Welcome to the tenth edition of Mockingbird’s preacher interview series! Over the past year, we’ve been interviewing some of our favorite ministers from diverse church contexts around the country to find out more about what is really working in American Christianity today and how to do church well. Our tenth interview is with one of Mockingbird’s OG contributors (active since 2007!), beloved co-host of The Mockingcast, and the current rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, R-J Heijmen.
[Note: If you want to hear more, make sure to check out R-J and Aaron Zimmerman’s conversation on “Renewing Your Local Congregation” from the spring 2026 Mockingbird Conference.]
M: R-J Heijmen! Thank you so much for doing this. I’m a big fan. Why don’t you start by describing your current congregation for us?
RH: Well, I’m at Holy Trinity, which is right downtown West Palm Beach. I’m sitting here in my office looking out at the Intracoastal Waterway in front of me, and then on the other side of me is Palm Beach, like the Palm Beach. I’ve been here for six-and-a-half years — I started in 2020. It’s a beautiful and historic church.
It’s had its ups and downs, but at least since I’ve been here, and for a good long while before me, it’s been a warm, welcoming, easygoing, generous, serving, and reasonably diverse — for an Episcopal church — kind of place. Of course, when I got here in January 2020, the pandemic happened two months later.
M: I was going to ask about that.
RH: It was great timing … haha. When I started, my family was still back in Texas because our oldest son was a senior in high school. So I started in January and I said, “Hey, why don’t you guys just stay until school is out, and then we’ll move here together.” But I went home to Texas for spring break in March, and that’s when everything shut down. And the church was like, “Well, just stay in Texas, and come back when things open up.” So I started doing video worship in my backyard and posting it to YouTube, and then we started doing Zoom coffee hour and Zoom records forum and Zoom youth group and all that sort of stuff.
We did finally move to Florida in June, but things were still shut down, obviously. So we installed a camera system in the church and started livestreaming. Then in September, we started doing drive-in worship — we bought an AM radio transmitter and people pulled into our parking lot, and we told them what frequency to tune to on the dial, and I was outside preaching and doing communion and whatever else.
M: That’s so funny.
RH: It was really funny. When it came time for communion, people would roll down their windows a little bit and I’d, like, slip the wafer in through the window.
Anyway, our diocese was pretty flexible, so we were back in the church by October, I think, but with social distancing and masking. But within a few months, we were too many people for our space. Our church could normally fit 300, 350, but with social distancing it was like 100, depending on how many family groups there were. So then in January 2021, we started talking about, like, what do we do? Do we add another service? And then we decided to actually start worshiping outside — under a tent on our front lawn. It was Lent, so we called it “Lent in the Tent” to begin with. But it extended through June, and it was a really amazing time because a lot of other churches were closed, and people had nothing to do. So a lot of new people started coming, they brought their own chairs, they brought their coffee, they brought their dogs, their kids were running around, whatever. And because we’re downtown, people would be out, like, walking their dogs down our sidewalk, and they’d be looking over, like what is going on over there? So the pandemic ended up becoming a really good time for us.
We were already a congregation willing to try things and take risks, which I liked. You know, we’re true to our Episcopal identity — we love that, but we were willing to try things for the sake of reaching new people. So that really worked. We ended up having 400, 500 people for Easter. We were on the front page of the newspaper. It was really cool. It’s one of those things you look back on and you’re like, did that really happen?
We’ve also grown a lot. I think the year before I got here, our average Sunday attendance was about 200. Now we’re over 400, which is fantastic. We hired another priest. We had some longtime staff people who’d been here for literally 30, 40 years who retired, and we were able to send them off well, which was great. And then we hired a full-time youth and children’s person and a new director of operations — just because we were growing and wanted to meet the challenge of the growth.
Then in maybe January 2024, we added a third Sunday morning service. We’d been at three Sunday services for most of our history, but then for the last 20 or 30 years, we’ve been at two services, because we went through some tough times where we shrunk quite a bit. So we added back another service, which I was nervous about, but it worked really well and filled out pretty quickly. And then this past January we added a fourth service, like a Sunday evening service at 5 p.m., which was okay. It draws like 50, 60 people, something like that. We take a break on that service for the summer because we’re very seasonal. Our most attended season is kind of January 1 through May 1, something like that. We have a slew of snowbirds who start coming down in early November. But really, our big season is those five months. And then in the summer, we’re about half the size.
