Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Winter 2025  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "Awakening to Your Purpose: An Interview with Steve Poos-Benson"   Quest 113:1, pg 12-16

by Richard Smoley 

In 2014, Quest Books published Sent to Soar: Fulfill Your Divine Potential for Yourself and for the World by Steve Poos-Benson, a Presbyterian pastor in Littleton, Colorado. It’s a guide to spiritual self-coaching based on the assumption that, as he writes, “a divine intention is imbedded within you and that you yourself have been sent into creation” and that “we are not sent alone. To fulfill our destiny, we need to learn how to collaborate with others.”

Poos-Benson also writes that everything in his book “is far more than techniques I have dreamt up. Sent to Soar is personal.”

Poos-Benson was a first responder to the shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, which shocked the entire nation. About the aftermath he writes, “I have seen many things in my years as a pastor; none of them can compare to the relief of watching parents reuniting with their teenagers that day. However, I have seen nothing emptier than watching the numbers of parents dwindle down, those remaining filled with a sick sense of dread.”

This experience, along with forty years of work as a pastor, has shaped Poos-Benson’s outlook on life and his approach to one of the most important aspects of his work: personal coaching. In September 2024, I interviewed him via Zoom on these and other subjects.

Richard Smoley: A lot of your work has to do these days with spiritual coaching. I always think of a coach as a guy in a sweatshirt with a whistle around his neck, but I gather that’s not entirely correct in this context. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what coaching means from your point of view.

Steve Poos-Benson: I don’t wear a sweatshirt or a whistle, although sometimes I feel I should, to try to motivate people to engage their life. I have this undying belief that each of us has a divine purpose that the Creator has given to us from the moment of our conception forward. Our major job in life is to realize what that potential is, what that purpose is, and to actualize. My coaching is based around helping people discover that divine potential, what that looks like, and how to bring it to fulfillment. Although coaching has many different aspects—mental, emotional, physical—it has a spiritual aspect too, as people come to terms with who they are as a spiritual person.

Smoley: I believe you’re right; I believe that everyone does have an inbuilt divine purpose. But many people have a great deal of trouble figuring out what this is, particularly in relation to career. Many people are in jobs that don’t seem to serve a higher purpose. They might be working in a minor and apparently insignificant role for a huge company. How do you work with people in situations like this?

Poos-Benson: I think sometimes we confuse a career—making money—with our sense of purpose. If you can have a career and make money with your purpose, that’s wonderful. But oftentimes that’s not possible. You need to have that job to pay the bills, and that job might not be very fulfilling. But if you can discover your sense of purpose, it brings an overall sense of meaning to your life and your job.

Ultimately your sense of purpose might not have anything to do with your career. I have a good friend: he’s retired now, but he was a career engineer, and he designed pipelines for many different projects. He was really good as an engineer, but it wasn’t his purpose: it didn’t fill his soul. But what did fill his soul was being a martial arts instructor. He had a studio, and he loved working with little kids, teaching them martial arts, developing their confidence, their physical skills, balance, and acumen. That is what he lived for. He worked as an engineer from eight to five, but then he’d go to his tae kwon do studio, and he worked with children. That’s what fed his soul. It allowed him to find more meaning when he was working as an engineer.

If people can make money when they fulfill their purpose, that’s fantastic. But if not, you need to find your purpose in other places in your life.

Smoley: That’s a very interesting case, because this engineer was doing something extraordinarily useful for society. These pipelines are incredibly important to a huge number of people, yet he didn’t find much meaning in building them. That strikes me as a little peculiar. He didn’t seem to recognize the value of what he was doing professionally.

Poos-Benson: I should probably rephrase my point. This man loves working with his team. He’s using his skills and ability. He’s a very accomplished engineer, so you could say he does find meaning in that. But what fills his soul is putting on his dobok, his martial arts uniform, and having a classroom full of kids. You could say that he’s fulfilling his purpose in both ways.

I’ve seen him in both roles. He has a big office, he has a huge staff, and he’s a consummate professional. But to see him with kids—it’s amazing how he lights up. He feels his purpose is ultimately being fulfilled by work with these children. When he retired, he went full-time into working with kids in martial arts.

