Jul
28
2010
So a week or so ago we were all in the gathering praying together and one of the folks there said this “…and thank you God for this refuge that we can come to and meet together in safety…” I went home that evening feeling like maybe we have done something right here. Of course at the same time I have to acknowledge that a refuge is a place for refugees, people who are fleeing tyranny of some sort. Maybe that is what I have been doing this whole time. Ever since my first desire to plant a church it has been out of this feeling of not fitting in anywhere else. But not just that, there was also this sense that I was running from something that was not right — fleeing into something more right, or at least a place that respects the individual’s ability to think on their own, to speak their mind, and to ask questions.
Below is a video from our friend Kathy Escobar, who fittingly Copastors a church called The Refuge in Colorado. why is it when I see this video I find myself wanting to be a “blue person.” Maybe, everyone is a little “blue.” What do you think?
church refugees – part 1 from kathy escobar on Vimeo.
Jul
26
2010
I didn’t want to come to gathering yesterday.
I didn’t want to face up to my pain in community.
I didn’t want to explain.
But I came.
If I’d had a chance I’d have made an excuse.
I’d have stayed at home. I’d have hidden away.
I’d have looked after myself.
But I came.
I didn’t have to explain, but when I did
I shared the pain and found it lessened.
I didn’t have to come.
But I came.
I’m glad I did.
Jul
9
2010
In 1962 it was considered to be a large 3 bedroom house located somewhere in the boonies of Houston, Texas. I wasn’t born yet, but my Mom and Dad were already planning for my arrival in 66 by finding a nice home to raise a family in.
That was the motivation of course. Isn’t that everyone’s motivation for finding a large home? What they didn’t realize is that the neighborhood was growing at a rather deceptive rate, well all of Houston was really, and by the time I was around the age of 10 that part of Houston was no longer considered the boonies.
It became what is now known as Spring Branch – one of the older suburban neighborhoods in the Greater Houston area, just outside the 610 Loop. So that would make me of course a child of the suburbs.
Suburbs were known for having the best schools, being somewhat safe as far as crime was concerned and neighborly. I can understand why my parents would want to raise me in such a place, and as an adult I did the same for my kids.
They too went to the best schools around. They too grew up each having their own room and a back yard and other good things. We always made sure that they had the best of everything. I think that being raised this way certainly had a bearing on why I chose to raise my children the same.
Now though, I wish I would have chosen the unfamiliar over the familiar. I wish I could have been brave enough to choose something different for my kids, for me and Tammy.
It all started about 3 years ago when we planted this church. I was becoming more and more discontent with the suburbs and wanted more and more to move into the city. The only problem is that at that time I still had two children in the “the best school in the area” and the city of Albany is not known for its “good” schools.
So I suffered, living in the burbs another two years or so. It was not until I was free from that environment that I truly realized the impact that it had on me. It is with a little reservation that I speak to you about the burbs, knowing that many of you live there and find your home there.
So I will say up front that this is not a criticism of you or your lifestyle, but more of a realization I have been having now for several years. After taking some space and time to gather my thoughts on this issue, I realize that the true insidious nature of living in the suburbs is not found in the physical place that you live, but in what I call Suburbanisn – a way of living based on conditioning, expectation and modeling by others.
I now see that we could have done things differently and could have benefited greatly from doing things differently, but it is what it is. Of course you also have to understand that I am writing this piece from the perspective of following Jesus.
I understand that living in the burbs is actually part and parcel of the American dream as well and that the things I will be saying here are in direct conflict of that dream. So please bear with me as I recklessly make my point.
“Believing vs. following” or “two kinds of Christians”
It has become ever more clear to me since becoming a Christian that “believing” in Jesus is merely the tip of the iceberg. Believing is not “following” nor is it even close. Following Jesus is much harder.
Believing in Jesus is easy. It requires nothing of yourself to do this and a peaceful suburbanite can quite easily believe in Christ and go to church and get on with life unhampered by the actual ways of Jesus.
