What does it look like to find spirituality in the hardest of
places? Well, we have an inspiring conversation with the
Reverend Jabe Largen coming up.
Welcome to Compass Finding Spirituality in the Everyday. I'm Ryan
Dunn, your host and fellow traveler on the spiritual
journey. This episode delivers a remarkable
story regarding addiction, tragedy, traffic,
transformation and renewed hope. I chatted with Reverend J.
Blargen, who opens up about his experiences
growing up amidst the opioid crisis in Appalachia,
wrestling with loss and the power of grace that
emerged not really in spite of, but often
through pain and vulnerability. We have lots of
conversations around faith exploration and
curiosity and investing in personal faith practices here on the
Compass Podcast. So as if this kind of content is meaningful
for you, then go ahead and hit the subscribe button on your
podcast listening platform. If you've already done that, then I invite you
to take the next step and help someone else discover Compass by
leaving a rating and or review of the podcast on your
podcast app that really helps new people discover our
conversations here. Some things for you to discover in
this particular episode include the role of honesty
and vulnerability in spiritual growth, how faith
communities can respond with radical love, and
wrestling with the the big question, the why of
suffering, and this thing that we have called the Odyssey. So if
you're into that, stay tuned for this inspiring conversation
with Reverend Jabe Largen. A bit about Jabe.
He's the senior pastor of Pinehurst United Methodist church in Pinehurst,
North Carolina. He served there since 2021.
He's an ordained elder in the United
Methodist Church. He's originally a native of
Pulaski, Virginia. And Jabe is the author of
they Call Me Jabe which was published towards the end of
2025. Let's get to the conversation with Reverend
Jargin. Oh, and one more thing. I just wanted
to add a quick note about the audio quality of the interview. My
microphone was way out of line and clipping a little bit, so
so I hope it's not too distracting. The good news is Jabe does most
of the talking and his audio level sounds fine. So if you can bear with
it just a little bit when I'm doing a little speaking and when I get
excited, then this should be a wonderful interview. Thanks so
much and we'll talk to you soon. Jabe, thanks for taking the time to join
us and sharing some of your story with us. How goes it with your
soul over there in Pinehurst, North Carolina?
Things are good, Ryan. It's, you know,
a surreal thing right now going through this experience of
leading the church while Also talking about
the story of my life and in written form,
but the whole process has actually been good for my soul. So I'm.
I'm feeling kind of spiritually renewed right
now as a result of. Yeah. Putting this
memoir on paper. And. And then also, you know, church life
is very life giving, which
is a tremendous blessing. I don't
at any time take for granted the fact that
I'm surrounded by a healthy community of faith that's
not only vibrant in their ministry, but also
very much in tune with my needs
and looking out for me and caring for me, especially
during this time in which, you know, know, I wrote
something that kind of was soul bearing.
Yeah. Well, I want to talk. Start our conversation really,
in. In gauging some of the reaction to
burying yourself in this way. You and I have known each other for a number
of years, but I've only known you as Reverend J.
Bligen. Right. And while
you had revealed a little bit of your history
and that there was a history of addiction there and certainly
some heart ache with that, I was not aware of the
level of that until I really read your memoir here. And I'm
wondering if now that you've kind of released all these stories into the
world, I mean, there's a fear that comes with that.
Certainly, as you have revealed parts of yourself earlier,
you've had, for example, a supervisor who kind of said, well,
I don't know, Jay, but this may not work out the best for you.
Has the reception from the faith community around
you and your congregation been. Been warm? Have some people
pulled back? Has there been some pushback?
No pushback at all. It's actually kind of overwhelming.
