Publication Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Our Town: Losing a pastor activist
Our Town: Losing a pastor activist
(February 16, 2005) by Don Kazak
Palo Alto is losing a voice of its moral conscience. The Rev. Jeff Vamos, associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church for 11 years, is leaving town.
He has spoken at antiwar rallies, organized youth-volunteer efforts, spoken out eloquently against anti-Semitism, and helped guide First Presbyterian's congregation in matters of faith.
Vamos is leaving to become head pastor at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville, NJ, a town of 4,000 people a few miles from Princeton.
He'll be trading a small congregation of 300 to 350 people for a larger one of 650 members who worship in a church that is 307 years old.
"George Washington may have slept there," he joked -- Lawrenceville was on the original road between New York City and Philadelphia.
But as Palo Alto will miss him, he will miss Palo Alto.
"I just love this community, for all of its foibles," he said.
Vamos will head East at the end of March with his wife, Catherine, and their 4-year-old son, Will.
Vamos, 42, at times wondered about his calling to the ministry. "Is that what I'm supposed to be doing with my life?" he asked himself when he was younger. "The answer was a resounding, 'Yes.'"
The apple didn't fall far from the tree. His dad was a Presbyterian minister in a small Indiana town.
Vamos is perhaps best known for being a part of the Community Working Group, which created the Opportunity Center -- low-cost apartments and drop-in service centers for homeless people, now under construction on Encina Way adjacent to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. The Community Working Group was formed in 1998 by parishioners at two churches, First Presbyterian and All Saints Episcopal.
"He was one of the first three people I talked with," remembers Dr. Don Barr, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation physician and Stanford University sociology professor who was the driving force behind the group. "He led the capital campaign," Barr said. "We're scratching our heads -- he leaves a big hole, and how do we fill it?"
Vamos feels others will fill in, as the values model has been created.
"What are the values we embody as a community?" Vamos asks. "The Opportunity Center -- this is what we stand for."
Vice Mayor Judy Kleinberg has worked with Vamos on affordable-housing issues.
"As a spiritual leader, he's been more of a community activist than many are, or are comfortable with," she said. "He's called into question matters of conscience and made people look within themselves."
"Good people come and go," Mayor Jim Burch said. "And this is a good one. He'll be missed."
Joy Wagner is a First Presbyterian Church member who also works with Vamos on the Opportunity Center. "He's really made a difference in the lives of a lot people in the community," she said. "It will be difficult to see him go."
Vamos also is a member of Peninsula Interfaith Action (PIA), the faith-based community organizing group with more than two dozen member-congregations on the Peninsula. PIA's confrontational operating style can rankle people, as at a June 2003 housing forum -- at First Presbyterian -- when some City Council members felt they were being sandbagged into literally signing on to PIA's housing goals.
"PIA apologized for what happened," Vamos said. But he added there was also a sense that the apology wasn't heard.
"Not everyone is going to like us," Vamos told me in an interview for an earlier story about PIA (Weekly, April 5, 2000).
In the same interview, Vamos articulated the link between faith and political work.
"Politics is about the art of living together, and if that doesn't have religious values I don't know what does," he said.
While he has a great fondness for Palo Alto and its people, he has some worries about us, too. "To afford to live here, you have to strap yourself into a lifestyle that is very toxic in a lot of ways," he said.
So what does he preach in his Sunday sermons?
"The dead center of our tradition is about the theology of grace. We live the good life not because we have the right technique for life, not because we work hard, but because we're attuned to the blessing that life gives us."
Amen.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be emailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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