When God Became Real
Rev. Bobbie McKay is a licensed clinical psychologist and an ordained minister. She serves as the Pastoral Associate for Spiritual Life at Glenview Community Church of the United Church of Christ, a Community Renewal Society (CRS) member congregation. At 92 years old, she still lives out her callings of ministry and psychology. CRS met with Rev. Bobbie McKay to learn about her faith journey and work with the church over the decades as she navigated hurdles related to her gender. Enjoy a summary of our interview below.
The Prologue to the Gospel of John
Attending to her housewife duties, Rev. Bobbie McKay once was cleaning her home and dusting the bookcase in her dining room. On the top shelf of her bookcase, among other books she hadn’t read, were 5 bibles. Although a church goer, she didn’t read the Bible back then and was unfamiliar with it. On the ladder dusting, she sees the 5 Bibles and decides to grab one, and it opened where the Bible wanted it to open, not where she wanted to open it. It went to the Prologue to the Gospel of John. She had a dustcloth in one hand and the Bible in the other and began reading that prologue. This was the moment her life changed. She read the prologue 5 times. She didn’t know how her life was different, but she knew it was. God engaged her to read the Bible. That is Rev. Bobbie McKay’s story of when she knew God was real.
Taking the God Experience Seriously
In response to her God experience, Rev. Bobbie McKay went to the minister of her methodist church. She explained to him that she had this God experience and needed to do something with it. Her minister wouldn’t support her joining seminary as the belief was that women don’t belong there. Following the discouraging discussion with her minister, she soon learned that God gave her the gift of writing music, even though she was never musically trained, flunked piano lessons at five years old and rarely touched a piano after that. It was when the young people’s group at her church needed to raise money, that she said (straight from God), “I’ll write a musical.” Everyone thought this was a wonderful idea! So, in her 40s, she learned to play the piano and wrote a musical. From that moment forward, she knew if God could help her write music, God can do anything. She never considered writing music before the musical happened. She took the gift of music from God seriously. She didn’t hide in the closet. She didn’t tell people right away that music was a gift from God either, but soon after, she did.
Wanting to continue taking the God experience seriously, Rev. Bobbie McKay decided to conduct a study on spiritual life. She approached the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries and communicated that she wished to do a study with their blessing. She was told that no one was interested in a study on spiritual life in the UCC. Boldy, she contested this notion. She spent 4 years going from church to church across the United States, talking to people about their stories of when God became real. Her study (The Spiritual Healing Project) included United Church of Christ (UCC) churches and about 2,000 people from the east coast to west coat and from Florida to Canada.
She created a nine-page questionnaire for her study to make sure she would receive enough data. The data revealed what she already knew: that people never talked about the stories of when God became real to them because they didn’t want to seem weird, crazy or too religious. This study opened the door for those with God experiences. For the first time, people were able to share an amazing experience with Rev. Bobbie McKay. They were willing to say: “This was God in my life. This wasn’t some kind of fantasy I had or some crazy notion. This is God. But I don’t talk about it in the church.” The more she heard these stories in her research, the more she knew she had to get her study out to the world.
Rev. Bobbie McKay brought her data to George Gallup, who later wrote a foreword for one of her books. He fell in love with the data. They spent the next four years connected to affirm that the research was genuine and would hold up in academic settings. Rev. Bobbie McKay wrote books on this study. From this study, she designed a small group experience where a diverse group of people could gather for an hour once a month to share God experiences with each other. To guide the program, she wrote a workbook, including why her research is important, what can be done with it and the process for easily sharing God experiences. Rev. Bobbie McKay states, “sharing these stories was transforming as if people were waiting for the right format to talk about God.” No clergy were allowed in her program until last year. She found the same theme everywhere in the country: people didn’t share God experiences in the church because they didn’t think it would go over well. Yet, her program successfully allowed these God experiences to be shared in the church. Nobody has ever failed the program.
A Workshop on Clergy Pain
At the time she developed her program, Rev. Bobbie McKay was asked to do a workshop on clergy pain at a UCC church in Florida for 4 days. During this workshop, she reflected on her job as a licensed psychologist and her responsibility to get people to talk, specifically about their pain. She knew that for this workshop, she had to provide safety and confidentiality for the clergy. Taking this insight back to her program, she removed her psychology hat and left it outside the door. She began attending her program like those involved, simply looking for God.
God is Here, And He is My Healer
Rev. Bobbie McKay’s program is not a psychological program. People don’t talk about their problems but instead talk about God and when He became real. This is a relief to many and a powerful shift to go from a mindset where ‘things aren’t working in life’ to ‘here is where God is.’ She believes this program is more powerful than anything she did as a licensed psychologist. Her program focuses on healing, and she proclaims her healer is God.
