Today we’d like to introduce you to Keith Case.
Hi Keith, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I dipped Skoal Bandits when I was in kindergarten and broke Rusty Meeks’ watch on the playground after I body slammed him. Felt guilty about both, hard not to when they have the Bible Belt tightened around you in the South. Smoked Camel Lights in my tree house and shot fireworks at cop cars on the weekends to get them to chase us for entertainment.
Life on Signal Mountain right outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee was primarily about survival for a kid with a deeply sensitive heart, skin, sinuses, and nowhere that really felt like home. That opening trailer for Miami Vice, and the song that went along with it, was calling my name. Underneath my wild wide eyes was a scared kid wondering if belonging were even a possibility.
The last place I thought I might find that was at a summer youth camp. The summer before ninth grade, I got invited to a camp at Panama City Beach. Through MTV, I had learned that Snoop Dogg was going to be playing there at Club La Vela. Ended up having a spiritual encounter at that camp that transformed the trajectory of my life. Flannery O Connor says the South is haunted by Jesus and I had a sense that I had somehow come face to face with him.
Life did not become easier, my heart just came to life and now I had to learn to live it. While for some, faith can lead them into constraint, it led me into expansion. What unfolded was a journey that took me from parties to train hopping, traveling overseas in the summer to places like Jamaica where I could have sworn was where I was supposed to be born. It also opened me up to connection like I had never experienced in my life. Connection to myself, to others, to God, to nature.
I fell in love with the Caribbean and Latin culture. I also fell in love with cities as I watched my own city be transformed and experience a rebirth. In college I studied cities and theology and lived in Little Havana for a summer, played pickup ball in Liberty City, walked most of South Beach, and that is when I fell head over heels for Miami. Cities were not just places to party. They were ecosystems for life and God wants us to invest in the ecosystem so it can flourish.
After college, I got exposed to counseling during a trip to Puerto Rico. That was another pivotal moment in my life and led me to pursue a masters in counseling and divinity at a grad school in Orlando. During that season, my wife and I were married, had our first kid, and then moved to Key Biscayne where I served as a pastor for multiple years. Had a ton of fun throwing huge parties on the island, hosting film premieres, fashion shows, and concerts on our waterfront property.
From my time there I was recruited by an organization out of New York City to start a church in Miami. While I had been trained in a theology that equipped me with a mind for the city, counseling gave me a heart for it and for her people. As a pastor with training as a therapist, I spent time investing in caring for the leaders of the medical, judicial, financial, marine biology, and meteorology industries in our beautiful city. The idea was if we can care for the leaders and help them live into health, we can also help them take ownership of their spaces and bring healing to the industries of our city.
Miami was just the beginning and led me to a city to the north primed for rebirth and renewal. I was then asked to do a similar work in West Palm Beach where we have been for the last 12 years. West Palm was where creativity and community invited me into even deeper connection. My work here has been even more grounded in the journey of living into vulnerability, becoming an advocate for the arts and the artists that we all are, and adopting the Tarpon Cove Islands in the Lake Worth Lagoon directly east of our church property that sits on the south end of downtown West Palm Beach.
In all my work, both as a pastor and a therapist, I am headlong committed to the work of ending the loneliness and polarization that fuels it. I create spaces where if you learn to sit quietly enough you might get a glimpse of someone’s soul and that will feed you for a month.
I now pastor two churches. One I started 10 years ago called Providencia WPB and one that is 100 years old called Memorial Presbyterian. Both churches play host to Wood Hall which is our performing arts space where we host concerts, fashion shows, art showcases, film premieres, and more. I also have a counseling practice and co founded the Providencia Counseling Collective which has 15 therapists and a scholarship to make counseling affordable for anyone in our city who needs it.
Somewhere along the way, the story got way bigger than me. My wife ended up adding four other kids to the pack to get a total of five. Our kids are rad. Being a parent has been one of the coolest experiences of my life and getting to build with my incredibly intuitive and creative wife has been so fulfilling. We love our house, our neighborhood, and the city we get to serve through our churches.
If there are waves, you can find me in the water on Palm Beach surfing with my kids and the surf community that has become like family to us.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Cleaned Version Without Dashes
At 13 I was ready to die. Maybe suicidal. And maybe my first time in a police car.
