He's the only person talking about love, but can you trust the preacher?

The title today comes from a lyric from the song Ball of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today) originally sung by The Temptations. My favorite version came out last year on The Neville Brothers latest album. Clicking the title will take you to their website.

This is a piece I wrote last Spring for my Nonfiction Finished Piece requirement. I am not sure all of you are ready for this. I say a few dirty words and speak in blunt truthfulness about how I feel about things. I feel this piece is important because since I wrote it I have felt even more embattled with some of the things I take on here. I am unsure these days about my future and I'm drifting toward walking out of The Church altogether. I'm just not sure one can have any integrity and a dissenting opinion simultaneously within organized religion.

Take this as it is, simply my thoughts and experience. If the purpose of this blogspot is to expose some thorns than this piece is neccessary to share.


Because It’s Good For You
By J.D. Rose
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Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ ”Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. Luke 19: 45-47
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I can see myself thirty years from now. I am twenty pounds lighter from dieting and a personal trainer I can finally afford. The brown hair surgically returned to my head thick is beginning to gray distinguishably. My gold rimmed glasses hang on the end of my nose. My dark brown eyes peer over them with authority and wisdom. My smile is polished white. My voice is articulate and rehearsed. My words are specific and direct. I’m wearing a dark blue pinstriped suit, an ivory white shirt and crimson tie, and a pair of polished dark brown Italian leather shoes. I’m tanned, ringed, clean shaven and clean cut. I stand on a stage in front of a giant metal cross and a massive robed choir, before a church of ten thousand men and women of all walks of life being broadcast to the world. I lift up my red leather bound gold trimmed Bible, I find camera one with a trained eye, and with professionalized sincerity I welcome the masses, here and at home, to Easter morning worship.
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There are breaks I take to survive the life I lead. For a twelve week period once when I lived in southern Indiana, when my activities ended on Sunday evening, I went to The Deerhead Tavern to hear a band called Blues 4 U play and drink pitchers of Killian’s Irish Red. I met this old guy named Sidney there. He had a white beard on a black face and a shaved bald head. He always wore suspenders and told stories I found hard to believe about singing in strip clubs and bars with famous people. Once a week Sidney got up and sang ‘Georgia on My Mind’ with the band. When Sidney closed his eyes, pulled on his suspenders and sang, the words “no peace I find” always had more significance to me. He was in a bar at 10:30 on a Sunday night for the same reason I was I always assumed, maybe it's why we were fast friends; because one can’t be truly righteous without knowing something of the alternative. Sidney was a deacon in a Baptist church downtown, and he lied to his wife about where he went when their meeting ended on Sunday nights. He would come to The Deerhead, drink orange juice, sing his song, dance with my friend Teresa, and smile so big I’d wonder what was church for him and what was just a gig.
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I was planning on taking one of my much needed breaks; time away from full-time church worker for the rest of me. It was the middle of March Madness, and there were not one but two basketball games on I wanted to see. It was early afternoon on Easter Sunday and I had a six pack of beer iced down and the rest of the day free. I had made the necessary adjustments to transition from churchgoer to guy on couch, but as I changed the channel from one game to another, knowing full well the risk I could avoid by using the previous channel button I clicked quickly past TBN, Trinity Broadcast Network, and fought like hell the urge to stop and watch.
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I watch Trinity Broadcast Network the way some people slow down for automobile accidents. In a small dose of watching I consistently see people who intrigue me, offend me, enrage me, and make me smile at their irrelevance and thinly veiled deceptions. There is the large woman who sings an endless stream of Christian hymns in front of a set that looks like it might host a cable-access cooking show or an infomercial for juicers on weekdays. Juicers and Jesus: two products that are probably good for you, but with a less than appealing sales staff.

