little less than sane.

“I had decided I had enough of this business of organized religion,” Brooks wrote in the foreword to his first published book, “Finding Faith in Life’s Beautiful Cracks,” available online at WDAY News’ e-commerce site at wday-smart-shopper.myshopify.com.

Contribution by Devlyn Brooks

Brooks continued in the book’s foreword: “After some time to reflect, however, I realized that although I had left church, religion, and even God behind in my youthful anger, I had never really rejected the experiences the Holy Spirit offered me, nor the tenderness and compassion Jesus extended to me. … With the luxury of age and a little wisdom, I now admit that Jesus was present in my life all along, and the Holy Spirit certainly pushed me down paths I might not otherwise have taken.”

The book, published in May, includes 15 of Brooks’ most popular “Finding Faith” columns that he has written for Forum Communications Company over the past two and a half years – but goes even deeper into the answers to the questions he originally posed in those columns.

Brooks noted that “the first half of the book is all about my family,” while the other eight columns focus on broader faith-based themes that inspired him.

“I really wanted to write a book that addressed the question of finding faith in everyday life,” he said. “When I came back to church, words like ‘church,’ ‘God,’ and ‘religion’ were very important to me and quite scary… but I’ve found that when you talk about words like ‘faith,’ ‘community,’ ‘Holy Spirit,’ and ‘Jesus,’ they are less scary and more comforting.”

Brooks graduated from Fertile-Beltrami High School and Bemidji State University with a degree in mass communications.

He spent the next 30 years working in the newspaper industry.

“I have worked for the smallest weeklies all the way up to the Forum (of Fargo-Moorhead) and have been a writer, editor, photographer, manager and publisher,” he said.

“That was my first career,” he added. “I really, really loved it and I still do (I love newspapers).”

In 2007, Brooks – who, like his mother before him, had become a single father through divorce – moved to Moorhead. “I was a single father, newly moved to the city,” he said. “I knew my kids needed a stable connection… they needed social interaction.”

Contribution by Devlyn Brooks

When he saw a sign at a local church advertising a Cub Scout meeting, he brought his sons that evening—but only one of them was old enough. Brooks and his youngest son were waiting at the church.

“He and I just hung out until his older brother left for his Boy Scout meeting,” Brooks recalled. “The two pastors of the church … stopped to talk to me. They realized there was a very broken man who could use some affection. And those two pastors loved me for almost a year until finally one of them asked me if the boys and I wanted to be members of the church.”

So Brooks and his children began attending church services on Wednesday nights.

“I started getting involved in youth activities and went on some mission trips. Eventually they asked me to serve on the church council.”

That was in 2012: By then, Brooks had already remarried, and his second wife, Shelly, was “very supportive” of his rediscovered faith—even when he unexpectedly decided he “felt a calling to go to seminary” and become a pastor.

“So I went to the seminary at the age of 42, not knowing where this path would lead me,” he said.

Brooks first became pastor at Faith Lutheran in Wolverton while pursuing his master’s degree in theology at Luther Seminary. He has served there ever since and is now a fully ordained minister.

About five years ago he began writing his “Finding Faith” columns for his blog findingfaithin.com, and about two and a half years later he began publishing them in Forum Communications newspapers.

“As I became more involved in pastoring, I realized that for me the two professions (newspaper and religion) were really intertwined,” he said. “I was using the local newspapers I worked for as a platform to share the gospel even before I knew I was doing it.”

“Who would have thought that my love of writing and my love of pastoral care would one day come together and result in a book?” he said.