In addition to sharing God experiences, she has taught people how to pray together, and those in her program practice praying aloud. Some people pray for the first time in her program since older generations have been brought up on silent prayer. She reminds people that the role of the laity in the church, and everyone, is to talk about God. She contends that if we can’t identify when God is real for us, we need to do so. People can discover how active God is in their life and get comfortable talking about this as well as be comfortable praying in a group setting. “Praying is something we learn how to get comfortable with. Once we are comfortable doing so with other people, it really changes prayer. It makes it so real and you’re not praying for results, but to know God better, to know God every moment of my day, to know you are not alone and that there are people just like me. God is active in the world everywhere. But we don’t talk about it,” states Rev. Bobbie McKay.
Furthermore, Rev. Bobbie McKay declares the laity needs to demonstrate that all of us need to pray, and that when you pray out loud, we connect with each other at a different level. “We are all trying to learn how to talk to God and to hear God,” she said.
Women Not in Seminary
Women were not welcome to seminary in the 1960s. Married women with children were looked upon as if they were neglecting their marriage and their children for going to seminary. Rev. Bobbie McKay was the first married woman with children to go through her seminary and announced as a non-unanimous candidate for ministry. She recalls this was the church’s way of saying they didn’t want her and that she didn’t belong. In 1970, she asked the minister who ordained her, “Why would you say that?” His reply echoed that nobody wanted her, and he couldn’t get a job for her as no church would take her. She thought, ‘I better see what God has in store for me.’
The Clergy Retreat
Rev. Bobbie McKay got a call from a conference in the UCC requesting that she work with clergy in Madison, Wisconsin, who were leaving the ministry. Rev. Bobbie McKay agreed to work with the clergy, partly because this was the only job offered to her. She spent a year commuting from Chicago to Madison, meeting with the clergy once a month. She heard and felt their pain. As she was going into ministry, these clergy were leaving ministry. For 2 years, she worked with these clergy.
About 10 years ago, Rev. Bobbie Mckay got a call from a minister at a Florida conference who said, “I have to provide leadership for a retreat on clergy pain. Would you do that?” She replied, “Sure,” knowing that she could figure out how to spend 4 days with these clergy. Working with these clergy the second time around, she heard similar themes to when she first did this.
At the end of the retreat, a minister told Rev. Bobbie McKay about a church in Cocoa Beach, Florida and invited her to be with that church. Agreeingly, she and her husband went down to Florida and spent six weeks there talking to people in the church. She felt more pain in the clergy than she did in the people of the church. The pain was real, palpable and connected to stories. She then thought of an idea (an idea from God) to design a program for laity to bring their spiritual life to heal their clergy. She finds more healing in this program that asks for God experiences, than any healing she did as a psychologist. She notes, “Making God real is so powerful and attainable and marvelously healing for the world to bring God out into the open.” This is why she continues to use most of her energy helping to make God real for everybody, claiming that this doesn’t take a lot of work because “God is real.” She continues to be a psychologist today but only part time.
God Stories are Good Stories
Rev. Bobbie McKay helps affirm that every God story is good enough. Often, people think they aren’t as spiritual as their pastor, and therefore, they should keep quiet, but she professes the work of the church is with the pastor and the congregation. Since people stopped going to church during the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been inspired in her 90s knowing that if she is going to do something to get back in the church, she has to do it quick. She is currently working with the Illinois (IL) Conference UCC to bring her program to UCC churches across the state. So far, the IL Conference chose a singular church to try out her program, and they finished a couple months ago. A pastor at the church where Rev. Bobbie McKay received her chalice did the program in Illinois. Rev. Bobbie McKay proudly asserts that the pastor shared the program worked.
Rev. Bobbie McKay has become evangelically committed. She teaches that if you invite people to pray aloud in a group and say, “I think this is a God story,” that it’s good for everybody. “We have to convince people that, when God appears, it’s always a good story. This doesn’t mean happily ever after, but it means we get to know God, and that changes everything.” Her passion for leading others to realize this has not quit.
Bringing God In
To put her faith in action outside of the church, Rev. Bobbie McKay writes blogs for 2 organizations where she gets to bring God in anytime she feels like it (and she feels like it all the time). She talks to individuals and groups about the experiences of God. What she brings to others is a message that God can become real. Her life has become about getting people more involved in the church. Over the course of her career, she gave speeches at seminars and always talked about her ‘composer story.’ She knew God gave her the gift of music, and she talks with great conviction.
Connecting with Youth
Rev. Bobbie McKay thinks that the new generation is not yet as interested in the church, but she doesn’t hesitate to talk about God and share her story about the musical and receiving the gift of God. This story is her connection to youth. She believes that if people don’t shift to spirituality, we may lose the entire younger generation in the church. “They get God as being part of a spiritual experience. This resonates with them,” discloses Rev. Bobbie McKay. Her research blessedly proved that experiencing God is real, and the more we listen and talk to each other, the more God is going to grow. “We can’t just keep God in our hearts. The experiential part is so real to younger kids. They haven’t found church relevant. Church has become tied up in money and not tied up enough in experiences people have had with God. The church can connect with the youth over sharing these God experiences.”
