Welcome to First Presbyterian Church! We hope to provide you a way to explore your faith, care for others, and serve in the community. We invite you to feel empowered by the Holy Spirit to live lives of mercy, justice, and faith. In our sermons, you will find messages about Jesus’s love for the people on the margins in society, challenge to those of us who could live our faith in the world, and comfort for those of us in pain. And occasional invitations to in-service dance parties.
In our exploration of theology and spiritual life, we always try to live by Oliver Cromwell’s exhortation to think it possible we might be wrong as we seek to understand Bible stories in their own context and history and understand how they might apply to our lives.
As for me, I was born and raised right here in Iowa City before moving east for college at Yale, a time working for a variety of software and telemedicine companies, and Harvard Divinity School. I worked in Western North Carolina for a few years and returned to Iowa in 2013 to serve as pastor of Ankeny United Church of Christ. There, I worked to build community connection in the Community Engagement Advisory Council, working on a variety of ACSD task forces, as a Scout leader and by occasionally announcing games for the Ankeny Miracle League. In my sabbatical summer of 2019, we received a Clergy Renewal Grant from the Lily Foundation that led me to work on organic farms in France and spend time in spiritual retreat at the Taizé Community in France and on the Isle of Iona in Scotland (perhaps I was predestined to serve in this Presbyterian context!). And in September 2022, I joined the inaugural class of fellows at United Theological Seminary’s Leadership Center for Social Justice.
If you want to join me in my interests, I invite you to come work with Friends of Pasrur, our longtime partnership with a girls school in Pasrur, Pakistan, with Justice for Our Neighbors, an immigrant-advocacy group here in Iowa City, or at one of my seasonal all-church studies. Or to talk about woodworking, wrestling, gardening, or snooker. And if you have interests in the history of science or book history, I invite you to come and talk with my wife, Dr. Elizabeth Yale, an associate professor in the University of Iowa Department of History and Center for the Book. While she’s from California, her mother, like her husband, was born right here.
Whether you are interested in joining our church, in being married (I am privileged to perform weddings on an equal basis), or for spiritual or theological exploration, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at nathan.willard (at) firstpresiowacity.org .