Pastor-poet and illustrator couple team up to deliver the

Contemplative poetry lives in the heart of Pastor Dan Schiel who, for the past several years, has composed a poem every week to walk alongside his Sunday morning sermon. These poems, as well as myriad narrative compositions, render a written declaration of his spiritual life.

Illustrations which accompany his sermons and poetry are created by Pastor Dan’s wife, Grace Ellen Schiel. During the past four years this husband-wife collaboration has produced more than 200 illustrated poems which have been published in book form, each volume covering an entire Christian Year from Advent to Christ the King Sunday. The four book titles include: Finding Ourselves at Home (2003-2004); An Unimagined Force (2004-2005); Bending toward the Holy (2005-2006); and Waiting for God to Speak (2006-2007).

Pastor Dan Schiel

Grace Ellen and Dan Schiel, Dec. 2007

Born and raised in Montgomery County, Texas, Dan was called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ at age 20 and has served as pastor in independent churches for the past forty years. At age 48, he resigned his pastorate in Midland, TX where he had served for nine years to move to Point Roberts, WA to attend Regent College, a seminary in Vancouver, B.C. Canada where he earned a Master’s degree in 1997. In November of that year, he and his wife Grace Ellen returned to Conroe, TX to assume the pastorate of Christ Church on League Line Road, a church he had founded twenty years earlier. His focus in ministry is to help his congregation to live contemplatively, paying attention to God at work in their lives, and to live in response to Him.

Grace Ellen Schiel

One semester in a Life-Long Learning drawing class under the tutelage of Robert McGeehee at Montgomery College in 2002 was the point of revelation in Grace Ellen’s life that her childhood desire to draw and paint could be something more than just a dream. Desiring to learn watercolor, she painted a portrait of a friend in black and white and entered it in the amateur division of an Art Show in the Fall of 2003 and was awarded a blue ribbon. The surprise and excitement of this spurred her on to enter ensuing art shows in which she was blessed to receive more awards. In the Fall of 2003, her pastor husband Dan asked that she prepare an illustration for the front of the Sunday church bulletin to complement his sermon. From that time on at his request, she has drawn or painted weekly illustrations in graphite, pen and ink, ink with watercolor wash, and watercolor. She knows that the ability, and the inspiration and ideas for her art, come wholly from God. She believes deeply that “art without passion is like food without seasoning or an ocean without water. Passion for God begets passion for what he gives us to do.”