Cumberland Road

Exploring faith journeys and inspiring ministries that embody the good news of God. This is the Cumberland Road. I am your host, TJ Melanosky. Helping others experience God in the small and the big and the everyday life is a calling that many people of faith attempt to live out, but it is especially important to today's guest, Reverend Dusty Luthy. Dusty is the minister at the Denton Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Texas. She hails from Lebanon, Missouri. And with a degree in journalism, Dusty spent six years as a sports writer covering division one college athletics. Having a calling to ministry, Dusty returned to school and earned a master of divinity from Memphis Theological Seminary in 02/2019. I was able to be in conversation with Dusty and hear more of her faith journey.

How are you, Dusty?

I'm good this morning. How are you, TJ?

Good. Good. What is life like in Denton, Texas?

It is big. Everything they say about Texas is true. Everything is bigger here. It is warm. And I'm really loving it.

I think this area is gonna fit my personality really well. And I'm learning how to appreciate the bigness. I've been joking that I am a country mouse in the big city now, even though Denton is not itself a huge, huge city, but it's a little bit bigger than I had thought when I was going through the interview process and discernment process. But I grew up on a dead end dirt road in the country in a town called Sleeper, Missouri. And then to now be in a place where I have a Target within driving distance and I can Uber in food, it's otherworldly.

Yeah. You're on a different planet now.

I I am. And the joke has been, oh, did you have to get a passport to enter Texas? Oh, not yet? Okay. Well, you'll have to have one to leave.

And there there have been lots and lots of jokes. But I can tell you, really and truly, everything is bigger in Texas, and I don't know how that happened or but it's it's uncanny.

You're originally from Missouri. I didn't know that.

I am. I grew up in the White Oak Pond congregation in Lebanon, Missouri. And from what we can tell, I'm a fifth generation Cumberland Presbyterian. And I had such a wonderful formative experience at White Oak Pond, and I'm so grateful for the opportunities in the way that my youth leaders, now the Reverend Jill Carr and Terri Jo Dean, really work to expand our horizons and expose us to the denomination and the world through faith. And it's something that definitely stayed with me because it would have been really easy for me just to blend out of this denomination and forge a new path.

Well, I like starting our conversations about, you know, early experiences and and how our journey began. Can you recall an early experience with God?

I knew you were gonna ask me this question, and I've heard you ask other Cumberland Road guests the same question. And I have thought and thought and thought like I have different memories about my first time I had anxiety. I have all kinds of memories. But my first memory and experience with God, I think was just an awareness. As I've thought and thought, you know, moments that God spoke to me, I think it was just experiencing the awareness of God.

And that would have happened at Camp Cumberland in South Greenfield, Missouri, the Missouri Presbytery Church Camp. When I went there as an elementary student and junior high and high school student and having quiet time, we would have vespers outside in the afternoon, late twilight time, and it would always be outside on a hill, and then we would have quiet time where we would take our blankets and go to that beautiful hillside. And that was the first time I think I was ever quiet and quiet for a long time. And I just remember being so overwhelmed at the beauty of the world and the sound of the birds and just feeling full. And I guess now I can identify it as being full of the spirit and how I always wanted to to capture that feeling when I would go home, and I never could.

And I'm not sure, you know, if it was the magic of Camp Cumberland, you know, just the church camp experience in general. But I think that was my first times was just being aware that God was with me, and that God existed in the quiet moments.

Yeah. Ain't that funny? We I can think as an adult and and youth of having a wonderful experience on a mission trip or a retreat or a camp, and you have that excitement, that fullness, and then you return to school, to home, to work, and you have this transformative feeling experience. And then but the rest of the world seems to be the same. Yeah.

It's kind of an empty, scary feeling at times.

It is. It's very isolating and lonely. I remember really, really struggling with that as a young person coming back from camp and that letdown of being back in your old familiar surroundings where nobody else had that experience, but you did, and you're forever changed by it. And people know something's different about you, but you still can't quite communicate it, and you don't know why everybody else isn't feeling the same way. And so even, like, as I went into youth ministry, and even now as a minister, like, that's part of my theology is helping others to experience God in whether it's their day to day life or the big experiences of the small, like, that's that's my theology.

It's helping others be put in a position to experience God, and then it's up to God how God communicates. Mhmm.

And being able to give us the language to articulate what we're experiencing, I think, is crucial too because I sometimes don't have the words to be able to go, this is what I'm feeling. This is what I'm seeing. This is what's changing about me and my view of the world around me. And I think it's important to have have people who are able to help us along. Yeah.