There is the occasional appearance of James Robison, a Southern Baptist preacher always seated next to his extremely quiet wife Betty, who’s heavy on salvation and prayer, and who can also be seen next to his wife later at night on other channels selling a new vitamin supplement TriVita with as much fervor. I’ve wondered how they justify this dual purpose in life, selling Jesus and selling vitamins. Perhaps there are missing Bible verses where Peter, Andrew, and James moonlight as fig leaf supplement spokesmen between spreading the Gospel and dying as martyrs for their faith. I see the Robisons on at night, sometime after the black preachers who teach you how to become wealthy through believing and sometime before the grainy black and white footage of Oral Roberts extolling the teachings of God in the fifties.
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I have an ordained minister friend, Erica, who grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma where Oral Roberts University is. She tells this story about her brother who was in a wheelchair playing basketball inside Oral Roberts University gymnasium along with Erica and some other kids. As they were playing Oral Roberts came through the gymnasium, stopped and watched them for a minute as they took turns taking shots, including her brother. Oral Roberts approached and explained that they could no longer use the gym. The kids were confused. “Today?” they asked. “Not anymore,” the preacher explained. Their looks must have deserved further explanation, because he hung his head and sighed. “I can’t have him here,” brushing a Bible holding hand in Erica’s brother’s direction. “People will ask why I can’t heal him.”
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Somewhere on an office wall in the giant church where I’ll preach in my dark blue suit hangs a picture of me today; beer-gutted, bald-headed, unshaven, unmarried. I am spontaneous and flexible, rebellious and a bit on edge. I talk too fast and too much off the cuff. I’m wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a light blue golf shirt with a pair of seven dollar Wal-Mart sandals. I’ll speak of these days as my wilderness years, before I found my calling.

I’ll tell stories in my dark blue suit of me in my light blue golf shirt, of all the times I tried to deny the rules. I’ll talk about with recanted naivety my views as a young man. How I believed Jesus was a divine man, endowed with spiritual gifts but nothing more than a blessed human. How I believed all of us could be divine people if we followed his example of unconditional love. I’ll remember with laughter my position that there were more than one way to get to heaven and how I’d suggested even other religions may be paths.

I’ll describe in full detail how I believed I could take God into bars and nightclubs, because that which is divine in me can work through me in any situation. I’ll speak of myself like a reformed criminal, listing the sins of my flesh and my mind; sex, lust, drinking, cursing, doubting. And I’ll write books on the years I tried to convince the churches I served that love really is the point of the whole Bible. Then with a knowing smile I will explain how I was converted by the persistent truth and came to be a minister of Jesus Christ Almighty. I will sellout arenas with my message. I will sit at the table with kings and presidents, movie stars and music phenoms. I will wear my dark blue suit as they name me Christian of the year and as my church becomes a media empire in Jesus’ name.
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It was 4:30 Easter Sunday morning when I awoke. I turned on the TV to see the news. If Terri Schiavo had passed worship was going to be tricky. The anchor on CNN Headline News wished me a Happy Easter and I started the water for a shower. Just for spite, I turned on Fox News to see if they were making any comparisons from Teri to Jesus, which I expected but did not hear. Maybe they weren’t that evil. They did talk about the many celebrations going on around the world for Easter, highlighting the ailing Pope and his limited role this morning in Easter mass. In one corner of the world a dying man waves to inspire us, in another a dying woman’s wish divides a nation even further into reds and blues.

I have served First United Church of Christ in Bluffton, Indiana as Youth Pastor for almost four years and a church in Evansville for three years before that. This Easter morning I am solely responsible for sunrise service. Sunrise service is just a name. The sun is coming up as I make it to the church a little after 6:00 to set up. People start shuffling into the sanctuary around 6:45. I have a meditation planned; some quiet time built around music so we can focus on what has just happened that makes Easter so special. I can’t stand celebrating Easter without also remembering the days leading up to it. They are ugly days, violent, hopeless days; days that imprinted themselves on the memory of humanity. Everyone has experienced pain, and part of my understanding of God is that pain is part of the deal. It’s the flipside to joy. How can we have one without the other? So today I’ll make them feel a small measure of pain so they can have a fuller measure of joy.

I rebel in subtle and silent ways that are never seen and never discussed. For instance I refuse to recite the Lord’s Prayer in unison. Jesus used the prayer to teach his disciples how to pray, not as a pledge of allegiance. I’m also still not sure Jesus rose from the dead. It seems illogical. It seems unnecessary. But I concede something happened. Something transformed sorrow into joy, hopelessness into the motivation to share the good news. I haven’t convinced myself Jesus came back to life, but I haven’t ruled it out either. For me his message is just as powerful without the cosmic miracle. This morning we are going to sit and be quiet and reflect on the message he shared and lived out.
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For the most part I watch TBN for its endless parade of freaks and hustlers, credentialed and speaking on behalf of a God I too worship by name, but struggle to recognize in these incarnations. Rod Parsley, the Pastor of a megachurch in Columbus, Ohio wears fatigues to drive his point home about being soldiers for God. Every time I watch Rod I think about a football coach I had in middle school who picked on me until I cried one day to toughen me up. I thought he was an asshole then, I think he was an asshole now, and I can’t help but assume Rod Parsley is an asshole because on some instinctual level he reminds me of him.