In short, if you can find meaning in both roles, that’s awesome. But if you don’t find meaning in your work, I would encourage you to try to find a greater sense of purpose outside of it.

Smoley: Could you tell us a little bit about your book, Sent to Soar: Fulfill Your Divine Potential for Yourself and for the World? It discusses these questions.

Poos-Benson: My book is at the root of what I really believe about people discovering of their sense of purpose, coming from the Creator into the world. When you develop that sense of purpose, you really begin to soar: you find meaning and hope and joy and identity. In the book, I talk about the different things that you need to do to discover your passion and a sense of purpose.

Smoley: There seems to be a number of ways to look at this question. Up to this point, we’ve been talking about meaning and purpose in terms of work and social interaction. But there seems to be another sense of purpose that seems to be equally vital, and that is a spiritual connection to higher things, to the divine. Maybe you could talk about how you integrate this into your coaching approach as well.

Poos-Benson: I’m a Presbyterian pastor, so I deal a lot with people’s spirituality.

I also coach people to talk about their past. What is their spiritual experience with their past? Some people grew up going to a church or a synagogue or a mosque, and they moved away from it. Maybe they had a traumatic experience that made them leave, or maybe the observance became a dusty, empty shell.

We talk about that past, and we deal with any trauma that might be there, because people wrestle with a great deal of spiritual trauma. Then we start looking at new possibilities.

I also help people develop a well-rounded understanding of all the world religions and spiritualities and how they work together. I like to guide people into the different world religions and their wisdom literature. If they’re curious about Buddhism, I encourage them to read about Buddhism. Taoism? Read the Tao Te Ching. If they’re interested in Hinduism, read the Bhagavad Gita. I even guide some people into the pagan religions and Wicca and help them understand earth spirituality. I try to use these basic traditions as avenues for opening their eyes to a greater sense of the Creator moving in the cosmos and in their own lives as well.

Smoley: I wonder if you could give us a capsule summary of the congregation you serve. Who are they? What are their issues?

Poos-Benson: I’ve been a pastor at Columbine United Church in Littleton, Colorado, for forty years. The cool thing about this church is that it’s ecumenical. It’s Presbyterian, Methodist, and United Church of Christ. We’re different denominations working together. But we also have people from all different denominations working here. We even have people from different faiths who come to Columbine to participate in the life.

In our congregation, we are working for progressive theology. What does it mean to be a progressive Christian in our current society? A lot of people cringe when they hear the word Christian, because they think of the conservative, evangelical side of Christendom that seems to dominate our society right now, whereas those of us who are on the progressive end of the spectrum are trying to help Christianity into a whole new era.

Progressive Christianity is very huge, very expansive. It allows me to explore all the different world religions. Our church is trying to deal with how to be a progressive Christian. We deal with a lot of social issues. We are very open to the LGBTQ+ community. We have many members who are LGBTQ+. They are church leaders, they teach, they are presidents of our congregation. They’re an integral part of what we do. We were doing gay weddings way before the denominations recognized it. We try to be on the cutting edge of social, cultural, and spiritual issues.

Smoley: The mainstream media are materialistic in outlook. The only options they present are their own secular, materialistic, agnostic to atheistic worldview versus evangelical Christianity, which is often extremely narrow-minded. The media seem to ignore this stream of progressive Christianity, Judaism, and other religions. Would you agree that that’s a problem?

Poos-Benson: I think it’s a huge problem. At this point evangelical Christianity, and the politics that it’s engaged in, has defined what it means to be a Christian today. The media pays attention to it because it’s such a political presence in our society. When people think of  what it means to be a Christian, they think of evangelical Christianity. The same is true with Islam: when people hear the word Islam, they think of Islamic fundamentalists, whereas Islam is a religion of peace and grace and mercy. The same seems to be true of Judaism. The media focus on these cultural icons, ignoring the progressive sectors within each one of these religions, which are helping them evolve into a new day.

Smoley: Today many people identify as spiritual but not religious. Could you talk a little about this trend?