At 16 I did not want to live past 18, because who wants to become an adult and then you have to work.
At 25 I left my job to work for an airline for a year, to travel the world and find the right grad school. Then 9/11 happened and my start date never did. I ended up working warehouse jobs, scooping ice cream, and building houses.
At 26 I pulled off the interstate out of anxiety on my way to grad school and forgot I was towing a trailer. It pushed me through the intersection and I just kept on driving.
At 29 we had our first kid. I was a full time student with two part time jobs and I was taking my son with me to my grad school classes. I would sit on the back row and rock him and pray that my professors would not say anything. When my babysitter fell through, he ended up sitting in a car seat in my last counseling session before graduation. My client was a stripper and the ethical violation was mine for having my newborn in the room.
At 32 I had to confront a retired opera singer who thought it was fine to walk around church grabbing the butts of young men, including mine. The second time it happened, the cops were called.
At 36 I confronted a worship leader about inappropriate sexual comments they were making toward my wife and toward me. They ended up attacking me in their office. Not a fun experience.
At 37 I was driving into West Palm Beach with a blown out knee, a pregnant wife, no life insurance, and thirty thousand dollars in an account to start a new church.
At 44 I was in the most creative and fulfilling season of my work and family life. That is when Covid hit and scattered our artist community.
I tell my kids, our churches, and my clients that no matter what you do in life, you will suffer. Make your suffering worth it. My pursuit of authentic creative community where people find belonging has definitely been worth it. Every step.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a curator of spaces where culture, spirituality, and creativity come together. My art form is building community. I specialize in helping people who feel on the edges find belonging and purpose with others who are on a similar journey. I do this through performance and visual arts spaces, through deep listening and storytelling, and through the kind of soul care that helps people come back to themselves and back to life.
Both of our churches host Wood Hall, our performing arts space in West Palm Beach. We have hosted concerts, film premieres, fashion shows, and art showcases. I love seeing artists walk into a room uncertain and walk out feeling like they found a space where they were really heard and seen. That moment when someone realizes they are not alone. That is the art. It fuels their creativity.
As a pastor and a therapist, I work with artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders so they can create from a place of health and imagination rather than fear and isolation. I want the creative people of our city to flourish, because when they do, the whole city comes to life. For them to find local sustainability and for churches to commission local artists again like they did five hundred years ago.
I am most proud of the community we have built. We have watched strangers become family, we have supported local artists and hosted their dreams, and we have raised our kids inside a culture that values curiosity and creativity. What sets me apart is that I see the city as a studio where we as people get to create together a more beautiful space. My hope is that our work continues to help our city become a place where everyone knows they belong. If connection is the cure for addiction and loneliness, can you imagine a city where more and more of us began to feel this?
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I barely read books. I probably have dyslexia. Two of my kids have it so that would make sense.
The books that have shaped me include The Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, Flannery O Connor, How to Know a Person by David Brooks, The Artists Way by Julia Cameron, The Road to Daybreak by Henri Nouwen, Parenting with Heart, Surrender by Bono, Wholeheartedness by Chuck DeGroat, Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key, and Alchemy.
I love music, new and old, across a variety of genres. Right now it is the street jazz you find in downtown New Orleans.
I watch a ton of documentaries on fashion from couture to sustainability. I love documentaries. My favorite film of all time is Traffic. I love stories where people wake up to themselves and to each other. My favorite line in Traffic comes right at the end. “We are just here to listen.”
I also love Saturday Night Live and try to watch it as much as possible. The jazz piece at the end gets me every time.
I spend time at our local museum, the Norton. I go there at least once a week and I visit the Rothko painting for at least a two minute stare down.
My greatest fuel and inspiration is when another human takes the risk to pull back the layers and be seen. My clients really do inspire me with their courage.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.providenciawpb.org and https://www.gompc.org and https://www.providenciacounselingcollective.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/providenciawpb and https://www.instagram.com/woodhallwpb
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063912586242
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-case-942562a/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@memorialpresbyterianchurch7959?si=OSJ1LERgYOSqz3ne
Image Credits
Hailey Wilson