I I think that's exactly why I love the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination so much is that, you know, Jill and Terry Jo really made sure to put us in a lot of different experiences as young people, whether it was at CPYC or Camp Cumberland or Triennium or, you know, even our mission projects or just our Sunday night meetings, just to where we were able to be in a lot of different types of environments and then figure out which one was best for us. And so even if our youth leaders weren't very skilled artistically, well, by going to CPYC and being with Eleanor Brown or going to Triennium and walking a labyrinth, like, we had those experiences, and so we could we could then see what worked for us and take advantage of other leaders and other skills, and it just really it impacted me in a beautiful way.

You had mentioned Jill and Teri. Are there other people who have had a great impact on your faith journey?

I think in a lot of different ways, different people have. I've definitely gleaned a lot of different things from different people, good and bad. I've joked with some people that I've even outside of church, so I'm I'm certainly not calling anyone out in the church, but working in a secular field, sometimes you learn about leadership and formation of your faith through bad leaders and just things that you've heard that are not that you wanna do better. And so I I think every single person I've ever come across in my entire life has been meaningful to my faith formation. So I can't even say that I've just modeled myself after one person or I have one mentor, but I've had many.

And so I and again, I think that's one of the most beautiful things about our faith is that as people of God, we bring so much to the table. And so we can look at so many different people and see how they've lived out their faith journey and how we might be able to live out ours.

Yeah. It's like a I've always thought of it as, like, a color spectrum. You know? And, you know, I have favorite colors, but then you start blending them together. And I think people impacting our faith journey is kinda like that color spectrum, that they bring beauty in the color that they may represent at that particular time.

And I think that's pretty cool that people are able to do that.

And not even just color, TJ, but even, like, looking at mediums. Okay. Some people color with crayons. Some people color with colored pencils. Some people are amazing with oil paints, and some people cut out paper, and some people use tile.

And so, you know, even we're communicating with colors, but we're all communicating through different ways, and I think that's part of the beauty too.

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's great. I hadn't even thought of it that way in terms of the medium. That's cool.

Yeah. Well, how has your faith in Jesus Christ given you purpose, you know, as a youth and as an adult? What does that look like?

I think a lot of it starts when you look in hindsight, and you have the twenty twenty vision behind you. I can can talk about the future, but it's only when I can look at my past and see how I interacted with the Holy Spirit or allowed the Holy Spirit to work in my life that I can have purpose going forward. I can look at three different times in my life that I absolutely needed the spirit of God to move forward, that there there is no other way to do it. In that first experience that I needed God, I chose not to allow God into my life. And I remember how long I was miserable and how long it took me to heal from that that one trauma because I didn't trust God's goodness.

And I really doubted God's call and God's power and God's ability for a lot of different reasons. And it took me years and years for God to to heal me because I was so just hard to trust God. But then the other two moments, I was in a different place in my faith. God had healed me a little bit, you know, and I was I was growing in my faith, and I said, alright, God, like, I've tried this without you, and that sucked. And so we've gotta try a different way.

So you've got to give me this power because I can't get out of bed today, or I can't I can't make it, you know, to work without crying. And so in those moments, God equipped me with the power to move forward. And so the healing process wasn't the same as it was without God, because as I let God into my life every single day and every single moment, It drew me closer to God and gave me the power to move forward and gave me a strength that I didn't know I had because it wasn't my own strength. So I think as I look for purpose, it's in that see what I can be, and I see what others can be when we allow the power of God to overrule our own strength because we're just mortal human beings. And and if we proclaim to worship the God of the universe, then we can also harness that same power.

Wow. There's a lot of patience and forgiveness, and in that forgiveness of others and patience and others and even in of ourselves. And I don't always have that.

No. And that's been a really, I think, you know, in dealing with others and growing in the faith, that has totally been of God and the spirit because I want to hold those grudges, and I want to have a long memory. One of the sermons I just preached was about how we worship a covenant God in a contract driven society, and, you know, contracts are there to protect us. And I remember who broke our you know, my contract with them, but God is a covenant God and an unconditional God. And so if we can somehow harness that love and that unconditionality, I think that we can really truly begin to make changes in this world.

You were mentioning about moments of being close and maybe even far from God. What is it that keeps you coming back and identifying with the Christian faith?

I also knew you were gonna ask me this question, and I've thought about it a lot as well. What keeps me coming back is that I experienced that holding God at arm's length, and and again, I just remember how miserable I was for how long. And so I've seen what it's like to rest in the arms of God when you are completely broken and to have God work through others, to work through the word, to work through, the environment and the beauty of the world, to to give you peace, to give you healing, to look back at the person you were and to say, that wasn't bad, but this person's better. And it's better because of who I'm with. It's better because of the one I worship, and it's the one it's better because of the one who has made me better.