A follower of Jesus cannot. They suddenly find that “church” doesn’t look anything like what Jesus would have wanted for a church. They soon realize that their calm comfortable existence is to be called into question by the Lord of the poor. They cannot with clear conscience follow Jesus and continue to exclusively pamper themselves at the expense of others.
Followers of Jesus, can’t justify having things in general. Lots and lots of things. I mean of course we have stuff, because many of us have jobs and we have to live and survive like everyone else. But can I really choose to have a collection of expensive cars while others go without where I am in the position to help?
In my experience, that seems rather excessive. Do I really need a five bedroom house with three bathrooms for me and my wife? Maybe I am using it to help people in need and in that instance of course that’s a good thing.
Do I really need to be paying a 400k mortgage when there are plenty of low cost rentals in the area that fit me just fine? I expect that these statements will meet you with much disagreement, but again I am really just telling you where I have been lately, not where you should be.
For me, following Jesus meant giving up on material possessions. Not selling everything I have and giving it to the poor mind you, but giving up on the hold that the material has on my life. Giving up on the special place that I had reserved for “stuff”.
Following Jesus means inviting people into your life en mass. It means dropping the privacy positions we have adopted from our parents and that we have been conditioned to believe. That means we take huge risks. We put ourselves out there. We open our doors.
Since we have let go of the hold that stuff has on our lives we are not as concerned when the stuff walks away with our new acquaintances. Following Jesus means placing the value on people not stuff, people not privacy, people not US.
Following Jesus is all about sacrifice, and serving and death. If we follow Jesus to our death, we don’t care about suburban things anymore. No I am not talking about physically dying here, although that could happen while following Jesus. I am talking about dying to self.
Ars Moriendi
We’ve probably all heard the phrase “Dying to Self” before and understand what it means, but I want to take a step in a different direction when talking about this. By “self” I don’t mean sin, or our old wicked ways, or the flesh or anything like that.
By self I mean who we have become through years of conditioning. By self I mean the things that our parents and our schools and the TV have sown into us for years that are not consistent with following Jesus- really following him.
By dying to self, I have to die to racism. By dying to myself I have to die to selfishness. Dying to self means that I must lay down my desire to always win the argument. Dying to self means that I die to not talking to strangers, not allowing people that I don’t know into my home, and not getting dirty. By dying to self I die to my desire to be in a smoke free environment. By dying to self I give up my desire to only befriend pretty people that make as much money as I do..
Dying to self would be easier if at the end of it we could actually die, but the problem is that we are still alive and we still have ourselves to deal with over and over and again.
My tattoo is a constant reminder of what this means. It says “ars moriendi” which in Latin means “art of dying.” So for me following Jesus is all about the “ars moriendi.”.
So what’s wrong with Suburbanism?
Again, the problem is not where you live but how you choose to live. It has only been through my experience of both living in the suburbs and living in the city that I have been able to truly slow things down a bit and notice a few oddities about suburban living that are not good for a follower of Jesus to subscribe to.
This is mine, that is yours
This one is pretty cut and dry. I mean when I lived in Loudonville, I possessed a few things that were clearly mine. For instance, my driveway, my front yard, my car, my grass, my tree, my fence, my side of the fence, my house, my curb, my ditch, mine, mine, mine.
No one in the suburbs had a problem with this, nor did anyone try and argue with me about what was mine. Why? Because they had theirs – their cars, their fences, their yards and so on.
As children we are all taught the value of sharing, but then we grow up and it becomes about what is ours. We justify this by saying bold statements like “I earned the money to pay for that, I have a right to fully possess it.”
Which is true, but a little sad too. The suburbs teach us that we have a right to our stuff, and no one else has a right to it. Compare this with the city where my back yard is actually my neighbor’s back yard too. I park on the street and share parking with everyone else in the neighborhood. My front yard is actually the city sidewalk where anyone can just walk through – anyone.
Bushes and Big Dogs
Bushes, fences, trellises, tree lines, blinds, guard dogs, and gates are all designed to keep people out of our yard, out of our stuff, and out of our lives. Especially those folks that are uninvited. The Suburbs tell people that do not belong to “Stay Out.”