Then there’s Paula White, the most sexually frustrated promiscuously dressed woman I’ve ever seen preaching or otherwise. She gets me fired up in ways that are inarguably unholy. The first time I watched Paula for any length I finally understood what a 'hate-fuck' was. I don’t know why anyone would listen to a word this woman has to say, but I know why they watch.
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The lighting is all wrong. The sanctuary is lit up like K-Mart and I get a few dirty looks from “widow-row” when I dim them. They tolerate me. I am a progressive universalist Christian who can’t stomach a literal interpretation of the Bible and thinks there are multiple paths, including other religions, to Truth. I think Christianity ought to be the most revered religion in the world only because if it is lived out in the way I interpret it, its greatest practitioners wouldn’t be Presidents and movie stars, but would be servants and poor.

They tolerate me because I truly care about the kids in this church. I never try to dictate to them or correct their mistakes, but rather listen to them explain why they can do better and then challenge them to do so. This will be my last Easter here most likely, before I head off to seminary and get credentialed myself, so today I feel the need to show them what I see. I play them a wordless Moby song that my friend Teresa describes as ‘the song at the end of the asteroid movie when all hope is lost.’ That’s a bit of the emotion I am trying to convey. The main character, the hero, has died. I want them to hurt to justify their celebration after pancakes and Sunday School.
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TBN’s all-stars take out of touch with reality to a new level. On their gold plated sets, with ornate high back gold armed and legged chairs they talk about a human-like, almost cartoon-like God that has been simplified to the lowest extreme. The founder of TBN, Paul Crouch, is usually clad in a goofy neck-tie, gray mustache, Republican comb-over, grandfather eyeglasses, and a light gray Matlock suit. His wife, Jan, is a true spectacle. She is almost always wearing a dark purple or black velvet dress, with hideous amounts of pink, purple, and blue make-up splotched over her collagen injected lips and sprawling alien face. And this is only an accent to her giant blondish with a hint of purply gray wig. If you’ve ever seen Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks movie, you’ve seen this woman, when the alien dresses up like an Earth woman and goes slinking into the White House, a massive blond weave atop its misshapen skull and eyes. She can be seen night and day crying her eyes out, for reasons passing all understanding.

The undisputed heavyweight champion of the Trinity Broadcast Network is Pastor Benny Hinn. Benny, born Toufik Benedictus Hinn in Israel is a white plumed olive skinned faith healer, always clad in a white suit with no tie, and a microphone in hand. Benny’s ministry takes in over 100 million dollars a year and holds crusades in all urban centers in North America and many mission spots like India and Northern Africa. Benny claims to heal people of all ailments by smacking them in the face with the Holy Spirit.

I’ve seen him allegedly cure AIDS, cancer, arthritis, and obesity. The obesity healing was my favorite. Usually when Benny heals someone he touches them and they fall straight back. The two people he “cured” of obesity were touched and fell slowly to one knee, then the next, then the floor. To think the Holy Spirit is so courteous and patient. Benny’s program is called This is Your Day and begins with a video montage of Benny with other famous Christians like Billy Graham, the Crouches, and Pope John Paul II. I can’t get enough of it. He hosts crusades and thousands of people come. Tens of thousands of people come and believe crippled men walk and mute children sing, and they’ve all been healed by this prophet named Benny.

Sometimes, in the ultimate indulgence of this laughable network, Benny will have Rod Parsley or Paula White on with him, and they’ll speak in tongues and prophesy, and a hundred or so people in the front few rows will fall out and start hemorrhaging in delight. Rod in his fatigues and Paula in her mini-skirt will get touched by this smooth Middle Eastern prophet and fall over repeatedly as he sends the Holy Spirit into them. And as Paula lies there, miniskirt riding up I shout Hallelujah myself as Benny begins to sing and the throngs cry out Jesus’ name and lift their hands.
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When you see Dwayne Taylor for the first time you think he must be, or was for a longtime, a biker, probably a Harley rider with black leather boots beside cool chrome. He is a formidable presence, but not in an intimidating way, like one might expect from across the room. He is a large man in stature, tall and thick. He has a brown mustache that is just a little thicker on the sides, like a receded handlebar, and he has a thick soul patch beneath it. He has a mane of hair that he keeps back until he goes out and then it flanks his dark framed glasses and accents his facial hair. Dwayne drinks Glenlivet single malt scotch unless they have Glenfiddich which he explains is older and smoother. The first three days I knew him we spent three nights in a row in a bar.