Alright. Thank you, Dusty. We mentioned earlier about Denton. So I wanted to ask you, where do you see God working in your life today?

Oh, man. The fact that I live in Texas now, it's the biggest adventure, and it is only due to God. When I grew up and even when I was in college, I had one goal, and that was to go home to Lebanon, Missouri and Sleeper, Missouri. And, I was called to ministry at a you know, when I was a teenager, and so I just had thoughts, well, maybe I'll, you know, be a pastor at my home church or a CP church nearby. Like, I had no big visions of the world.

I didn't wanna go out in the world. I wanna go home. And and some of the people that knew those desires is they look and see that my life because after college, I moved directly to Paducah, Kentucky to be a sports writer. And people ask me all the time, how did you wind up in Paducah? It's, you know, it's a small town with a lot of different offerings.

And and I tell them, you know, it's it's because of God and the spirit and the way my life was working at the time and just how God had expanded my life even though I was still at that point very angry. I still wanted to be a Christian. I still wanted to be a Cumberland Presbyterian. And when I drove into my interview to work at the newspaper in Paducah, I drove by Margaret Hank Cumberland Presbyterian Church. And I almost wrecked my car because I was so excited because in Missouri, there's not a lot of Cumberland churches.

It's they're few and far between. You have to drive, and and there wasn't one in Columbia where I went to college, and I just felt so lost there. And so I knew when I I went somewhere I wanted to go to church, and I drove by this Cumberland church, and I was like, god. Let them like me. I can go to church here.

I can be Cumberland Presbyterian. There was one right here. And and so people joke. They're like, well, what brought you to Paducah? And my my joke is Margaret Hank Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which has since merged with another congregation and is called Grace Covenant.

And and that that's that's a funny answer, but in Paducah, there were five different Cumberland Presbyterian churches in the county. And so I was able to church shop for the first time, and that was such a gift. I was like, oh my gosh. I'm in Cumberland Presbyterian heaven. There's five churches here.

But to get to Denton, you know, I never thought I would leave Paducah either. If you asked me where I wanted to retire, I would have said Paducah, Kentucky. I loved my life there. I had made so many connections. I lived there for thirteen years and started, as I said, as a sports writer and did that for six years and had so many wonderful experiences.

I covered NCAA tournaments and dirt track auto races and high school sports, but there was always that that feeling that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do, and I was so at times, I was really miserable, even though sports is fun, and I excelled at it. And, I mean, really, what's so wrong about going to basketball games for a living? But but god kept drawing me closer and giving me more opportunities and getting back into the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination and through leadership. I served on the communications ministry team and was able to reconnect with so many people that I had met years ago at CPYC, and to find that they still remembered me, and they knew me, and they still loved me. That was so empowering.

And so when at the church I was going to New Hope Cumberland in Paducah, when the youth minister job came open, I had really been wrestling with that renewed call to ministry. And so I was hired as the youth minister, and I also started working part time at the McCracken County Public Library, And, again, just made so many connections in the community, and I was tied. I had met my husband there, and then we I got a divorce there, and then I bought a house. You know, as a single woman, that was empowering. And then I started seminary, and then God kind of started opening my world, but still, I loved Paducah.

And then after I graduated, the pandemic hit, and I had a lot of time to think and pray. So I had told people that I was not interested in even looking at other jobs or other calls. One, because I was so happy in Paducah, I had, become the associate minister in at New Hope and really loved the people there. They are my brothers, they are my sisters there, my surrogate parents. I can't tell you what a gift New Hope has been to me during my ministry development and my life there.

The thought of leaving them was just terrible, but I had told people I'm not entertaining any other jobs or thoughts of jobs until I graduate seminary. And I was done with school in December 2019, and I was gonna graduate in May 2020. That didn't happen. But the few people I told about it, TJ, really held me accountable, and they're like, well, you said you were gonna start discerning. Are you discerning?

And I was like, oh, no, I don't I don't know. I oh, I did say that, didn't I? And so I started the discernment process. When I started discerning, I looked at all of the openings that Pam Phillips Burke sends out in the emails, And I was like, God, I wanna I wanna do whatever you wanna do. That's kind of been my themes.

I want to do what you have called me to do, whether it was going to seminary or buying a house. I just wanna be obedient. How can I be obedient? And that's a weird word for me to say because as an independent woman, I don't like that word. The only, only thing I am obedient to, the only being is God.

So that sounds really bad. You may have to edit that out later. But how can I be obedient, God? And so I started writing out all these churches that had openings, and I kinda I made one of those things you're not supposed to make a deal with God about. I said, God, can I just be eight hours from home from my parents?

