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Paul Hayden laughs with several women at the free communty dinner the church hosts each Wednesday. From left, Dotty Waters, Carol Harris and Susan Bullock get news about the campfire worship service Sunday. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / PRICE CHAMBERS

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On Pentecost Sunday, the Rev. Paul Hayden led several hymns at the Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole, singing out with his clear baritone voice.

Then, before he read a word of Scripture, the pastor began to talk about remodeling his house and how he learned to install siding. He didn’t cut the lengths perfectly and left some gaps. He thought it didn’t look half bad, but then his contractor came along, shaking his head. The contractor told Hayden to remove the short pieces, which he would use on a different job.

“We don’t do everything right all the time,” Hayden said, illustrating man’s fallible nature by admitting his own shortcoming. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna put putty in that crack, and nobody else will know that I blew it except me and the general contractor.’”

In the story, the contractor took on the aura of God, saying, in essence, “I’m in the business of taking your mistakes, forgiving them and making it right,” Hayden said.

Hayden, 59, is in the business of saving souls, but he doesn’t do it just within the vacuum of his own church. He reaches out to the community through music and stories, by visiting the sick and offering food to the hungry. A year ago, his church opened its Wednesday night dinners to the community, giving those in need a chance for a free, hearty meal.

This spring, the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce named Hayden 2010 Citizen of the Year. He shrugs off the mantle, saying it fits awkwardly.

“So many people are doing what they feel called to do,” he said, “and are doing it well.”

To watch Hayden on a Sunday morning is a bit like watching professional theater. From the main character’s well-groomed silver locks to his perfect-pitch singing, from the way he engages the audience to his memorization of his monologue, it’s seamless. He gestures to emphasize a point; his voice rises and falls, creating virtual italics or exclamation points. He keeps his segments short enough to combat boredom and full of trivia, jokes and popular-culture references.

Members of the congregation pay attention. There is the stray jiggle of the knee, sip of the coffee, but all in all, they are rapt.

Last month, he addressed a gaggle of graduating high school seniors, telling them that Charlie “Tremendous” Jones offered three questions each human being must answer: Who am I? What will I do with my life? With whom will I do it?

He urged graduates to “make a distinction between making a living and making a difference” and to be conscious that “who I am is different than what I do.”

Pull of the pulpit

Hayden, the youngest child of an accountant and music teacher, grew up attending a Bible church in Orange County, Calif. He hoped to be a professional athlete, a dream cut short in college at Seattle Pacific University when funding for the baseball team dried up. He thought of being a math teacher, a broadcaster, a musician. He changed his major six times before he left college and toured the country as part of a Christian music group, where he was charged with speaking to groups numbering  25 to 4,000. It was during this time that Hayden felt the pull to the pulpit and returned to college aimed at seminary.

He narrowly escaped being drafted and sent to Vietnam and went on to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. After graduating, he worked as a youth minister at the enormous First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, then as a junior pastor in Sacramento, Calif. During summers, he strummed his guitar around campfire services at the foot of Mount Rainier. His first solo church was a ramshackle building in isolated Friday Harbor, Wash., but during his 11 years there, he built a new sanctuary and boosted the flock from 80 to 320. In 1994, he and his family moved to Jackson Hole to start the church here.

A parishioner gave him a fancy nameplate for his desk that reads “Rev. Dr. Paul E. Hayden.” Ever humble, on the back side of it, Hayden taped a scrap of paper declaring himself “Just plain Paul.”

What he does best is connect with people. He’s “magnetic and sincere,” said Lynn Sherwood-Humphries, children youth and family coordinator at the church. “He’ll remember your name. He’ll remember your story.”

Alison Kyle Varilone, a soprano who leads songs with Hayden each Sunday, said that even more than public speaking, the pastor specializes in focused listening.

“He gives you the attention that makes you feel special,” Varilone said. “His commitment and dedication to the people at church is like none I’ve ever experienced. He cares. He cares for the people. He expresses his love of God by loving all those in the congregation.”

Hayden recently moderated a women’s Bible study group of nine ladies from their 30s to their 70s. They talked about how David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, and they read Psalm 51, his public confession.

They talked about the pull of power and success. They listed public figures who had their transgressions splashed onto television – Tiger Woods, John Edwards, Bill Clinton – and the sequence of events involved: sin, consequence, cover-up, accountability, repentance.

“No matter how much people praise you, salute you, name you citizen of the year,” Hayden said, “we’re all of us just one incident away from incredible vulnerability.”

‘He makes it relevant’

For the past 15 years or so, Caryn Haman has been attending the Bible study group, and counts Hayden as the main reason.