The love and support that I've been showered with, my whole
family's been showered with, you know, Amber,
my wife, and. And the kids. I mean, it's just been tremendous,
especially from the church family. But, I mean, it's. It's kind of a unique
situation, Ryan, in that, like, folks like you, who I've
known, like my congregation and so many other people
since we moved to North Carolina and entered into
ministry, like, they knew some of it, like you said, but they
didn't know the depths. So then they read the book, and they can't believe
it. And then there are those who I grew up
with and those who knew me as I
was growing up, who read the book and
see me now, and they can't
believe it. You have
two. Two polar opposites here
of disbelief. I can't believe you did that, and
I can't believe you're doing this,
but the church has been tremendous. We had
a book event recently where we just had a
conversation kind of like this. And then at the end, I signed
some copies and stuff, and just the outpouring of love and support,
it was moving for me to feel that
love. I think that in terms of United
Methodist ministry, it goes to
show that vulnerability and honesty from
the pastor really might not be all that bad
of a thing. Maybe it should be
embraced more. Maybe we should be more open.
And if congregations aren't open and receptive to
embracing the vulnerability of their leader, then
they need to perhaps take time to look in their own mirror.
But, yeah, in my experience, it's been phenomenal. It's
exceeded expectations. Was it therapeutic for you
to revisit some of this stuff? Yeah, it
was very therapeutic. Not in the moment. In the moment, it
was painful and
fearful for the reason that we just talked about. I was
very afraid that in telling my truth,
I would not be embraced or received.
I did fear that the reaction would be much different
than what it actually is. But
the biggest burden was in the actual writing of it.
I'm not a good journaler, so I've never
journaled for any extended period of time.
And so the writing of the book was
a process like that, except I'm doing it all at once
and over and over and over again. So, you know,
I write some very
hard things that have happened in life, and
then, you know, I move on to the next very hard thing that happens in
life and so on and so forth until it comes time to edit it.
Then when I edited it, I
relive it again. And then, you
know, about 48 to 72 hours later, I feel. I feel really good
because, you know, I've got this off
of my soul, right? And
then it's time to edit again. And then
some other feeling comes up that's probably unexpected
or some other memory comes up that's unexpected, and then
it's the whole process again. But now that it's all
done, yes, extremely
therapeutic. I've had people use the word
cathartic. This must be cathartic for you.
And I think that's a good way to describe it now.
But the process itself was. Was. Was wrenching
to put it the best way I know how. Yeah, well,
I don't want to necessarily rehash the
events that you detail well within the book of, you
know, why this might be therapeutic. And in talking about, well, your
addiction and revealing all that for people who want those gory
details, like they can Read. But can you give us
maybe, like a synoptic narrative, the
elevator speech, so to speak, of what happens throughout
your memoir here? Yeah, I think there are a couple
strings that run throughout it. One is
death and then hope.
And with that death string, I mean, you have the addiction side of things. You
have tragedy. You have a lot
of things that are associated with death on that death
string that runs throughout. But then you have the hope string
that runs throughout. And grace
is very much a big part of the hope piece as well. Or maybe
it's vice versa. Hope is part of the Grace piece. I mean, you
can take it either way. But I
grew up in Appalachia in a community that was
once thriving, but quickly deteriorated
in terms of its economy, its
quality of life. Drug addiction
was rampant in our community. Accessibility to
narcotics was high. And that was always the case
throughout my childhood. But then when
OxyContin dropped, you know, in the late
90s, early 2000s,
we were ground zero for that, as was so many
other communities in Appalachia. And so that really
brought me to a bottom there in terms of
addiction, which, you know, I started using drugs in general at the age of
13. Elevator speech,
you know, Grace.
Grace that I didn't know existed, nor did
I see it coming. Grace
intervened, and a conversion
happened. Then a calling happened.
And then after that, old demons reappear.
And those old demons reappear when that old
foe named Death, who I'd been dealing with since my
teens, that shows up in, you
know, untimely ways as an unexpected guest, keeps knocking
on the door because of my calling,
you know, and just my.
Also wrestling with that, as
someone now in ministry who has been very successful in
ministry, I would. I would use that word, successful.
Fruitful. And then also dealing
with the loss of my
father toward the end is another thing that happened
as I was finishing the book. Actually, I'd finished.
In my view, I was finished. And then he passed away right before my
deadline, so I had to rewrite. And so the last couple chapters
are very much what we would call an elegy.