Dwayne Taylor has been an ordained Baptist minister for 23 years, since he did ride a Harley. He has spent the last two decades serving in churches as a music minister, associate pastor, and senior pastor. He’s currently unemployed. He knows he is employable, but doesn’t want to “whore himself out”. He wants to be called to the next thing as he believes he’s been called to all that has led him here. I tell him burning bushes are hard to come by.

While he waits Dwayne has begun a ministry to the Hispanic community of Denver, Colorado called ‘Tacos and Jesus’. It is simply a carry-in dinner, where people bring food to share, sit together, and catch up on the latest occurrences within the community. Dwayne doesn’t preach, he never leads worship, there are no songs, and no prayers but a blessing of the food. Dwayne just sits among this community and listens to what is happening in their lives. Inevitably each week someone shares a need; ‘I don’t have money for medicine’, ‘I can no longer mow my grass’, ‘I am feeling depressed these days’, ‘I am failing geometry’. They eat on Tuesdays. Dwayne spends Wednesday through Monday finding the resources, the finances, and the people to help in each circumstance, usually from within the community. Then he shows up again for ‘Tacos and Jesus’, sits and listens.
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I can’t escape the Darth Vader version of myself in the dark blue suit. He stands in my future waiting to be born. Waiting for one more year of deep complicated belief to become defeated by easy fill in the blank faith, fed to the masses over satellite waves, binding itself to an indulgent acting rather than an experiencing world. One more consistory meeting where they fail to make any changes, one more youth group meeting where they echo half thought clichés, one more conference where I feel overwhelmed by the vast majority of thinkers uninterested in making God any bigger than they are or Jesus’ message of love any realer than their ad campaigns and I might as well take my place, dark suited among them. I can’t walk away. I can’t spend my life on the outside. My only chance to turn them, to open them up, to expose all of us is to rise in stature among them; slowly evolving into the very thing I stand in stark opposition to now. I’ll have to whore myself out in order to stand one day amid the den of robbers and drive them out, myself included, in my dark blue suit and reclaimed idealism.
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My belief in a Christian God stems from my understanding of the message of Jesus of Nazareth. He said, when asked what the greatest commandment was, to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul was the most important thing. He said to love your neighbor as yourself was a close second. He said all other rules could be summed up by these two. I’ve never read where Jesus makes some of the claims that Christians do. I’ve never read where he asserted someone could be only good or bad. I’ve never read where he said only certain people could get into Heaven. I’ve never read where he named homosexuality a sin, said one had to say a prayer to be saved, or send in a satellite sponsorship fee to receive his blessing.

He said “love one another as I have loved you.” For me, my faith starts and stops here. But such sentiment is radical. There is no place for it in Christianity. It’s an either/or religion as presented in most places. C.S. Lewis said, basically, either you think Jesus was a man or a maniac. The church never talks about any alternatives. The church says either you believe and go to Heaven or do not and go to Hell. We rarely question the plain fact that many good people do not believe and many evil people do. Quick test:

One of these was a baptized Christian?
A) Mahatma Gandhi
B) His Holiness the Dalai Llama
C) Adolph Hitler
D) Mary, mother of Jesus
Let me see, who would I let in if I was running Heaven? Christianity must be bigger than the discussion of eithers and ors.

The opposition to opening up to such discussion is a powerful one however, and I feel their affect weighing on me every day. I sense them ask themselves the either/or question about me. Is he a good young youth minister or a radical kid who doesn’t know enough yet? Is he a positive influence or is his constant questioning making our kids question? Is he a sinner or a saint? There is no in between when you work in a church. I don’t mention Sidney in my sermons and I don’t drink pitchers of beer in the heads of my congregation.

And I feel the strain in my own thoughts. At what point do I lose the ability to distinguish between churchgoer and guy on couch, between minister and blues lover, between who I am and who I need to be for others to hear what I have to say. I feel boxed in from all other examples of Christian living by an emphasis on proselytizing; selling the juice, the vitamins, the answer. I feel in my heart that I can help people without converting them. I want to help people because of what I believe, not because I want my actions to be a sales pitch for how they should believe. These feelings present another either/or to my world. Either I am going to find a way to reconcile my faith with the vocation of serving God as a Pastor or I am going to give in to the watered down majority. Are there no other options?
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I met Dwayne Taylor at a conference in Los Angeles, California for church types discussing the Emerging Church. The Emerging Church is the movement within Evangelical Christian churches away from a focus on structure and hierarchy toward mission and relevant interaction with the unchurched. I was one of three mainline Protestants there. We are typically further behind on everything innovative, but three at a time is a good showing. Dwayne and I came to know each other out of necessity. Neither of us had a car at the conference and we had to bum rides everywhere. More than once the first day I found myself in a car with Dwayne.
Later that night a guy I’d met, Carter, asked me if I wanted to get a drink. I said yes and invited the folks riding in the same car as me, and Dwayne was excited about going out. So Carter, a former Pastor trying to be an actor in Hollywood, Dwayne, a self-proclaimed former “whore” trying to be a Pastor again, and me, in my cargo pants and light blue golf shirt, headed to a bar to get a drink.