“He’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had for anything,” Haman said. “He makes it relevant. He’s taking something and making it real to our life. We see how we learn from our mistakes in life.”

Although Hayden knows the Bible backward and forward, he prefers to tell stories rather than quote Scripture. It’s what Jesus would do, he said.

“Jesus only quoted the Bible to two sources,” Hayden said, “the religious leaders of the day and Satan. Talking to common people, he used stories.”

At a family service last week,  Hayden told the story of David and Goliath. He focused his attention on the scrawny preteens and confessed that he loved that story as a little guy himself, not breaking 5 feet 3 inches and 110 pounds until after his freshman year of high school.

“Goliath was 9 feet tall; his sword weighed 35 pounds,” Hayden said. “All David had was a slingshot. So when he was tending his sheep, he would put little Coca-Cola cans up on rocks and practice.”

Hayden paused for the belly laughter that followed his unexpected joke, then told the kids and parents that David chose five round rocks as ammunition not because he didn’t have faith in being able to knock out Goliath with one shot but because Goliath was known to have several large brothers.

“I like a guy who has confidence in what God can do but is prepared for what might happen,” Hayden said. “Prior prayerful planning prevents potential problems.”

Rather than preach fire and brimstone, Hayden drifted from his Bible church roots and chose Presbyterianism, he said,  because it’s inclusive, democratic and “more of a process of how we live our faith.” He doesn’t feel the need to convert everyone.

“That’d be a boring world,” Hayden said. “Part of what makes us unique and wonderful is diversity.”

No magic wand

In early May, Hayden led a group on a tour of Israel. He has spent much time studying theology and the way the world worships.

“All religions agree that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and got broken,” Hayden said. “We disagree on how to put him back together again.”

The Christian approach is accepting Jesus as a personal lord and savior, Hayden said, but many other faiths take salvation a step further, demanding good works in addition to good thoughts.

“We sort of wave a magic wand of Jesus over someone, and poof, we’re good,” he said.

In his personal life, Hayden has dealt with heartache and divorce from the mother of his three sons, Isaac, 29, Sam and James, both 21. It made him stronger and wiser, he said.

Education can be found not only in universities but also in the trenches of life, “out there where people are getting beat up,” Hayden said, “learning and healing and growing. You don’t want anybody to have cancer, but you want their counsel if you face it yourself.”

He and Terri, his wife of nearly seven years, blended families when her son, Cameron Foster, was 16, and the Hayden twins were 14. Now Isaac, a musician, is finishing up a live CD, Cameron is working on a degree in photography, James is studying education and Sam is captain of the soccer team at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Mike Lance, one of Hayden’s friends who doesn’t attend the Presbyterian Church, said the Hayden boys are “the finest young men I’ve had the opportunity to be around,” and that’s a testament to the parenting they received.

At the church’s May 26 community dinner, Hayden deflected praise for the turnout of 130 people, pointing out John Bitner, a congregation member who helped start the church garden and suggested opening the dinner to the public.

He discussed the family service that took place before dinner, and told of a recent experience coming upon children watching the movie Fivel Goes West.

“Where’s Jesus in this story?” Hayden asked them.

They considered the animated film as a parable and came up with pretty good answers. Like his friend Fuller Seminary professor Robert K. Johnston, who teaches a course on theology and film, Hayden encourages folks to “always look for Jesus.”

As a board member of the Good Samaritan Mission, Hayden often sees good people who have fallen on hard times, and he maintains an open countenance for all God sees fit to direct his way.

“Jesus hung out with people who were not your church people,” Hayden said. “The church people are the ones who crucified him. He didn’t reject anybody: a leper, a prostitute, a demon.”

Whether he’s consciously chosen to live his life that way or it’s something God developed inside him, Hayden doesn’t know, but he loves community members with all his energy.

Still, the lens of a small town can magnify his own imperfections.

“They know I was divorced,” Hayden said. “They know I got a technical foul in basketball because I’m an aggressive, competitive kind of guy. They know I yelled at the refs when my kids were in basketball. You can’t hide in a small community.”

Hayden compares life to a kayaker floating down the river. The waterway belongs to God, and the boatman can’t predict what’s around the next bend.

“There are times I’m going through rapids and holding on for dear life,” Hayden said. “Sometimes I come out on a sandbar and rest. But if I’m really going to be faithful to the adventure of my faith, I’ve got to get back in that river, and trust that it will take me to its destination. ... It’s my responsibility to try to be centered and balanced and stay in that flow.”

So how does he manage to always glow with joy? Hayden draws a diagram on a napkin: a cross-section of Jackson Lake. On the surface, happiness dwells. In the depths, there’s joy.

“When the storms of life take away my happiness,” Hayden said, “that doesn’t take away my joy and my strength.”