Jon Stotts

Director of Adult Formation

I'm a professional lay ecclesial minister in Nashville doing Christian initiation, ongoing conversion, and parish enrichment at Christ the King Catholic Church.

I have over 15 years of experience in a Catholic parish ministry, including adult education, RCIA coordination, pre-marital preparation, retreat direction, pastoral counseling, young adult ministry, youth ministry, liturgical planning, and spiritual direction.

I have a Ph.D in Religion from Vanderbilt University and a M.A. in Theology from Saint Meinrad School of Theology.

My professional and scholarly interests include sacramental and practical theology, the sacrament of reconciliation, psychoanalytic theory, ritual and liturgy, and family systems. These are all ways of examining how folks integrate religious thoughts, feelings, and practices into their daily lives.

I'm married and have four kids. In my free time I read, bake bread, and dance with my family.

Curriculum Vitae

Here's something I wrote recently.

An Easter Story

Once upon a time God decided to spend time with humans as a human. He found a time and place to live and spent time doing all the things that God likes to do. Like listening to stories. Telling stories. Stopping hurts. Cheering people up. Finding lost people. Fixing problems. Sharing food. Mending broken things. Unsurprisingly, God made lots of friends.

While he was there, God visited some guys who were in charge of introducing other people to God. But they didn’t recognize him, so his visit was really confusing for everybody. They made God talk to another guy who was in charge of running that part of the world for God. That guy also didn’t recognize God, and he was pretty busy, and everyone was really angry, so he decided to have God tortured to death. Just to clear up any confusion about who was who. God’s friends mostly ran away, and other people made fun of God, and God’s mom was really sad, so all in all it was the worst day ever.

God tried being dead for a while, but it wasn’t really his thing. While he was there, he noticed that the other dead people didn’t seem to be having a good time, so God made friends with them and invited them to come back to his place when they were done.

On his way back to life, God ran into two of his friends taking a long walk. They were pretty upset about what had happened, especially since no one could find God. God told them some of his favorite stories about himself to cheer them up, but they didn’t recognize him.

It was getting late and they were hungry, so God’s two friends offered to share their food with God, and he could crash with them too if he wanted. God wasn’t really tired or hungry, but he was super touched by their generosity, especially since they didn’t know it was him. So they made some food and they held hands and they prayed, and God thanked them for sharing their bread with him, and then he thanked himself for making people and food and friendship and stories and pretty much everything else.

Then his friends recognized God. And they realized that it had been God all along.

The end.