I think the whole thing's an elegy to piggyback off of some other dude who
wrote a. A book,
Appalachian elegy, so to speak. Okay. Yeah,
but, I mean, I actually lived there, but
never mind. So, yeah, it very
much is like that. It's. It's analogy.
It's. It's part lament,
part preaching, part
wandering and wondering, and, you know,
it's a little bit of all that. But ultimately, you know,
hope in the Face of death and enough
grace to sustain at least one life.
We talked about finding grace revealed
even in the midst of debt. Yeah, there
was an instance in your book in which you're
talking about a child,
your child that had died basically
during pregnancy or just after being born. And at that
time, you could not recognize that there could be a God
that would allow something like this to happen. Like, if stuff like this happens, there,
there can't be an all good God or a God in general.
And yet you started going to church. It felt like not too
long after that, was there something that
impelled or give you the impulse to. To make that kind of turn? Was
it social pressure that brought you into the church or what was
happening there? It was family pressure because
Miriam died in, in 2002.
August 22, 2002. I
got clean from, from
OxyContin and the other narcotics in July
of 05. And so there was, you know, it was almost
three total years before I started going to church. Okay.
And, you know, being clean is what
led me to, you know, I would say
a journey of spiritual discovery.
And my wife Amber had started going to church with
my, my mama Large and my dad's mom
and dad too. And yeah,
they pretty much just drugged me. They were like,
you're going. So I reluctantly went.
And, you know,
as, as grace often does,
unexpected things start to happen as
a result of being drug.
And yeah, perceptions started to change
in terms of whether or not there is a God and whether or not that
God is good. But yeah, I didn't
see in 02 how there could be a God
that is good when babies are stillborn,
especially when there was an attempt to
get clean for that pregnancy. And so it's
like, hey, finally doing the right thing now,
you know, our baby's dead. Like,
in a weighted view of the world of,
you know, balancing out good and bad, now we're adding
more to the good plate, but the bad plate's
still here. You know,
where's the positive effect for the calls? Right. And
it took a little while after going to church to even begin to
comprehend the notion of grace
and the question of theodicy.
So it took a while, but
I was just desperate enough and that void inside of me was just
great enough that I was willing to keep showing up and to keep doing things
like praying that some, some change
and transformation was, was able to happen. What would Reverend
Large and now say to somebody who's walking
through the similar shoes of Jay Bargen back in
2002? Like, you talked, you mentioned theodicy. And maybe you can describe
what that is for us. Like, how do you. How do you
communicate that within your own congregation?
Yeah, look, I. I think that because, look, in
seminary, Ryan, when they said, you can
write a paper about whatever you want to write, I was writing about theodicy,
that being the question of how can there be
evil in the world if God is good? Why
do bad things happen to good people?
Why does tragedy happen? During that time, I was
introduced to a sermon by William
Sloane Coffin, a great preacher of the 20th
century. Actually, I think it was Dr. Rick Lisher who
introduced me to the sermon. And Dr. Lisher actually
endorsed my book, which was kind of cool for me because he's one
of my preaching and teaching heroes.
But in the sermon, it's a sermon that Sloane Coffin preached
after the death of his own son Alex. And so
Alex drives off the road into
the Boston harbor and dies. And so then Dr.
Coffin has all this tremendous grief
because his son's met an untimely death, which is obviously something
I'm very familiar with in my experience. And so that
sermon's preaching to me, right? And there's this lady who shows up
at Coffin's home, and
she brings food, like good church people do
when there's death. As she comes into the home with the food,
she says, I just don't understand the will of God,
implying that God did this, that
God willed Alex to drive into the Boston Harbor.
And Sloane Coffin went off. He
went off, as we would say where I grew up. He
went ballistic. You know, he. I. He said. I
say, you don't understand the will of God, lady.
And so in my
practice ever since, you know, reading that
and running my own experiences
through that, that same type of. Of
theological thought. Yeah, I say, you don't understand
the will of God, because how can you fully understand the will of
God? How can you say that this is the will of God?
