Text: Luke 15:1-32

Image: from “Praise the Lord” by Randy Horst from Voices Together

Pastor Tyler brings a message of hope and comfort as he recalls the ways that the shepherd of life and a loving father remember the belovedness of the lost and celebrate their return as through from the dead. And indeed being lost and alone may feel like the invitation of death. Yet there is life in the return home.

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Pastor Tyler Merrill is on the pastoral team at Seattle Mennonite Church. He came to Seattle from Illinois in 2017 and graduated with a Masters in Christian Studies from Seattle Pacific Seminary. Driven by his twin passions for theology and music, Tyler has worked as a musician in the Free Methodist Church, a music instructor and owner of a guitar and ukulele studio, and member of The Noble Manes, a band he started with friends from college. He believes that music—like art, justice, compassion, and joy—is a means through which the Spirit resurrects lives and communities in the present.

Tyler also loves hiking with friends, meditating, lounging in the sun, hearing about the children in his wife Elise’s preschool classroom, and picking up various short-lived hobbies, like whittling Pokemon figurines. Tyler joined the team at Seattle Mennonite in November of last year.