When spiritual people go to a bar to get a drink, especially with one another, they turn into philosophers and poets, discussing the virtues of their lives, of any lives, of all life. Dwayne was seeking my counsel on what his next step should be in his ministry ‘Tacos and Jesus’. Carter was trying to convince himself he would make it as an actor. I was listening to ensure I would never become either man.

We were getting pretty drunk when a girl dancing alone caught our eyes and we debated over who should approach her. Dwayne immediately discounted himself as he is married. Carter put forth a good argument about why he should approach her as he lived in town and I did not. I began explaining how I was more charming than he was and had first dibs as I was a guest of Carter’s in this bar and in this town. Before we could settle our argument, she approached us and sat down and asked if we would talk to her.
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After seven hours of worship, which included a well-received sunrise service, a breakfast spent sitting with some of the members of 'widow row', a high energy hour of Sunday School with the first and second grade class, and morning worship spent as liturgist and choir tenor I am home. I have scheduled no youth events tonight and I have a six pack of beer and two basketball games ahead of me, until I see it; The Easter morning celebration service of Lakewood Christian Church in Houston Texas. Their Pastor is Joel Osteen, fifth this year on Church Reports list of Most Influential Christians in America, which starts with President George W. Bush, Mel Gibson, Billy Graham, and Rick Warren, and includes only two non evangelical-conservative people in Barack Obama at 39 and Jim Wallis at 43 and only three women.

The service is unbearably upbeat. For a second I think I am watching a half-time at a Superbowl, which may have something to do with the similarities between the two events. There is a choir of over 700 voices, to sing to over 30 thousand in attendance at the Minute Maid Park in Houston. The choir director stands on the pitcher’s mound before a massive stage which houses the choir and over twenty instruments and ten vocalists. They sing songs of exclamation and rejoicing as the cameras pan the crowds, sure to capture each ethnic group and age demographic.

A small band of children, representing multiple races and ethnicities comes out and recites scripture in a Welch’s Grape or latter-day Ovaltine commercial manner. They are trained, probably actors, probably earning a SAG card for this appearance, and when they announce Jesus has risen a huge ovation rings out in the baseball stadium. The worship leader, a professional singer I can’t distinguish from all other female Christian artists, with blond hair, perfect make-up and one part school ma’arm, one part dominatrix business suit, big sexy leather boots and a plunging neckline begins to sing a praise song. The choir begins to sing with her complete with hand motions and it is in this instance I realize they are all wearing black suits with blue shirts and red ties. We’ve come so far as a religion, from matching dirty tunics and sandals to matching suits and ties.
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Fucking vitamins.
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After the jollies are significantly stoked Pastor Joel comes out with a freshly pressed suit and slicked back hair, a winning smile, and a practiced sermon down to the inflection. Even his greeting has been rehearsed and I am now yelling at the TV. He encourages the praise and welcomes the crowd and me at home to the celebration in Jesus’ name. Who is this Jesus these crazy people are talking about? Did he just get named MVP of the game? Why are we here? The Jesus I worship wore a tunic and sandals and probably stunk of body odor his whole life. He didn’t come to start a new religion; in fact he came to save an old one. He died because the truth matters, and speaking it matters, and love matters, and loving matters, and in the end despite all of our clawing life doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. This stadium Jesus is a stand in for a prize lamb, a virgin to subside the volcano, while my Jesus was a teacher who told his students to love one another and then showed them how to do it.

Meanwhile in some little village in Iraq a Muslim boy is watching a satellite feed of 30 thousand Americans in suits, ties, khakis, dresses, make-up, and jewelry praising their God in a baseball stadium. Does he think Jesus wanted worship this way? Does he think Jesus was just a hyped up story from a team of amazing marketers, complete with a logo and an ad campaign? At least he knows Mohammed was a man, who lived, who shared his message without claims of divinity on his part or the part of others. A prophet is a man. He can be emulated, exemplified, aspired to. But what about a god? This question is too big for me and this stadium Jesus is too small.