Poos-Benson: It’s a huge thing, and I think it goes to the failure of religions to be spiritually dynamic places to feed people’s souls. People have gotten so frustrated with the dusty narrow-mindedness of the world religions that they have begun to leave those religions behind and branch off into finding alternative spiritualities.

I encourage that. I say, if the religion doesn’t do something for you, branch out, find something new, find something different. I think people find the spiritual in many different ways: nature, science, art, even engineering and architecture.

I always tell people to go where your soul leads you. If your soul isn’t fed by the religions, go someplace else. If you find a sense of curiosity or joy through art, theater, movies, reading, or walking in nature, go where your soul leads you, because that will ultimately open your heart up to the presence of the Creator. If your soul doesn’t lead you to religion or religions, then go where it is leading. Follow your curiosity, and follow your passion.

Smoley: Of course I agree with you, but for the sake of the interview, let me pretend that I don’t. I might retort, “That’s all very well and good, but how can you call that Christianity?”

Poos-Benson: That’s the progressive end of Christendom. A lot of people within the evangelical community consider me a heretic: an agent of Satan, an agent of the Devil. I’ve been called that on many different occasions. People have told me I’m leading my congregation to hell.

I’ve laughed at that, because I think the best of Christianity is universal. I believe in universal salvation. I believe that through God’s love, through Christ, the entire world is saved; that pushes me even further on the progressive end of the Christian spectrum. But it is, I believe, the best of Christianity, and it’s just not me. A whole host of Christians believe this way, as well as others within all the different religions. Within each of the traditions there are progressive ends. When you look at them, you see that we all start bending together to find a common vision and a common sense of interrelationship with one another as children of the Creator.

Not too long ago, I read a powerful metaphor: there is one ocean, but many shores. The great ocean washes up upon all these different shores of the different world religions, as well as alternative spiritualities. The religion, the shore, is not the goal in and of itself; rather it is the ocean. The key is to be willing to swim into and across the ocean—and meeting other people who are swimming from their different shores into the ocean.

A lot of people might say, “You’re not a Christian.” I like to say, “No, I’m the best type of Christian, because I’m a universal Christian that embraces the entire world.”

Smoley: That’s very beautiful and noble. Let’s go back to another issue with evangelicalism. Many religions, particularly the conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist sides, have a bizarre obsession with the Devil. They seem to be looking for the Devil everywhere. Everything is the Devil—that starts to look like a mental disorder, whether it’s collective or individual. If I see everything as the Devil, I have to start asking myself, what’s wrong with me?

Poos-Benson: The evangelical sector of Christianity is obsessed with the idea that we are in a spiritual battle with the Devil, with the dark forces. This obsession goes back to apocalyptic theology at the end of the first century. People were so oppressed by the Roman Empire that they began looking for relief, for God to come screaming in through the clouds and save them from their oppression. They developed apocalyptic images of horses and wild things happening in the creation.

These apocalyptic images were locked in at the end of the first century. But we have taken those apocalyptic images and put them onto our society. When people think about the Devil and Satan, they don’t really think about the Bible; they think about Dante’s Inferno. Dante gave Christendom the basic images of Satan and hell. When a lot of people think about Satan today, it’s not really from the New Testament; it’s apocalypticism, and Dante’s Inferno.

I want to give people permission to say, “I don’t believe in the Devil.” I don’t believe in the Devil. I don’t believe in a Satanic being that is out there trying to destroy our lives. That’s not a part of my worldview. I think that a God of love and grace would not create a devil to destroy what God loves the most: human beings and the creation. I would say, focus on a graceful, joyful, fulfilling, loving God, and allow those who want to believe in Satan and their own apocalyptic images and Dante’s Inferno to do so.

Smoley: That is very apt. At the same time, we still have to face the problem of evil in the world. And you’ve seen this very graphically, vividly, and horribly, because you were a first responder to the Columbine shootings. Could you talk about your response to that, and what it tells you about evil?

Poos-Benson: Thank you for bringing that up. It goes way back to 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School and began shooting and killing people. I was kind of a first responder: my church is right down the road from the high school. How could two eighteen-year-old boys dream up such a horrific vision that they wanted to destroy their entire school?