M: I mean, it’s hot as Hades down there in the summer, right?
RH: It’s so hot. So yeah, we shrink down in the summer. But it’s just been really good here these past few years. I think people are hearing things they haven’t heard before, or at least experiencing them. Even longtime Episcopalians are like, “We’ve never talked about Jesus this much. We’ve never heard this much about the Bible. We’ve never heard about grace.” I think just connecting with people’s actual lives, like their lived experience, is what’s working. It’s not a head trip, it’s not a theological exercise, it’s not a lecture. I’m talking about my life or the lives of our people, the lives of people we know, and there seems to be a connection that happens where people are like, “Oh, this is actually for me.” And we’ve had quite a few people come to us who had not been coming to church for a long time, or who never went to church, or who don’t even necessarily consider themselves Christians, but they like what we’re doing. They like the message. They like the feel of our congregation because we are a really warm and welcoming place. You know, we’re not the “frozen chosen.” You walk in, and people shake your hand and smile at you and want to get to know your name, all that sort of stuff. So there’s just a really good feeling to what’s going on.
M: It seems like you’re doing something right in terms of making people feel welcome. So what are your practical recommendations for how to make new people feel welcome in church to the point where they want to keep coming back?
RH: I would say, first of all, don’t say anything from up front that creates a kind of insider-outsider mentality. Like, try not to use language that’s going to be unintelligible to someone coming in for the first time, where they’re going to feel like, “Oh, I don’t understand this,” or “I don’t belong here,” or “There’s clearly a them here, and I’m not part of them, and there’s going to be a high barrier to entry.”
You know, I love our liturgy, but it can be a little bit opaque sometimes. So part of making people feel welcome is we print the full liturgy every week. We don’t print the hymns yet, but we might start doing that as well. So the bulletin has all the readings and prayers and everything, and then, you know, they use the hymnal. So they only have to manage two things as opposed to four things. Which is still maybe a little bit too much.
Then, we have little margin notes in our bulletins that explain things, or where things come from, or the history behind things — like, what is a Collect? Things like that. And also a lot of direction — when to sit, when to stand, when to kneel. And I usually do that verbally as well. You know, “Please rise,” or “Kneel as you’re able,” or whatever it might be, just so people aren’t so totally disoriented and feeling completely out of the loop.
M: And fumbling.
RH: Yeah. Someone once described it as “the Episcopal shuffle” — you’ve got the bulletin, the prayer book, the Bible, the hymnal. Like, where do you put things? It’s insane. It’s too much. So we try to make worship as easy for people as possible. We also try to keep things efficient and moving along, not have a lot of dead space in the service. Just keep things flowing, you know. And we focus not on perfection but excellence. Because I think excellence fades away and allows people to engage with God and engage with their own emotions, but a lack of excellence calls attention to itself, jars you out of that.
At the same time, if a little mistake gets made or a baby cries or, you know, if one of our unhoused parishioners does something odd, it’s like, fine, whatever. It’s not the end of the world. It’s important to hold things with a loose hand and have a sense of humor. Worship is a living, breathing thing. It doesn’t have to be boxed and perfect and shiny. It can breathe a little bit. I often love unexpected moments that happen in the service.
I think it’s also important just to be kind, obviously, to get to know people, ask them their names, try to learn their names. But also to model kindness and curiosity about people for other people in your church. And then just to do all that with your leadership as well, and really instill with your volunteers — altar guild, ushers, readers, whatever — that basic message: that grace abounds, and that if something goes wrong, it’s okay. That this is not about perfection. It’s about joy. It’s about love. It’s about community. So the stakes aren’t so high, you know? We do this because hopefully we actually enjoy doing it together. And then hopefully that spirit of grace and welcome and warmth trickles down through your staff and through your volunteers to the people that walk through the door, so they can sense it when they walk in, like this is a safe place to be a human being.
