When I first meet Jason Radmacher in the entrance to John Street Methodist Church, I’m struck by two things: his powerful and resonant voice, and the comfort and familiarity he exudes as we walk through the church. I’m expecting him to bring me to a side room for our interview, but instead, he peeks his head around the doors to the nave and says “This should work.” We sit down in the pews, as if in the congregation on a Sunday morning, and begin to talk. Unsurprisingly for a pastor, Jason is precise and deliberate with his words, sometimes pausing to think about how best to express his ideas. But he’s also very relaxed: he jokes about people’s surprise when they see he doesn’t wear a clergy collar, and shakes his head fondly whenever the lights flicker above us – “Old church,” he says, grinning.
Isabel Tessier
Q: Where were you born and raised?
A: I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, raised nearby in southern Indiana.
Q: How did you end up in Lower Manhattan?
A: I started serving churches in New York after I graduated from Duke in 2000. My first church that I served as pastor was in Putnam County, New York. And in 2003, the pastor here retired, and the bishop at the time appointed me to come here.
Q: How did you realize you wanted to work as a reverend?
A: Up until my junior year, I was thinking of … getting a Masters of Social Work. And that came about through the internships I did: a job working at a group home for children, volunteer work with Meals on Wheels … My first job after undergrad was actually working at a psych hospital in a detox unit.
I knew I wanted to do something that put me in touch with people in need, and being a part of addressing that need-physical, social, spiritual, all these things working together.
But my first internship in my first semester at Duke was in a little church in Durham, and that just clicked. So since then I knew I was going to throw in my lot with local church and being involved with local church ministry.
Q: What was the church and surrounding community like when you got here (in Lower Manhattan) in 2003?
A: [Laughs] This neighborhood has changed so much, it’s incredible. I came in July of 2003, and … we were still recovering from 9/11 in that period, intensely, and in the community it didn’t quite feel like we’d hit rock bottom – businesses that had survived 9/11 were going out of business that summer and fall. At my first meeting, I remember the church said, “We feel like the fog is starting to lift.” They had this real sense that people who had cared for them after 9/11, and now they wanted to give back.
Q: What sort of help had the church gotten after 9/11?
A: It was just the prayers and words of support that they’d received. And then I think there was everything going on down here, because people … who were still here in 2003 had made the decision to stay.
It seems so strange now, but the questions raised right after 9/11 were, would anyone want to live or work downtown again? And now you see what it is today. It’s just so amazing where we were 14 years ago.
Q: The revival of the community-would you say that was the mission you were tasked with?
A: Yeah, I felt that as my responsibility as a pastor, as being a part of helping this church be revitalized. And [I] very quickly realized that that wasn’t just some pie-in-the-sky charge, that was really tangible – we could do this. This was going to be an exciting era in this neighborhood and in this church. And I think we did that. I have great feelings that the church and the neighborhood are both much stronger than they were 14 years ago.
Q: In terms of the church, what sorts of things do you think led to that transformation?
A: We benefited from people going through that soul-searching period of “do we stay or do we go?” And when they decided to stay, there was a real sense of, “we’re staying for a reason.” So … for the people who found their way here, there was this sense that we could be a part of building something together. And that was fascinating because you had this church, the oldest Methodist church in the country, being reborn, just like you had the oldest neighborhood in New York City being reborn.
Q: Do you have a sense of how much the congregation has grown?
A: I think it’s fair to say it’s doubled in size throughout the years. If you could bring home everybody who has come and gone … it would be much larger than that.
And that’s been one of the exciting things about being here, is, I’m sure I’ve never preached to the same congregation twice. There’s always either new people or visitors from somewhere …That’s a really invigorating part of the ministry here.
Q: I heard you have a son, Oliver.
A: Yes! He’s five.
Q: Do you think that becoming a father has changed anything about your work?
A: Oh gosh. It’s definitely changed me. I think it’s simultaneously sped me up and slowed me down. It’s made me appreciate some things that, ten years [ago] I could’ve told you, but I think they’d come from a place in my head, and now I feel them much more so. Just things of love and patience, and seeing the city through his eyes. So those things have been going on in my life, and that translates into how I preach and what I do.
I think it’s made me a little less organized, in a positive sense: just being much more willing to be in the moment, and speak from the heart in the moment.
Q: What are you most proud of or have enjoyed the most about working here?
A: The thing I’ve enjoyed the most is that sense of being a part of something coming back to life, and the freedom that came with that. And there were things that we tried that didn’t work, and it was all good, you know, it was all part of the excitement. It was just kind of invigorating to try. That was just a really exciting thing to be a part of, and I don’t take that for granted.
I think we created a community here that really allowed people to be themselves, and I don’t take that for granted either. Like, I remember, this memory sticks out vividly: it was the Sunday after Halloween. And there were young people who showed up at church, maybe hungover, still in costumes. And I thought, this is wonderful! Because, they had made it here. So I thought, we’re doing something right, that people feel that what’s going on here is important enough to them that they want to come.
Q: What’s in the future?
A: As of July 1, I’ll be the pastor of Asbury Crestwood United Methodist Church in Yonkers, New York. I’m anxious to see how it all meshes in a new place. I mean certainly, my 14 years here have profoundly shaped me, probably in ways that I’m not even aware of yet, but I am excited about the new opportunity.
Q: Any hobbies and things you like to do outside of the church?
A: I love music. My downtown favorites are the Crusty Gentlemen down at the Seahorse. We did a lot with music here … Music and how music becomes the soundtrack to our different experiences, I love that. So that’s, I’d say, my hobby. And then trying to raise my son to have good taste in music.