It's not God's will, most likely that our
baby died. I
can't look at the whole of scripture and
say that that's God's will, but at the same time, I can't say with certainty
that it's not. And
so what I try to do pastorally,
in congregational care and also in teaching, is
to just to try to
emphasize the beauty that can be present
in suffering, knowing that we can't
say with certainty one way or another, what's God's will in the
midst of tragedy, knowing that that beauty is not
always easy to see, and then also just pointing back to the
cross as a great example of beauty and
suffering. Because I mean, if, if we
as people who confess
that we believe that Christ was crucified, dead and buried,
if we truly believe that, then that
that proclamation, that profession of faith should
influence how we view our, our own encounters with,
with death and tragedy and injustice and oppression
and all these other things that haunt us
in our living and that
mess with our peace. You know, I've been in a lot of rooms
where people are dying or people die,
you know, and in other settings as a first responder in
ministry, which I was for five years, I've been at
a lot of accident scenes where family
members show up heartbroken because of just
something as, you know,
unexpected and unpredictable as, you
know, an ice patch in the road or something like that.
And you know, we have this
tendency to want to try to explain it away,
you know, oh God, God needed them more than,
than you do. We needed another angel.
Yeah, there was an ice patch in the road. But
that doesn't mean that God's absent in the situation. That doesn't mean
that there's a lack of beauty to behold.
It's just to where do we look to behold
it? And for me that's a communal thing to figure
out. And that's why the church is so important,
because the church is.
The church has the ability to help be eyes
that see for those who are having a hard time seeing
because of what they're experiencing. So
yeah, those are the types of things I promote. And
yeah, the community being the,
the reminder, the reminder that, you
know, God's love is sovereign and
bad things happen and if God intervened in every situation, then
we'd be in heaven and we're constantly reminded that we're
not. Faith entails this tension
with certainty in, in some degree
where I think when it comes to theodicy, you know, we tend to,
to lean into, well, oh, this happens for a reason because it gives us comfort
and certainty. But you seem to
push against a certain kind of
certainty to a degree. And actually I want to read you something here. James, throw
me a book. I don't know if that's a full pot. I like read back
to the author part of their book. But just for the sake of our listener,
I think that they need to hear it. And then I ask you to address
Canada. No, I really appreciate it and I'm not
reading it again. So this is even. This is it. All right, well, here's what
you said in case you need didn't know in this grace
filled existence who really deserves what and when?
Why? And why is it that when what is
deserved is levied, the levying is
inconsistent from one reckoning or blessing to the next
among us mortals? If anyone claims to know the answer
to any of the above, undoubtedly I will without shame,
run away from them as fast as I can. I'd encourage
you to do the same. Why? Why
run from such certainty? What makes you so uncomfortable with
that? I'm really satisfied with how that sounded.
Right. If they do like an audiobook, I
might want you to read it. Oh, w.
Those sermon moments when you're like, oh, man, it was so powerful when you said
this and you're like, I said what? Yeah.
No. So, yeah, I think that I
am pushing back against certainty always. And
look, there. There are few things to which I am
certain. And those things
that fall into the realm of
why or how.
I'm not going down the road of certainty
because why and how are, as we would say, above my pay grade.
And it's not for me to do that.
It's more imperative for me to lean into the
mystery than it is to try to seek out all the
answers. Now, we do have to have some idea
of what may be. And a lot of times we have to have
some idea of what may be so that we can be a hope that is
faithful and what we believe to be
at least close to true. So much
as we can say what is true. But how and why? I mean,
look, if again, we
take serious the things that we confess about our faith,
how and why is really hard to say with certainty. And
in terms of deserving, you know, in terms of
deserving, because if I get what I deserve. We're not
talking right now, you know, causes
most likely death, but possibly also jail, prison,
mental institution. I mean, there. In terms of deserving,
based off of how society views who's
worthy of what, then there's no way. I live in
Pinehurst, North Carolina, and lead a
phenomenal church and, you know, have my
own house and drive my own car. And so
it goes back to that Sloan Coffin example too, I think, and
the lady bringing in the food and I just don't understand the
will of God. Like, she was certain that this was God's will. That
was harmful and misguided too, no matter
how well intentioned. So,
yeah, I don't run much
these days, and I would actually probably be more
prone to push back
as opposed to run from them.
