I’m Jeffrey Hensley.

People have asked me why a pastor would put two words like Shalom and Shithead together.

Fair question.

Shalom is a Hebrew word that carries the idea of peace, wholeness, restoration, and things being made right. Not the kind of peace where everybody smiles politely while pretending the world isn't going to hell. I'm talking about the kind of peace that gets its hands dirty trying to put broken things back together.

And then there's shithead.

I probably don't need to translate that one.

Some people think those two words don't belong together. I think they describe the beautiful, frustrating, sacred mess of being human.

We can be loving and selfish. Generous and judgmental. Full of faith and full of shit. Sometimes before we've even finished our morning coffee.

I've spent enough years in church to know that religious people can get awfully good at pretending otherwise. We polish our language, clean up our stories, and act like God has never heard a swear word.

I don't buy it.

I believe grace meets us as we are, not as we pretend to be. And I believe Jesus was far more interested in loving actual human beings than protecting everybody's religious vocabulary.

So, Shalom, Shithead.

Two words that probably shouldn't go together.

Then again, neither should grace and some of the people it keeps finding.

Including me.

I’m a pastor, writer, storyteller, and occasional pain in the ass for theology that sounds good in a sanctuary but falls apart in a hospital room.

I write about faith, grief, grace, church, family, failure, and the strange holy mess of being alive.

For a long time, I thought faith meant having the right answers. The right doctrine. The right words. The right explanation for why life hurts.

Then life got involved.

What I found was not less faith. It was a faith that could finally tell the truth.

These days, I’m much more interested in what happens when theology meets actual people: the grieving person, the kid everyone has written off, the church that doesn’t know what to do with pain, the person who is tired of pretending everything is fine.

I believe Jesus keeps showing up in those places.

Usually without a PowerPoint.

Sometimes with grace.

Sometimes with a middle finger to the bullshit we’ve been taught to call faith.

And usually with somebody pulling up a chair and staying.

That’s what I’m trying to write about.