As Joel begins his sermon they pan away and for a second I am a prophet myself. Behind the large stage on the walls of the outfield and on giant signs above the stage are the permanent advertisements of such Christian entities as Minute Maid, Citgo, and Coca-Cola. Easter, brought to you by Minute Maid orange juice. Resurrection sponsored by Citgo. Jesus; The Real Thing.

For a moment I am that boy in Iraq and I want to blow up a shit-load of American Christians.

Then I am a disciple again and I remember that during Holy Week Jesus went into the Temple and threw over the merchant’s tables. I remember that he washed his followers’ feet and fed them the night before he died. I remember the first Easter he visited only a dozen or so in a single room. Joel is spewing some story about a snake in the middle of the road, and how a man encounters it and crushes it with a boulder, as they shoot to a boy about the age of nine asleep in his mothers arms, while she stands hands raised to Heaven. So many people need fed these days.
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She has a thick French accent. Her name is Jessie. She tells Dwayne, Carter and I that she works at Air France in LAX. She says she is having trouble meeting “real people” and asks us if we are real people. None of us answer that question directly. A young man walks up who she identifies as her brother but we all know is her boyfriend or at the very least her date. He introduces himself as Kevin, and three questions into the conversation asks us what we’re doing here, from Colorado and Indiana, in a little bar in Venice Beach. I look to Dwayne. “We’re all here as part of a conference discussing how fucked up the church is and how we can do it better.” The perfect answer.

Within an hour of talking Kevin has told us that he has recently relocated to California with his family, he was a PHD candidate at the University of Montana in chemistry, that he had gotten addicted to methamphetamines, and that his parents’ house had burnt down because of a fire that started in their garage. We silently add up all this information. Jessie has been talking in French to Carter most of the time. For a second I am jealous, but then Kevin starts talking about his faith and what church means to him. Like so many young people he says he believes in God, but can’t get into church. I tell him I work there and feel the same way.

Within two hours of talking it is last call, and Dwayne and I suggest we go outside to continue to talk, because we have cigars to smoke and its closing time anyway. There is an easy tag team taking place, one of us talks to one half of the couple while the other two talk to the other. We switch without communicating. By now we have established that Kevin is looking at five to fifteen years in prison for the things that took place in Billings. He tells us his parents have disowned him and his brother, an attorney, has refused to help. Jessie is crying to Dwayne, wondering what she’ll do if Kevin is taken away. She’s too old to wait and to in love to leave now.

I tell Kevin that “we are a whole lot more than the worst we’ve ever done”, a quote I’ve stolen from somewhere and used a lot with my kids. That helps for a second, but there is still this overwhelming sense in him that he is helpless. Then Dwayne Taylor, this scotch drunk biker looking former “whore” trying to be a Pastor again steps up and says, “Kevin, I’ll tell you what. I’ve been an ordained minister for twenty-three years. Carter used to be a Pastor, and J.D. serves a church full-time as Youth Minister. You keep in contact with us from now until your trial and we’ll come stand up with you and tell the judge you’re a good guy who is trying to make up for past mistakes.”

There are tears of pain and joy, in my eyes, in Dwayne’s, in Jessie’s and Kevin’s. For the first time in a long time there are people willing to stand up beside, to stand up for, this young man. It never occurred to me we hadn’t told him what we were; when we weren’t drinking in a bar we had titles, convictions, 'ministries'. Indeed we were drinking in a bar, smoking outside of it, and talking to these people because of our convictions. In Kevin’s eyes something happened and you could see it. In Dwayne’s too. We were talking about how “fucked up the church was and how we could do it better” and we were putting that to immediate action. One man was hurt and needed help. One man was helping and lifting him up. For a split second we all knew the purpose of our lives. It will make a difference three ministers stand up with Kevin. I fly to his court date June 7.
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I hope when I’m old I don’t have to sneak away to a bar to listen to blues, lie when I get home about dancing with beautiful women, or feel like I have to drink orange juice when I do sneak away. I hope I’ve never worn a dark blue suit. I hope I own a juicer, because it’s good for you and not because I bought the sales pitch. I hope I’ve got stories to tell, real or imagined about strip clubs and bars and famous people. In mine I want to tell stories about how I helped people in these places because that which is divine in me was always there.