Which, honestly, there are not that many spaces like that in our culture. Especially here in West Palm Beach, where everything is about looking the right way, having your act together, wearing the right clothes, presenting yourself well. It’s something special to be able to come into a space where, as someone said, you can let your hair down a little bit. So we also try to model vulnerability — not bleeding in the pulpit but talking about real things, real pain, real need. The greatest compliment I ever get as a preacher is “You know, R-J, I felt like you were speaking directly to me” or “to something going on in my life.” Like, that’s when you know you’re doing your job. And that’s not every Sunday, but you hope you’re connecting as much as possible with other people.
Finally, you try to create as many opportunities as you can for people to engage. Just have things going on, whether it’s Sunday worship, whether it’s Bible studies, whether it’s midweek worship, whether it’s grief groups, meals, parties — just giving people avenues to connect with each other, to make friends, and then to connect with God. And do a lot of encouraging too. Like, I don’t tell people what to do, but we have a lot of jobs that need to get done, and so I also want to encourage people — when I see someone doing something amazing, just to call it out and praise them and hopefully encourage them.
M: Do you push people to be involved in small groups?
RH: I invite people to stuff and talk it up. I talk about how great things are but only if I really mean it. I don’t tell people they should do anything. I try to eliminate “should” from my vocabulary as much as I can. I try to create events and spaces that people want to be in — that they would just want to show up to because the food is good and it’s fun and the music is good and the time works and there’s childcare. Like a mentor of mine said, “You always want people coming to church for the wrong reasons.” And then you slip the gospel in.
M: That’s great. So you have four Sunday services: 7:30, 9, 11, and then a 5 p.m. with a dinner. But I was looking at your website, and what interested me was that you also have all these other services during the week. You must be a very busy guy! I hope you have another priest on staff.
RH: I’ve got one. We need another, but yeah, it’s a lot.
M: There’s a Tuesday Holy Eucharist, a Wednesday Vespers, a Thursday Morning Prayer …
RH: My associate does pretty much all of those. He’s away this week, so I’m doing all of them.
M: So part of the purpose of those midweek services is just, as you said, to give people such a variety of offerings that it allows them these sorts of side doors to come into the church?
RH: Yes, that’s exactly right. And those three services in total probably draw only 40 or 50 people. They’re not huge. I did the Tuesday Eucharist yesterday and there were, like, a dozen people, and most of them were in their twenties and thirties and some with kids, and a lot of them know each other. They were hanging out afterwards. One of them had just had an appendectomy last week, and when I went to visit her, two of the people were there with her. So it’s just interesting how these little communities form, and the services are not hard. It’s like half an hour. You do a little scripture reading. They’re not setting the world on fire, but they are opportunities for people to connect.
We have other things going on midweek as well. Bible studies. There’s a grief group. About half the year, maybe 25–30 weeks a year, we actually do a Wednesday night fellowship thing where we usually have about 80–100 people. We serve dinner and it’s free, and then it’s accompanied by a variety of things — some kind of Bible thing, whether it’s like an Alpha class or a Bible study, sometimes a Vespers service, and then there might be a painting class or a sculpture class or game night. There are usually about three or four options for people to choose from. So we all have dinner together, and then we break out into our various activities, and there’s always childcare provided. So that’s been another way that people have found their way into church. Of course, there are people who just come for the meal and leave.
M: In your mind, what’s the most important thing that happens in church on a given Sunday?
RH: Well, I don’t know. I mean, besides the presence of the Holy Spirit? I don’t know how you quantify that.
M: Let’s put it this way: what’s the most important priority for you?
RH: That everyone there has an individual experience of God’s grace, however that might happen. You know, whether it’s through a hymn or a prayer or the sermon or meeting somebody — like, being welcomed in a way that they weren’t expecting — whatever it is, that somehow by the power of the Holy Spirit, through everything that we do, everyone there has an experience of God’s unconditional love for them as they actually are. I’d say that would be my dream for everything that we do.
M: So if you were talking to a kid right out of seminary, what would be your best advice on preaching?
RH: Ooh, gosh. You need to be fully convicted of the truth of the message for yourself — that God is real, that he is Jesus, crucified, died, resurrected, and that the Holy Spirit is real with you, for you, as a sinner, as you actually are. Because that’s the whole thing, you know? It has to flow out of that conviction. People can spot a fake a million miles away, and if you don’t believe it, then your people aren’t going to believe it. But I don’t know how to make that happen or how to quantify that.
M: Or how to control it?
