Rev. Austin shelly leads an 800-person cengregation at Shadyside Presbyterian Church with warmth and intellect.
Rev. Austin Shelley Makes Shadyside Presbyterian Church a Place for Everyone
Leading a congregation of 800 people at Shadyside Presbyterian Church is an order as tall as its 120-foot steeple.
As the 12th senior pastor — and the first female senior pastor — and head of staff for the past five years, Rev. Austin Shelley has learned about the church’s congregation and what they value. Besides preaching 40 times a year and managing a 24-member staff, she works with the church’s governing body, called the session.
Over the past five years, the church has become a bit less formal and more social, says Rev. Elizabeth Michael Ross, parish associate for pastoral care. There’s pie Sunday, birthday cake Sunday, a June strawberry festival and a chili supper. Rev. Shelley takes part in every event.
Her work seems to resonate; weekly attendance was 504 last year, more than 200 worshipers higher than the number recorded in 2018.
Scholarship, Language, and a Deep Theological Foundation
A 47-year-old biblical scholar fluent in Greek and Hebrew, Rev. Shelley speaks in a soft and measured South Carolina accent. She has completed work for a doctorate in homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary. (Her dissertation is about the perspective that deaf ministers and ministers with disabilities can offer.)
One of her mentors, Rev. Dr. M. Craig Barnes of Pennington, NJ, was senior pastor at Shadyside from 2003 to 2012.
“She has elders, committee chairs and trustees who can help,” he says. “But ultimately, if things are not going well, it’s her neck on the line.”
The very first meeting she called at Shadyside focused on replacing the building’s leaking roof. When a slate specialist refused to wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID, she ended the meeting. To see and touch the crumbling slate, the pastor took a ride in a cherry picker; today, the church has a new roof — and Rev. Shelley knows more about Canadian black slate than many registered roofers.
The Church’s Cultural Identity
Completed in 1890, the stone church is famous for its semi-professional chancel choir known for its precise acoustic sound and its Sunday concert series, Music In A Great Space. Music is foundational at Shadyside Presbyterian; in 1866, railroad executive Robert Pitcairn rehearsed the church’s first choir in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Shadyside station.
Mark Andrew Anderson, an accomplished liturgical composer, directs the concert series and the chancel choir. He also composed a song, The Sparrow’s Call, for Rev. Shelley’s installation. “I learn something from her every week,” he says. “I feel like the luckiest church musician in the country.”
Service Work and Global Mission Partnerships
Rev. Shelley leads a congregation that has long been dedicated to public service, both here and abroad. Church leaders started Chatham University in 1869 and Shady Side Academy in 1883. More recently, over the past 25 years in Malawi, the church has built a sanctuary, a medical clinic, a nursing student dormitory and three centers for orphans and vulnerable children.
The congregation’s traditionalists are usually affluent business executives and a variety of professionals; they may appear gruff, Rev. Shelley says, but they generously fund partnerships with 22 charities. Shadyside’s global initiatives benefit communities in China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala and India. The church also engages in mission partnerships with social justice organizations such as East End Cooperative Ministries, Hosanna House and the Neighborhood Academy.
A Community Built on Quiet Commitment and Shared Purpose
A few years after Donald Coffelt and his family joined the church in 2011, he was elected an elder. In 2022, he traveled to Malawi with Rev. Shelley.
“If you look at the church from the outside, it’s an old heavy stone and built like a fortress. Yet, the people on the inside are warm and loving and caring and profoundly part of a long tradition of spiritual service and giving. You don’t necessarily expect that,” says Coffelt, a retired U.S. Coast Guard Captain who is associate vice president for facilities management and campus services at CMU.
It All Comes Down to Family
Between music and pedagogy, the gospel and group dynamics, Rev. Shelley seems to fit in everywhere — an ability she developed on her family’s farm. Her industrious childhood in Chapin, SC, involved tending a large garden of corn, tomatoes and peas. One day, while collecting eggs from a chicken coop, she accidentally touched a chicken snake. That’s when she decided to trade tasks with one of her brothers and fed the cows instead.
The eldest of 10 children, she was the peacemaker among her siblings, learning life lessons at the knee of Ruby, her maternal grandmother and one of three women who raised the children. During 10-hour shifts, Monday through Thursday, Ruby sewed at Stone Manufacturing, once the world’s largest producer of men’s underwear; on those days, Rev. Shelley’s maternal greatgrandmother, Louise, minded the youngsters. The pastor’s mother, Linda, has worked in the operating room at Richland Memorial Hospital for 47 years.
Grandmother Ruby’s powerful influence figured in a Lenten sermon that Rev. Shelley titled, Held Captive, Set Free. One Friday, when the children missed the bus, Ruby fired up her rusted blue Ford Fairlane to drive them to school as the radio played Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again.
Then, from the back seat, Rev. Shelley’s brother Donald remarked that he had to become friends with a boy named Johnny if he wanted to make the soccer team. That’s when Ruby shut off the music, Rev. Shelley recalls, and gave this speech:
“You be Johnny’s friend because you want to be Johnny’s friend. Because you like Johnny. Because he’s kind to people. And because he‘s good to be around. We love people and use things, Donald Wayne. Don’t you dare mix those up. Because loving things and using people will mess you up every time. In this family, we love people and use things, not the other way around.”
Women in Ministry and a Changing Tradition
As a child, Rev. Shelley revered her teachers. At age 16, she asked the Methodist minister who taught her the Bible what to study if she wanted to be a pastor. He replied that he would not attend a church led by a woman.
Decades later, when she was teaching Christian education at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, that same Methodist minister “told me how proud he was of me and he was glad that I had become a pastor,” she says. “That was huge. It was huge for him. Men of that generation had no reason to encourage younger women to go into the ministry.”
She is among a wave of women who became Presbyterian ministers during the past 60 years. Change began in 1965 when Margaret Suppes Yingling became the first woman ordained in the Pittsburgh Presbytery. Today, of 109 pastors in the presbytery, 46 are women. Of those 46, 31 are senior pastors, according to Jenny Tarrant, a presbytery administrative assistant and webmaster.
Life in Shadyside and a Ministry Close to Home
After Rev. Shelley and her family came to Pittsburgh five years ago, they lived in O’Hara, a decent commute to Shadyside. A recent move to Shadyside means she can walk to work, making it far easier to be home for dinner with her husband, Mark, and two young daughters, Ruby and Lillian. A border collie and three cats keep them company. The couple also has two adult children, Micah and Emily Grace Anne.
Living close to the church also allows her to quickly return for Table to Table, a regular free meal for those in need held in the parish hall, followed by Wednesday night vespers.
Rev. Barnes was president of Princeton Theological Seminary when Rev. Shelley was one of about 500 students on campus. “Austin and I had quite a few really significant conversations about ministry and some of the challenges,” he says. “She’s so caring and tender and thoughtful. Some of the hardship Austin went through in her early life has made her a better pastor.
“People are anxious and worried about the future. People are worried about the country and are looking for insight and are looking for truth. They are coming back to churches that are offering thoughtful perspectives.”
Rev. Barnes says Rev. Shelley is a rare blend of warmth, keen intellect and someone “capable of writing sermons that address the human condition.”
Still, Rev. Shelley values questions — even of herself. She often wonders, “Am I seeing current events through the lens of my faith? How do I have integrity? How do I say things in a way that can be heard?
“That’s my calling,” she says, “to listen well without judgment and to speak with kindness.”
Story by Marylynne Pitz
Photos Courtesy Shadyside Presbyterian Church