I want to have a whole batch of stories that start with ‘I was getting drunk’ and end with ‘I fly to help him in June.’ I don’t ever want to be righteous. I don’t ever want to stop asking questions. I don’t ever want make someone feel bad for what they believe or over inflate how good I feel for what I believe. I don’t ever want to wear that dark blue suit. I don’t ever want to sing, “no peace I find.” I’d like to look back thirty years from now on the time in between that day and this one and see how my subtle and silent rebellions became lifelong actions; instances of loving God and my neighbors. I hope I have a picture hanging on the wall of me bald-headed, unshaven, spontaneous, idealistic, wearing a light blue golf shirt.
I hope it’s a recent photo.




POSTLOGUE

I didn't go out in June. Kevin plea bargained into a long probation and a ton of community service. He and Dwayne talk via email once a week. Teri Schiavo passed away March 31, 2005. The ailing Pope refered to in this piece passed two days later. I still serve First United Church of Christ. I recently tore a hole in the light blue golf shirt. I am struggling to find my place.


"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mahatma Gandhi

PLEASE JESUS, SAVE ME FROM YOUR FOLLOWERS
-a bumper sticker I bought in Nashville

Let me go on like I blister in the sun!

The title/lyric is from Blister In The Sun by Violent Femmes, their biggest (substitute only) hit. I was always told this song was about masturbation and so it was the first one that came to mind for today's post. However new evedince has refuted such a claim. I don't know if you wiki, but I can't stop and I found the entry on this song utterly amazing. Click on the title to read the wiki entry on this song.

The First Ever THE WEEKLY INAPPROPRIATE CHURCH SIGN

Each Thursday I will be posting a church sign that I find humorous. Sometimes that means perverted, sometimes just dumb, sometimes extremely unintentionally hilarious, and often just witty. Today's falls in the perverted category. I think I have a mostly PG-13 audience.

Welcome to THE WEEKLY INAPPROPRIATE CHURCH SIGN



Tune in next week for another church sign that clearly isn't what Jesus would do!

You deem me due to clean my view and be at peace and lay. I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way.

The title today are lyrics from the Fiona Apple title track to her amazingly strange latest album Extraordinary Machine. Click the title to go to NPR's top ten of 2005, where this album ranked 10 but should have been 6. If your computer's not a dinosaur you can listen to a track from each album.

I am supposed to be preaching on February 19 at a buddy's church in Wisconsin on the subject of A Young Person's Relationship To The Church, as part of a series on relationships. I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't ask me to speak on romance or marriage, but the church?! Now?!

If I have a relationship with The Church it is at best a supervised visit these days. She cheated on me with Politics and Selfishness and I am ready to be divorced for good and go out looking for my next spouse. I want to say to these kids
"Run! She's a heartless lover, easily manipulated and seduced!"

But that doesn't seem to be a very uplifting message.

So here's my first crack. I am not too pumped about it.
I'd like some feedback.

I picture a boat, filled to the brim with people and supplies, traveling west across a vast ocean enduring storms and squalls. I see a hundred passengers with eyes full of hope that they travel to a place of new beginnings. I see men of courage and women of strength gazing from the deck of a ship at the growing land they are sailing toward. I see them land in a new world and begin to make it their new home. They fell timber and build cabins, they hunt and they gather, they plant and they harvest. But from the beginning they have compacts with one another, prayer meetings and sermons, and before long meeting halls. These are the earliest churches in this new world and they will stand for years in the middle of little villages that will become booming cities, turning these meeting halls into towering cathedrals of limestone and marble.

I picture a wagon train. I see a dozen families with all their worldy posessons loaded up in a covered wagon, limited food, staggering obstacles, thousands of miles, many days and often weeks bouncing west with those they'll form a community with. And I imagine that moment when they come over a hill to a piece of flat fertile land near a brook, sheltered to the west by mountains and their wagons stop at their new home for the first time after a long journey that some did not survive. I imagine them gathering resources, finding food, building homes, and planting crops, and raising children. And once they've built shelter they begin to build a community and so they build a church. It stands in the center of their town, a simple glowing white chapel where they'll worship, hold meetings, cast votes, host parties, have weddings and funerals. Later there will be a saloon and a general store, maybe a doctor's office or a bank, maybe a street will run through a town, and perhaps later even a railroad. But first they'll be a community and then there'll be a church.

I picture a town, this town, just after a second world war. The men have come home and rekindled interrupted romance, the country has reinvented itself into a manufacturing and military superpower. There are new babies and new opportunities at every turn, but the lessons of the lean days have not been forgotten. At the center of each neighborhood is a church. There's a German Reformed Church, Italian and Irish Catholic churches, a Lutheran church, and a Methodist church. Most folks see the same people at church, at school, at family gatherings, and in social settings. There's radio, and this new medium TV. There are cars, but only one per family. There is a phone in the home. There is mail by mail carrier. There is milk and ice the same way still in most places. A week is full of chores, family meals, family outings, and ofcourse church with a big extended or adopted family.