My parents are older. They're not in great health. I wanted to be able to get home in a day if anything happened. But I wanted to be obedient, and I wanted wanted God to tell me, do I stay or do I go? And I wanted to be at peace with that, because I could be happy staying, again, for the rest of my life in Paducah, or I can be happy with wherever God sent me.

And I kinda had a vision right after my divorce as I was trying to discern, do I go to seminary? Do I find a new career? What do I do, God? I kinda had a vision, TJ, where God said to me, you can stay in Paducah and have a good life. Knowing my anxieties and how much I love Paducah, God said, you can stay here and have a good life.

Or one day, you can leave here and have a great life. And it's up to you because I have a lot of anxiety, and so the thought of leaving Paducah was just terrifying to me just because it was comfortable. And so I'd always held on to that vision. Do I have the courage to have a great life? Can I be satisfied with a good life?

Neither was bad, and God was giving me the option. And so as I was looking at the openings, I had made a list, and I was reading different church information forms. And when I read the one for Denton, it felt like home. It did. Read it.

Was like, oh, that's a really good church information form. But I I don't know about Texas. That's a long way away. It's a small church. I don't think so.

A couple days later, I was looking at the contenders again, for lack of better word. And right as I was closing Denton's church information form, Christie Lownsbury sent me a text message, and Christie was the the last full time pastor there. And she goes, Dusty, would you ever consider pastoring a small church like Denton? Right as I was closing the window of their church information form. And I was like, I I don't know.

Maybe. And that's the kind of stuff, the way I think God speaks to me a lot. And I know people think sometimes those are coincidences, but I call them God winks or God nods. And that Christy didn't let me alone. She really kind of pursued me and made that connection.

She was my mediator and really encouraged me to send in my pastor information form because I'm not sure I would have had the courage to do that truly, TJ. I was looking, but I wasn't committed to going. And so Christie got the ball rolling, and then at a certain point, I knew it was that's where I was going. And it was a hard decision. I was in mourning for weeks.

I didn't know that that was such a hard process to say goodbye to one church and one place that you just completely loved. And I'm thankful for so many ministers who were a part of that journey of encouragement for me. I said, Oh yeah, didn't anyone tell you how hard it was to leave a church? And I was like, No, nobody told me how hard this was. And so several of my confidants had told me, you know, when I left so and so, I cried for months.

And that helped me know that that's part of the process is, you know, you mourn before you can truly begin to celebrate. And so I'm very thankful that now I'm in the celebration mode and the learning mode of all this newness. And it's been good. I had a wonderful chance to say so many goodbyes and to tie off so many loose ends. I sold my house.

It was just a wonderful opportunity. You could tell God was with the whole process from start to finish. And now I am in Texas.

You are a true Texas resident now.

Almost. I don't have a Texas driver's license yet, but I have Texas car tags, and I have cowboy boots. It's been part of my it's been really important to me to feel part of this community and to learn the to assimilate. I think missionaries kind of go through that process. I mean, you know, obviously better than I do, TJ, but you want to learn the culture, you want to learn what makes a person, you know, identify with an area.

And in Texas, there's so much Texas pride. If I walk in my neighborhood, like, everybody's door has a Texas star on it, or there's a Texas flag. I mean, I'm just amazed at everybody who has Texas stuff, because we didn't have Kentucky stuff, we don't have Missouri stuff. I don't I'm not sure I can pick out the Missouri flag, you know, out of 50 flags, but I can pick out the Texas flag now. And so part of my part of my ministry here has been just to get to know the community.

I go everywhere. I shop everywhere. You know, I'm trying to be as Texan as possible. So the other day, I went to Justin, Texas, which is only like thirty minutes down the road, which is where the Justin Boot Company started. And so I bought a pair of Justin Boots, and I was very intent on having steer horns above my mantle because that seemed like a very Texas thing to do.

So I found some steer horns, and everyone's like, who are you? Like, you have steer horns on your mantle? I'm like, yes, that's what people in Texas do, and I'm a Texan now. And so, yes, I picked Baylor in my national championship basketball bracket, specifically because they were a Texas team. I think I had, like, five Texas teams in the, you know, elite eight, just because I'm a Texan now.

It's what you're supposed to do. You have Texas pride, you love everything Texas, and you buy big things. So I have this tiny little Toyota car. So eventually, I'm gonna get a giant vehicle. I'm kidding.

I don't want a giant vehicle because they're so big, but they they're everywhere here.

Well, in the midst of this new change, Dusty, in in your faith journey, if you were to describe God working in your life today, what descriptive words would you use?

