After Dan Stockum, MDiv ’08, moved to Silicon Valley in 2016 to join the staff of Bridges Community Church in Los Altos, people back in the South often asked whether the culture shock was real.
“Yes, but not in the way you think,” Stockum told them.
Within the technology capital of the world, Bridges’ campus sits 10 minutes away from the headquarters of Apple, Google and Meta. "People in the South think of the progressive politics, the beach or the drug culture,” Stockum said. “I don’t see any of that; it’s just computer engineers. That culture is very task oriented as opposed to the more relationally oriented culture of the South.”
That difference led to what Stockum called a “deep loneliness and isolation” in Silicon Valley, a loneliness he is working to alleviate with the power of the Gospel and the church.
“Every group has people, but not every group has community,” Stockum said.
For Stockum, even church in the area felt more like an opportunity to attend an event or hear a lecture, than to connect with a community of fellow believers. There were ministry leaders at other churches whose own church members did not know their name.
Frustrated by the lack of resources that answered the question of how to build such a community, Stockum decided to create it himself. That effort started by looking back to his time at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School.
“My Rivendell”
At an early age, Stockum felt the call to ministry, though, like Jonah, he ran from it for a while before God won.
“All my running felt like swimming upstream,” Stockum said.
During his undergraduate education at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, he admitted he wasn’t called to the world of engineering. He switched his major to business management and surrendered to the call to pursue seminary after graduation. On the way back from a beach trip, Stockum stopped at Samford to visit a mutual friend, and he toured Beeson Divinity School.
“The heavens opened,” Stockum said, “I knew this was where I had to be.” He stopped applying at other schools, confident the Lord had called him to Beeson.
After graduating from Beeson in 2008, Stockum went back to Georgia Tech as a campus minister. Seven years later, he felt called to serve the local church, eventually finding a job on the staff at Bridges. Stockum became the young adult pastor before taking over as the lead pastor in 2021.
In both campus ministry and local church ministry, Stockum said his time at Beeson prepared him to interact with those from other backgrounds and traditions. It also modeled the type of community he sought to plant in California.
“Beeson models this institutional community. They invest in the people there and make them feel like they matter. To weave that into the culture of an institution is a heavy lift. Beeson has given me a target. It’s my Rivendell. There is goodness and healing,” Stockum said, referencing the Elvish utopia in The Lord of the Rings.
Finding Belonging
After seeing the landscape of loneliness in Silicon Valley, Stockum began a PhD program focused on learning how to turn a group of people into a community of people. His work will be published in February 2027 in his new book, Finding Belonging. While it includes his doctoral dissertation, it also includes the story of Bridges, which is “dramatically different” from what they were five years ago, Stockum said.
“The new folks come because we have emphasized the welcoming and engaging aspect of church. Before, our parking lot was empty 15 minutes after church. Now, people hang out all afternoon.”
Bridges has become countercultural in the area, providing a space for people to know others and be known, Stockum said. Now, he’s hoping the work can help other churches in the area.
“If the average person here thought of church as the place they would be known and the place they matter, I think the churches here would be full,” Stockum said. “I’m grateful people have found that place in our church, though I’m sad it has to be found. I want all churches to have that kind of culture.”