We have become very private people which take the very word private to extremes. We seem to take pride in just how private we can be. Unlisted phone numbers, gate entry systems, windowless garage doors that allow us to pull into our homes in privacy, camera systems set up on the perimeter of our yard.
Sure these are extreme examples, but you see what I mean. Suddenly the value of privacy is more valuable than following Jesus into the unexpected. Suddenly privacy takes precedence over chance encounters, and relationships in general.
We use it as an excuse to isolate ourselves in our big houses and only spend time with the people we choose. This leaves God out of the picture. How will we ever meet that new person if they have to get through the German Shepherd in our yard first?
Dying to self means giving up on the clique, throwing open the curtains and being available to all. That is not to say that there is no room for privacy, but we are a lot less private now.
The Smiths and the Joneses
Subarbanism creates a competitive atmosphere for material accumulation. Now maybe this does not apply to you, but when the neighbors got that new snow blower last season and proceeded to bring it out and show it off, I felt envious. I wanted to replace my single stage snow blower and go for the big one.
Sure it costs more money but look at how well it works I justified. The price tag of 1200 dollars was a bit of a deterrent, but I needed to get this thing. I needed it. Funny thing is before I saw my neighbor with one my little single stage was the talk of the hood. It was more than adequate for the amount of snow we were getting.
But something happens to us. It’s like some kind of disease. We need things that we never had before – things that we never needed before. And why not, I mean it is the American dream isn’t it? We must have what we must have.
Dying to self means dying to Americanism, consumerism, suburbanism and all of the other “isms” out there. As I recall from my time in the burbs, I never really remember thinking about this stuff much. For awhile there it was like living in the Matrix.
Now I feel as if I have been set free from the Matrix. Someone has pulled the plug and I cannot go back there. I know that it is an easier more convenient existence. I know that the air conditioning is cooler and the heat always comes on. I remember what it was like to own my curb.
Nope. It’s city life for me now. It’s sharing, and being concerned for my neighbors. It’s not being worried about my security of stuff and not being worried about who knows that Tammy and me fight occasionally. It is about not having to own everything. It is the opposite of the American dream. It is my dream.
Let’s get our lives off this track
In the song “American Empire” by The Cobalt Season the lyrics say it all. Check them out:
Well you take me out and you drag me around
And I’d do anything ’cause all I’ve found in you
In you
You broke my heart with my soul laid bare
But you didn’t know, didn’t care, now did ya?
Even care?
Still I followed you
’cause you promised me
More than I ever really wanted
Well damn this American Empire
We all overpaid to be sure I know it
But even still
All these needs and wants and toys and taunts
They follow me everywhere
Everywhere
But still I followed you
’cause you promised me
More than I ever really wanted and now…
I wanna get my money back
I wanna get my life off-track
I wanna find my one true friend
If I could just begin again
I want to find my way back home
I want to find I’m not alone
And I’m not alone
Not alone…
Well the money’s in the plate and your life’s in my hands
And you wonder if I’d even understand your situation
In this great nation
Where the sick heal the sick and us blind lead the blind
Maybe together we can find what we’re looking for
What was it we were looking for?
So don’t follow me
’cause I’d promise you
Nothing more than what you need and…
You’d wanna get your money back
You’d wanna get your life off-track
You’d wanna find your one true friend
If you could just begin again
You’d wanna find your way back home
You’d wanna find you’re not alone
Friend, you’re not alone
Not alone…
Here’s hopin’ I find my way back to you
Here’s hopin’ that one day I’ll follow through
Here’s hopin’ they read me between the lines
Until then I’m fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine
So we don’t get our money back
Let’s get our lives off this track
Maybe you’re my one true friend
Here we go, let’s begin again
Maybe we’ll find our way back home
Now that we know we’re not alone
Not alone…
From But I Tell You (2005) and LIVE: Deconstructing the American Dream (2006)
So, with all of that said let’s get our lives OFF this track and begin again. God Bless.