RH: I mean, yeah, you can’t really control it either. But that’s the prayer, that you’re going to see Jesus show up in your life and in the lives of other people often enough and powerfully enough that you will believe it, or that you’ll have a foundation to build on. That because I’ve gone through these things and experienced these things, I’ll know that it’s true, this message is true.
Then beyond that? You know, preach the Bible, preach the passage, and talk a lot about Jesus — always connect it back to Jesus and grace. You don’t have to say the same words over and over again, but it has to be in that realm of God and his mercy and grace connecting with hopeless people like you. Be vulnerable, make it personal, but again, don’t bleed in the pulpit. Also, talk about things that interest you. If you love music or literature or sports, whatever it might be, then use that. If there are ways that you see this message connecting in your actual life, use that. That’s what Jesus did with his parables. That’s what Paul did at the Areopagus.
Try not to read off the page, and recognize that writing and preaching are two different things. They are different forms of expression, so maybe you write it out, that’s fine, but try to speak it from your heart as much as you can. I don’t know if that means memorizing it. I know some people try to memorize it. But have it come from your authentic side. Obviously, no preacher voice. My God, no preacher voice! No Christianese. No Episcopalese, or whatever your denomination is. Just try to be a real person talking to real people about the grace of God through Jesus Christ and through the medium of the passage.
And then find a preparation pattern that works for you.
M: What do you do?
RH: Haha, do you know this? I write every sermon Sunday morning.
M: Seriously?
RH: Yeah.
M: Like at 5 a.m.?!
RH: Yeah. I think about it all week. I read the passages on probably Tuesday or Wednesday, something like that. I find the one that I’m probably going to preach on, home in on it. I’m thinking about it. What stories can I tell about this? What movies does it remind me of? What does it bring up for me in my own life? You know, what other parts of the Bible does it remind me of? And then I go to bed pretty early on Saturday. Then I wake up at 4:30 on Sunday morning, and I’m in the office by 5:00, 5:15, and I’ve got two hours to hammer it out because I’m preaching at 7:30. I mean, I’ve tried to do it the other way. I’ve tried to write my sermons on, like, Thursday, but I always threw it away. I always got to Sunday and was like, “That’s not what I want to say. I want to say this instead.” Or if I did preach it, it just felt very disconnected.
When I prepare it Sunday morning, it feels very emotionally immediate. It also forces me to simplify because I’ve always got the temptation to complicate things. When I’ve only got two hours to prep, it’s like, okay, I got this thing to say and I’m saying it. It really makes me trust the Holy Spirit.
M: I bet.
RH: I do find that I’m testing God a little bit. But I will say, it’s also kind of a product of my perfectionism, because in the old days when I wrote my sermons on Wednesday or Thursday, I was worrying that it wasn’t good enough all weekend. When I write it on Sunday morning, I don’t have time to worry that it’s not good enough. I’ve just got to give it, and it is what it is.
And usually the 7:30 service is kind of a dress rehearsal. I’ll see how it goes and then make some changes for the 9, make some changes for the 11, make some changes for the 5. Sometimes the 7:30 is the best one because it’s the rawest, but it moves around a little bit. You’ve got to trust the Holy Spirit, because it can be a little crazy-making if you think it’s too much about you.
M: Well, it seems to be working for you.
RH: It seems to be working.
M: I want to ask a little bit about your hiring and management philosophy. What do you try to focus on as a boss/rector in making hiring decisions and in managing people on staff?
RH: With managing, I will say, I try to be as much of a human being as I can. I try to love my staff. I try to encourage them. I try not to control them. I want our staff to be a place of grace as well, not just the church. Like, what I hate is when I hear people say things like, “Well, I used to love this church, but then I got on the vestry, and now I see how the sausage is made.” Or “The curtain’s been pulled back, and I see how messy it is behind the scenes.” I don’t want that. I want this church to be gracious and good and godly all the way through as much as we possibly can.
At the same time, my staff is not my therapist, you know? So I try to find that balance between being a human being and giving other people the permission to be themselves without making them carry stuff that it’s not their business to carry. I’m here to care for my people and not the other way around.