It got me thinking about evil. In his book about the subject, People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck talks about the fact that there are two opposing forces in the world. There’s a force for life—LIVE—and there’s a counterforce in the world: EVIL, which is LIVE spelled backwards.

There’s a kind of continuum whereby people choose the way they are going to live their lives. They baby-step their way into one or the other. Some people baby-step their way into bringing goodness, love, and joy into the world. Others baby-step their way into evil. They do small but increasingly destructive things. Before they know it, they’re perpetrating horrific evil.

That has been a helpful image for me: either you can daily choose to do LIVE, or you can daily choose to do EVIL. This spectrum is tilted: it’s really easy to do evil. It is hard to do good. It is hard to choose to do the good, the just, the ethical, the moral, the joyful thing.

Smoley: I see it from the perspective of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

 The Kabbalistic tree has two pillars on its sides. One is the pillar of mercy; the other is the pillar of severity. If either one is out of balance, some kind of evil arises. If there’s too much on the side of mercy, you have gluttony and greed; if there’s too much on the side of severity, you have cruelty. Goodness, as Aristotle said, is a mean between these two.

On another subject, I get the impression from you that your own congregation is fairly evenly divided politically between Republicans and Democrats. Could you say a little bit about how that tension plays out? Is there any evidence of it in the congregation? Or does everyone get along fine and keep their opinions to themselves?

Poos-Benson: For the most part, we get along with one another. We talk about our faith, we talk about our politics, but we do it with a great deal of respect. In our church, we try to create a healthy community, where people have their political views, and we honor and respect the differences. We talk about these issues, but we don’t proselytize.

Periodically someone will come and blurt out how much they hate a given political figure; they push their politics onto people and want everybody to believe as they believe. I don’t try to change someone’s mind. I try to engage in dialogue. Let the fringes be the fringes, and focus on dialogue and healthy community. You have to be willing to sit down with people who believe differently than you and engage in a dialogue to listen to what makes them tick. What are their worldviews? Why do they believe the way they believe?

 Smoley: One fact that seems to be relevant here is that, particularly with political issues, there’s a certain reactivity in the human mind. For some reason, people—and this includes me—are often easily triggered into reactivity when certain issues or individuals come up.

It would seem that self-understanding has to do with seeing and managing one’s own reactivity. Would you agree with that?

Poos-Benson: Oh, yeah. I think it goes back to what the media is doing. The media are looking for triggers to pull. People buy headlines, they buy into media personalities. People actually look for those triggers.

I think that people have to be very aware of their own buttons. When someone tries to push those buttons to get a reaction, we can say, “OK, that’s a button. I have strong opinions, but I’m not going to allow my button to be pushed. I’m going to engage us in a healthy way and listen and either choose to respond or not respond.”

Personally, I don’t pay attention to any news sources that are button pushers. I don’t think those people are healthy and helpful in any way, shape, or form. I look for places like the Theosophical Society, which is fostering healthy dialogue and healthy education. I think people should gravitate to places like this to soften their buttons, if you will, and learn how to engage in healthy community and healthy dialogue.

Smoley: There’s another aspect to this problem. It’s not just that people have their buttons pushed. The popularity of this kind of media suggests that people want to have their buttons pushed. Their entertainment, their excitement, comes from having their buttons pushed. It’s fun for them in a weird, sick way. How do you see that?

Poos-Benson: We have a culture of reactionism. Buttons are being pushed all over the place. I believe that a spiritual person will try to find a way to step back from allowing their buttons to be pushed.

Smoley: This reminds me of the days of the Gulf War in the early nineties. A friend of mine said, “I’m getting so upset by all this news about the war.” I said, “Why don’t you just stop watching it?” She said, “I never thought of that.”

Poos-Benson: I tell people in my congregation, as well as in my coaching career, to stay away from the trauma of watching the news. Watch it once, get your information, but stop watching the loop. We’re watching the loop of the Twin Towers coming down, the loop of kids being evacuated from schools. Quit watching those loops, because that’s just trauma over and over—button pushing. Don’t get hooked. Pay attention to those things that bring you joy in life—music, theater, art, dialogue, community. Find your community.