I picture today, a world thrown apart by our conveniences-cell phones and cars three or four per household, suburban sprawl and subdivided neighborhoods. We can snail mail, email, instant message, and text message. We post profiles on myspace and blogspot and carve out a little chunk of the universe for ourselves. We have jampacked schedules that we manage with microsoft programs, pda's and personal assistants. We have 300 TV stations, high definition, digital cable, and TiVo. We have satelite radio and iPods. We spend less time at home and when we do, most everyone has a room to themselves with at least two electronic devices to pass the time by. There are ten gaming systems that I can name and the last one I owned was a Sega Genesis. Few families sit down to a meal together, most because they don't return home until much later after a day of work and school and afterschool activities and extracurricular activities, commitee meetings, clubs, games, practices, and competitions all weeklong. We are exhausted. Tired. Stressed.

And somewhere in the background of this world is The Church. It's not the foundation of our community as it was for the Pilgrims. It's not the center of our community as it was for the frontiersmen. It's not the center of our neighborhood as it was for our parents and grandparents. The church has become a backdrop, a subplot, an ought to in a world of have to's.

And while the world has changed few churches have.

Oh, there are churches that look and feel different. Some with stages instead of altars. Some with bands instead of organs. Some meet in garages, bars, clubs, homes, schools, and parks instead of steepled buildings. We cycle buzz words like contemporary, praise and worship, emerging, seeker, purpose-driven, even evangelical. But while the world has changed few churches have.

For a long time church was for the lost to come and seek answers. Church was a place to hear the wise explain how to live and how to act as a Christian. There were answers, but little room for questions. There remains little room for questions. In a fast-food world most churches are a State Dinner; place settings, multiple courses, formal attire, dinner conversations, and assigned seats.

I don't believe that this is what The Church is supposed to be any longer.

I believe the church of Jesus Christ ought to look like the Christians of Jesus Christ. Church ought to be an experience that grows out of us. That literally is us moving and working and worshipping as we live in this world so different than the worlds of our forefathers. As someone once said,
“Church isn’t where you meet. Church isn’t a building. Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let’s not go to Church, let’s be the Church.”

This is where my brain crapped out. I have other thoughts whirling, but I wanted to take a first pass. Too much history, not enough meat-that's my conclusion. Stay tuned for developing news!

The time between meeting and finally leaving is sometimes called falling in love.

Once a possible future wife of yours truly...
I present Miss Lisa Loeb



I can see how I will be abusing this picture thing.
Today's title is a Lisa Loeb lyric from a song called Falling in Love that I have never heard.

Hello all. I have been up all night (again). I was blessed with inspiration and just as I faded WTTS interviewed Lisa Loeb!

Some of you may remember a major incident in my life with sweet Lisa. If not I refer you to my blogpost titled This is not that. I think that I'm throwing, but I'm thrown. Damn that's a long title.

Anyway, it turns out Lisa is single and looking for a mate, and because she's famous and hasn't had a hit since 1993 she is having a crew film her while she searches for a sutiable beau. I was so excited that I rushed to the website and decided I'd share my thoughts while reading the official announcement with you here. The bold is from the announcement. The italics are my thoughts. That should be self-explanatory.


Single Singer Seeking: Find Out if You're a Love Match for Lisa

Texas girl (minus big hair). Petite build, brown hair, hazel eyes.
Cute Glasses! Soft Skin!
Singer-songwriter. Nice!
I listen to Zeppelin but don't sound like them. Not at all.
I love to cook and eat excellent,
go to restaurants, let's go together
grocery shop, call me after
read, I can read.
travel I can travel.
and hike. I can take pictures of you hiking!
I enjoy Chinese food doesn't matter where it's made,
good conversation I'm good while we eat or after
and long walks on the beach (ha, ha!).

Seek intelligent check
city guy (NYC or L.A.) small glitch
between 30-45. Will you be asking for identification?
Must be smart, check
funny, check
sensitive check
>(not wimpy), not sure
adventurous and family oriented. Double check!
Preferably Jewish. How Jewish?
No diets, No problem!
no fake hair. No hair at all!
Healthy and active a plus. How big a plus?
Must love cats. Mmmmmm...alright you got me! Can I just touch your hand again?

I guess it wasn't meant to be. I'm off to captialize on this new energy!