You know, if need
be, then I would run because
I just don't trust anybody who's that sure of anything when it comes
to matters of life and death and what's deserved
and what's not, that's. I, When I, When I read the gospel,
when I read Paul, when I read
scripture in general, I, I don't see how you can ever be
that certain of anything other than the fact
that, you know, the whole of scripture points to
a God who will go to any links
to find what is lost until
it is found. Yeah,
so often that that finding occurs within community.
You've talked a little bit about how church community was
part of your, your spiritual awakening,
but also the, the community around recovery
seems to have been a profound influence on your spiritual
awakening as well. You noted that you learned to pray
within Narcotics Anonymous. And I'm
wondering, was there a time
when you remembered, like your prayers
becoming something genuine? Like a lot of us, even
before we are quote, unquote, believers will pray
out of a necessity. Right. Sort of the idea that there's
no atheists and foxholes. Right. So there are probably some
moments when you were in the, in the junk and, and you
were muttering some prayers there. But do you remember a time in which it
became something more for you than just maybe the, the pleading to get out of
a situation and then it was something a little bit more
heartfelt? Yeah, absolutely. So we call
those prayers prayers of desperation. Yeah, you know,
prayers of desperation because
desperation will push you to the point of prayer.
But yeah, my prayers really start to become more genuine
the more I got clean and the more I prayed.
And also my prayers became more genuine
when I stopped talking so much.
Howard Thurman, who I absolutely love. I love Thurman.
Going to teach a class on him at church in the spring.
He basically frames meditation
as listening for the sound of the genuine.
Listening for the sound of the genuine. And
my early prayers were so much me asking,
asking, asking, asking. And it
wasn't until I stopped asking and just learned to just sit
and to be, to just be that
the sound of the genuine started to come through.
And all that happened, you know, in my first year getting clean.
And like I point out in the book, church
really didn't teach me that. Narcotics Anonymous taught me
that. And I've often
said that if you take the principles of 12 step
recovery and take them out into the world or
even within the church, it could be a transformative thing. Because, I mean,
you do focus on actually praying and meditating
and trying to improve yourself,
listing out your character defects, like, tell me all
the things that are wrong about you and tell me all the things that you
feel done that have caused harm to others, and then go make amends
to them all. And then every
night, make an inventory of yourself and what you did during that day and then
determine, do you need to make any amends? Like, if we take that out into
the world, we could really see some change. But the problem then is
that people like me would no longer be able to identify because
everybody would be in that boat and
a lot of us addicts and alcoholics would be, would be dying
still that currently were not because of the
principles. But eventually another
thing that happened was as I
continued to practice prayer,
meditation and those spiritual principles,
eventually the discipleship, church
type of things, and the 12 step recovery
type of things, they kind of became wed together.
And that's really when, you know, I started to grow
spiritually. And that's when I really started hearing God
calling me was when
church entered the equation.
You know, up until that point, yeah, I was growing spiritually,
but I was still lacking something.
And then as that work
started to happen alongside the other work, then, you
know, there was a
different type of wholeness.
It's been a while since I've researched this, but I
believe that in their creation, the 12 steps from alcoholics
Anonymous, which I'm assuming have also been carried over into
Narcotics Anonymous. Yeah, basically
it was developed as a pathway of discipleship. So
that, and I, I'm curious, like, do you see that
within, like, does your, your church journey of
discipleship, for example, mirror the 12
steps in any way? It needs two more probably,
but I think, you know, in terms of intention,
yes. In terms of practice, I think it could
perhaps be
utilized or emphasized more. But yeah, you're
right, it's very much so. You can go back
centuries within Christian history and
you can see it's the same model. It's the same
model and it's the same model that earlier alcoholic groups used
prior to the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's, you
know, it's about discovery and confession is
very Christian thing. Right. So, yeah,
it's. You can go back. Like I framed the book
in terms of Augustine's Confessions. I don't know if you
noticed that, but it's very much like a
hillbilly version of Augustine's Confessions. And
playing a part of Augustine is
Jabe, which is really weird. He and I don't have much
in common other than we had a lot to confess.
