Planting a Church With My Brother, Losing Him, and 17 Years of Staying

Send us Fan MailTwo brothers planted a church together in Vancouver, WA. Seven years later, they merged with another congregation, and within months, one brother stepped away from ministry entirely. The other stayed. That was 2018, and he's still there.Adam Hendrix is the lead pastor of Union Chapel, a role he never wanted and never planned for. This conversation traces the full arc: growing up as a pastor's kid in rural Oregon, planting out of Imago Dei Community in 2009, the scrappy church-in-a-box years of setup and teardown, the hopeful merger with Calvary Downtown in 2016, and then the gut punch of losing his co-pastor, his brother, barely a year later.But this isn't a grief story. It's a formation story. Adam talks about what crisis did to their congregation (it didn't scatter them, it forged them), how their community became unexpectedly trauma-informed before that was a buzzword, and why their Sunday liturgy intentionally makes room for lament alongside joy. There's a story about a four-year-old who told his mom "I accidentally got sad" at church that became an internal motto.Adam closes with the one thing he'd tell his 20-years-ago self: tend your own soul. Innovation and strategy mean nothing without it.For pastors, planters, and anyone thinking about the long game of ministry in the Pacific Northwest.