New. I would use, to describe God working in my life right now, I would describe new. I had no idea I was so ready for something new. I was so content in what I had, and I think that's okay. But I've really been preaching that God is doing a new thing through Lent and through Easter, that God is doing a new thing through Jesus, a new creation, this new covenant, and now I'm living out part of that.

You have to have new courage, new courage that I did not know I had to pick up and move across the country. I mean, that was a ten, twelve hour journey. And so, you know, I'm experiencing everything with new eyes. There are new bugs in Texas that I I've never seen before. Cockroaches here are Texas sized.

They are the biggest things I've ever seen. Looking at the new life in the spring, spring is a couple weeks ahead of what it was like in the Midwest. And so looking at all the new buds and the way the new trees are blooming to find out what grows here and what doesn't, I think it's newness, as I find new places to eat and new haunts and new local places and new friends. Everything about my life is new. I live in a new place and, you know, I'm wearing new clothes.

I have boots now. So I think I think right now it's that God is doing a new thing and and that if we allow God that that the newness can become renewal and reenergization. Reenergizing, that was the wrong word. But I I think right now, God is doing a new thing, and I'm just trying to embrace the newness.

How would you respond to the question, where do you see God working in the world today? You kinda talked about God is new to you today. That's how. But this one, this question seems to be a little bit harder for folks. Where do you see God working in the world today?

I think maybe connecting it with that newness is that I see folks having the courage to do something new, the courage to strike out and do something. One of the reasons I think that I was able to channel a little bit of courage is I watched a friend sell everything that she and her daughter had packed up in one vehicle and moved to a different state to start over. And that new start was gonna be a refreshment to them. Was like, man, if if Leanne can do that, then I can do that. You know?

And and so I see, like, in some of these movements, these justice movements, I see newness and the courage to act in a different way, to go against what culture says, this courage not to consume everything that we possibly can, this courage to use our stimulus checks and donate it to charity or justice movements. So I see it just in courage, think, in trying to get the world to look like what Jesus wanted it to look like that new thing, this thing that God promises us, your kingdom come Lord, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And I we see that heaven is this new thing, and if we want this world to look like heaven, we have to have the courage to do something new and something different.

What could that newness look like in the church that we serve? What hopes, what dreams do you have for the church at large?

I say this, and it's gonna sound kind of funny because one of the strengths I think of the Denton Church is our beautiful facilities. The church is so gorgeous, and the property is beautiful. There's this gorgeous little gazebo. There's a walking path behind the church. Sanctuary is gorgeous.

But I think what the pandemic has really taught me and hopefully a lot of, you know, our Christian compatriots is that the church is not a building, and that our true ministry is outside of the church, and it's people related, and it's all about relationships. And so as the future of the church changes and goes forward, I hope that we start leaving the building more. I would love for more services to take place outside. Like how beautiful is it to have a sunrise service outside? You know, it looks like Camp Cumberland when I was a teenager having worship on a hillside, being able to, you know, to see the need for so many social programs and, you know, this need for unemployment and food during the pandemic, like, can we meet that need?

What what place can the church have? And some of us didn't feel safe to do that. And it was agonizing, TJ, to have these facilities and and the money, but not to be able to help because you didn't know if bringing your germs was the best thing at this time. And so I hope that the future of the church is not church centric, and that we can find a way to be more about the body of Christ in terms of relationships than a building.

That's a big challenge. I but we are up to the task. I really believe that we are, that we can open our arms up to strangers and friends for sure.

Yeah. I think that's what it is, is can we be open to new things and new people and new ways of doing it, things that just don't look like they did even two years ago.

Mhmm. Well, with all this newness, Dusty, happening in in your life, how can we continue to follow you on your faith journey?

There are lots of opportunities on social media. I probably won't add you personally as a Facebook friend unless I know you. I live my life very much out loud, so sometimes I like to have a face to face connection. But if you would like to follow the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Denton, Texas on Facebook, please do. We would love to have more interaction and more followers.

That's part of that's one of my gifts is somehow I've become a social media expert from my days in journalism and and such and working all this out. If you'd like to follow us, that's great. We have a website dentoncpc.org. I have a personal website, but I haven't updated it. So, if you Google me, you can probably find all kinds of evidence of me.

But, and hopefully have a couple projects with the denomination coming out. I've been working for something for a long time with the CMT. So just stay tuned and listen on the Cumberland Road.

Well, Dusty, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks, TJ, for having me. I really appreciate your ministry and what you're doing in this church.

And thank you for listening to today's podcast. Grab a friend and travel with me on the next journey down Cumberland Road.