You know, he's a little, he's a little brighter than me, but
yeah. So, I mean, if you go back to Augustine and
Confessions. It's kind of that model. It's like,
yeah, I need to confess this and
my spirit is
awake now and I'm praising God for it. And
you know what? I probably need to confess a little bit more. And, you know,
it's. It's. That's discipleship, you know.
Yeah. And it's 12 steps, too. So. Yeah, I appreciate
you asking the question because I think if
we,
those of us especially who have experience in both worlds,
if we take serious the work of disciple making, we can learn a lot
from those principles while understanding that those principles were formed
by principles that already existed within the community of Christian
faith.
Well, to kind of shift gears a little bit, we're recording this towards the end
of 2025. It's been a year, and you write about
it in the book that certainly this has been a year with some hard
losses for you. Not to negate
that, but just that there's so much hope lifted up within
your book itself. And this idea that God
always kind of pursues us in hope, that grace is ever present. I'm
wondering, like, what has you hopeful for moving into the next year of
2026? What are you looking forward to either in life or
ministry? One thing that's happened as a result of the book
coming out that I didn't see coming
was the amount of love and support shown to me by the congregation
and by other people who I've known. And then I knew that people
would also want to, like, share openly and vulnerably with me,
both of it. But the depths at which people are willing
to go now is really,
really beautiful. And the other thing about that
is that that shows that through my vulnerability and
my bearing my soul in a way that was
confessional in nature, I
haven't lost any integrity and leadership.
I've actually gained some because people are now willing to
go to depths that they weren't going to before. Gives
me great hope for humanity and the church that
we can be real with one another, you
know, because let's face it, just like so many people
in the book and just like so many people you've known and the
billions and billions of breathed this air before
us, there will become there, there will be a day
when our breath gives out, we reach the end of our words,
and that's it, right? So
why not be real in the interim? Why not
use the breath and the words to just be genuine,
to be your authentic self? What do we have
to lose? Anything that
perhaps we fear that we have to lose?
Is it really that important. So what the book has
reminded me is that real is
okay. And I think people have
a deep longing for a shared realness.
So I've got some hope for that. And I wish I could take credit
and say, oh, man, I did this great thing and wrote this book.
Now people want to be real and I want to be real and all this
and all that. But no, I mean real is real because
God is really real. You know, Gregory of
Nyssa used that.
Phrase to describe God. The really real,
really real. The God that we cannot understand but
we know to be really real. You know,
we have a deep longing for that and God
so really real that God became flesh and dwelt among
us. Our God is incarnational. That's
real. So why not be real in. In response to
that? It's, it's certainly
Ron made me, having told some of the hard truths
that I tell toward the end of the book about my own flaws,
even in ministry and fruitful ministry.
It has led to, you know, the last,
you know, six plus months being
some of the best six plus months that I've had in terms of
how I feel about myself and how I view
the world. And yeah, that's.
That's not on. That's not on accident. Well, Jabe, thanks
so much for taking the time. It's really good to reconnect with you
and, and thanks for sharing your
story so openly. And I hope that people can kind of take a sense of
boldness in moving forward to, to be a little bit more
vulnerable in themselves, too. And, you know, and I do want to note
just especially for people in ministry, that there can be
a temptation to not be vulnerable.
And so hopefully in sharing your story and even what's happened
after, we can all take some courage and
in moving forward with that, which is a little bit more humility and vulnerability.
So thank you for that. Thanks, Ryan. You're on my. One of my
favorite folks that I've, I've come to know in ministry. I love your spirit. And
yeah, I know that it's risky to,
to share openly if you are in ministry and
certainly having strong relationships that are already founded,
that helps. I wouldn't go in on day one and say, let me, let me
tell you everything that's wrong with me.
A little bit at a time. You're gonna be okay.
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