Speaking on Spirit
There is so much work to do to help this world, and although the possibility of the church (God, Jesus, spirit, conversation and prayer) disappearing or disintegrating scares her, Rev. Bobbie McKay will continue talking about God experiences.
Rev. Bobbie McKay conducted two additional studies, with adolescents (The Adolescent Study of Spiritual Life) and with those in old age (The Spiritual Aging Project), totaling about 4,000 people in her research. These studies were revealing, much like her first study. She learned that there isn’t an endpoint for when spirit stops. “We have to talk about it, and we have to put it into action. It can’t be a Sunday morning thing anymore. The world is in too much trouble. We dare not do that. We can’t do it to God, and we can’t do it to the rest of the world,” warns Rev. Bobbie McKay.
Blogs in Marketing Class
About 4 years ago, Rev. Bobbie McKay got invited to teach a marketing class at Northwestern University on a scholarship. When presented with the opportunity, she wondered how she could market a product, particularly God, and she took this chance. She assigned the class a final exam of writing and sharing a blog. She knew if she asked the students to write a blog, she had to write one too. She asserts that God had come forward for this task because she didn’t know how to write a blog. During the exam, she heard 21 wonderful blogs and with God’s help, she wrote her own blog, Discover God – Share the Gift – Change Your Life – Change the World. She struggled to share her blog with the class but finally did, leaving everyone crying and hugging. Her blog title has become a constant in her life. This is what her ministry is all about. She finds that people understand what she means. The hitch is, “How do you discover God?” In her almost sixty years of ministry, Rev. Bobbie McKay asserts that the best way is for people to talk about when God has become real and to make God real. This is the church’s job.
Resolving Social Issues
“Once you discover God, the world can change.” And the need to change the world is urgent. To those not extending a warm welcome to new neighbors, Rev. Bobbie McKay states that it is “Painful because it is so wrong.” Her immediate association with the migrant crisis is with her grandchildren. “They have a world coming along that will be awful if we don’t look for solutions, if we turn people away and are willing to let them suffer,” she says. She personalizes the migrant crisis with her family. She doesn’t know what kind of world we will have if we turn away from caring for people and caring for this world. She asks herself what the church should be doing, and while she doesn’t know how to resolve social issues like the migrant crisis, she imagines we are going to have a situation so terrible that it will go beyond where it is now if we don’t do something.
To help with social issues, Rev. Bobbie McKay talks and writes books about God and spiritual life because she wants to make God real to people. She knows the hunger for spiritual life is present but that people are unsure how to feed that hunger. Discussing social issues reawakens her question, “What am I doing to help?” Social issues scare her, but she declares they can’t immobilize her. “If were willing to let people suffer, it’s a pretty scary world.”
No Excuses
Rev. Bobbie Mckay has her independence, and she likes to arm elderly to know that they aren’t too old to help. “None of us are allowed to say we are too old. I can’t do that. I don’t know how. Those are excuses we can’t claim,” she remarks. “We have discounted older people, but we don’t shut down at a certain age even though we’ve been diluted to think so.”
Rev. Bobbie McKay observes how people get caught up in their own stuff and act as if other people don’t exist, which is untrue. She maintains that education is a big component at the young end, and we have to insist our kids get this. We can’t let them off the hook. This being said, she doesn’t expect to keep very quiet.
Discover God – Share the Gift – Change Your Life – Change the World
Being alive to God and talking to others are Rev. Bobbie McKay’s accomplishments. She urges that we become aware of what’s happening in Chicago and around us, such as the flow of lethal drugs in society. She conveys “What is the solution?” is a question to ponder and adds this question has to be followed by an action of some kind. She praises Community Renewal Society for taking action and not letting people think everything is fine in our world when social issues exist. Rev. Bobbie McKay may not have a simple solution, but she will keep talking because this is what we need to. And when presented with a solution, she is ready to listen. For her children and great grandchildren, she wants a better world.
Rev. Bobbie McKay’s message of hope is from her God-written blog: Discover God. “God is healing. If you don’t know God, find somebody who does and listen, and then start talking. Not everyone has to go to a seminary, but you can’t just change you. You have to change the world. Or else, there are too many kids who are not going to make it,” expresses Rev. Bobbie McKay.
Rev. Bobbie McKay has not lost the fact that we all have a voice we must use. She wants the church to stop being blind and pay closer attention to injustices. And because God is real, a conversation needs to take place.
Check out a few of Rev. Bobbie McKay’s incredible blogs and books.