With regard to hiring, I will say this, I don’t want to say we’re done with Indeed.com or Monster.com or whatever, but every time we’ve posted a job description to one of those places, we just get flooded with hundreds of résumés that don’t even begin to deliver any kind of candidates we’re looking for. Well, that’s not totally true: our director of operations is a great guy, and he did actually come to us that way. But in my experience, when you need to hire somebody, God tends to drop them in your lap, and I don’t question it too much. Like, when we needed a new priest, we hired the first person that came along because he was the right person, and he’s now been here for five years. The same thing happened with two youth people we hired and two directors of operations. God does seem actually to deliver in that way. I don’t want to say just trust your gut or something like that, but trust that the right people will eventually surface.
Also, do it collaboratively. I’ve always had a little hiring team. When we hired this latest staff person, it was me, the operations directors, some vestry people, some staff people, and we all interviewed this person, and we all just felt like, yeah, I think this person is the right one for this job. We looked at other résumés, but this was the only person interviewed, and that’s fine. We’re not going to say, “Oh, we’ve got to interview three or four candidates.” What’s the point?
M: So as a church that preaches grace, how do you handle really difficult people in your congregation?
RH: We don’t have that many really difficult people. We just don’t. I mainly try to just love and encourage people and ignore their bad behavior, just trusting that, you know, the Holy Spirit will eventually do something in them. Every so often, if there’s something I really need to address, then I guess I will.
The toughest thing is when there’s conflict between parishioners that they want me to work out. My general approach in those cases is to do a lot of listening — a lot of listening — and pray, actually pray, because God does actually work things out. I encourage people to be gracious and patient with each other. And then, I don’t know, I just tend to kind of ignore it and hope it goes away. Also, the bigger we get and the more services we have, people can just kind of choose to avoid each other.
M: Haha, right. Plenty of options to choose from.
RH: Someone in our men’s Bible study asked me something on Thursday. He’s like, “R-J, is there anyone in the church you don’t like? Anyone?” And I thought about it, and I was like, “I don’t know … not really.” Part of that is, and this is very Mockingbird, to not believe in free will, to believe in a bound will, to know that everyone (including yourself) is a little bit crazy and doing the best they can, and to not take things personally — that just makes it a little easier, so you can love them and not try to control them, and you can trust that God is doing something in them. Of course, there are some people who don’t like me. There are a few people who’ve left the church because for whatever reason they decided they didn’t like me, which is fine. What is it Jacob Smith says? “Your parishioners can always break up with you, but you can never break up with them,” you know?
M: That’s a good word.
RH: So I try to sort of see them all with Jesus-colored lenses a little bit. They’re just broken sinners doing their best, that Jesus loves. And if he loves you, broken sinner that you are, with all the shit that you pull, maybe you can love them too. I don’t know.
M: What is one thing that other churches could do to help people feel more connected to church?
RH: I think people who are leading churches have to make it their business to know all of their people’s names. And if they can, their spouse’s names, their children’s names … I just think that personal attention and care communicates so much to that person. And just to not be distracted, to be willing to listen, to be curious. I think that in and of itself is so incredibly healing and life-giving that it ends up spilling over. I remember someone saying about Paul Walker that “when he was talking to you, it felt like you were the only person in the world.” And I’ll never forget that. That’s how I want the person in front of me to be feeling, to love them enough in the name of Jesus, to know them and pay attention to them. And I’m not always good at that. But I think it goes a long way. Love your people enough to know their names.
M: Okay, last question: what aspect of your job do you hate the most, and what aspect do you love the most?
RH: Probably the thing I struggle with the most is just sitting in my office and answering emails. Also, thank you notes. I’m terrible at thank you notes, partly because I hate my handwriting. I’m so embarrassed about my handwriting, to be honest with you. I’m just like, “This person probably thinks I sort of have my act together, and now they’re going to see my handwriting and know that I’m actually just like a nine-year-old.” So I don’t like that kind of thing, the administrative-type stuff.
The stuff I love the most is also the most exhausting, which is just spending time with people. That could be on Sundays or visiting them in the hospital or teaching small groups, just being with people. I love that. But it also is really exhausting, and it can be anxiety producing because the more people you have relationships with and the more people you love, the more pain you open yourself up to, because people are hurting. And the more people you have around, the more people there are to love. But yeah, being with people, that’s what I love.
M: Well, R-J, this has been really fun. Thank you so much.