Jul
2
2010
Hey folks,
Sunday we will have our first Sunday of the month Meal to celebrate 4th of July and any birthdays in July. To celebrate we will be providing brisket, burgers, hot dogs and veggies from the grill. Everyone else is supposed to bring a side dish. So feel free to bring salads, side dishes, drinks, etc Also bring friends and of course bring yourself. We will eat together and then meet in the gathering space for some musical worship and then prayer time.
Time: 4:30 PM
Date: July 4th (Sunday)
Place: The Distillery @ 67 Watervliet Ave, Albany, NY 12206
So hope to see you there!
Jun
22
2010
We had some snacks, cupcakes and conversation in place of our usual gathering on Sunday. It was great. We were celebrating Father’s Day, Miriam and Beth’s birthdays and our community life together.
I am a great believer in community – not just this little community at The Distillery, but that too! Let’s start with a definition of community (adapted from Kathy Escobar of The Refuge in Colorado who a couple of our community were visiting while we were eating cupcakes!):
Community is learning to love God, love one another and love ourselves. Allowing ourselves to be loved by God, be loved by one another and to accept that we are lovable.
Of course, in other contexts, the ‘God’ clauses might disappear or change, but I suspect in some way the rest of it would stand. I have a sense that if we embrace true community in this way and open it to include as many as we possibly can, we will do more to bring God’s kingdom as Jesus intended it than any amount of arguing about theology or worrying about what is or is not sin or about who is in or out of the kingdom.
I read somewhere recently that if you pray without seeking to be the answer to your own prayer, you are not truly praying as a Christian. That was a challenge to me. It reminded me of a conversation I had at college. I was a proudly evangelical Christian with all the answers talking to the relatively liberal chaplain of our college chapel. He dismissed the idea that prayer could change what God did. My reaction on the inside was “What’s the point of praying if it doesn’t change anything?” but also, deeper inside, ‘Now you mention it, it does seem strange that my prayer could change God’s intentions.’
I suppose the polarized sides of this debate boil down to “What’s the point of a God who is swayed by mere human desires?” vs “What’s the point of praying if God has already made up his mind?” So, shall we argue until we all agree (or fall out) or shall we get on with praying, having faith and acting in love? These principles of Jesus transcend theological arguments.
We don’t have to agree on all the theology to be in community together. We just have to get on with it. In love.
Jun
13
2010
Everything has a time and all activities have a season under heaven…
This is the conclusion of Solomon in chapter three of Ecclesiastes. Yet he seems less than satisfied with this and wants more (at least it seems like this to me). He says that “there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil — this is the gift of God (Ecc. 3:12-13)”. Yet throughout the chapter and the book he seems distressed at the temporary state that life is; what does it all mean? Why do we live? Is doing good enough? Perhaps enjoying your toil and labors is the best you can hope for, but shouldn’t there be more?
He states in chapter 3:11, “… He [God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” So our hearts feel eternity, but our minds fail to grasp the forever. Is this not the definition of frustrating? The gift of God is to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die…? That seems cruel – eternity rests within our hearts, yet we fail to understand it. There must be more to this puzzle.
Indeed there is much more! Unfortunately for Solomon his kingdom lacked one critical part – he was king and God was a side note at best. When Jesus came to the Earth, He revealed that the Kingdom of God was the real place to be – not this earthly kingdom. What we lack is the understanding of eternity, which after all, resides within our heart. Earthly kingdoms pass away, but God’s kingdom last forever! This is where we will pick up the discussion this week.
In Luke 9:23-27, Jesus talks about the way we save our lives and that is what Solomon really wanted to understand (so much for his wisdom)! The meaning of life is not a mystery; we just may not like the answer.
Jun
4
2010
So there was this one Summer when I was fourteen that I remember very vividly because of the skateboard accident.
I was young and kind of headstrong and determined back then and pretty much thought I was invincible. I was in Southern California visiting my cousin Sandy at the time who was older and married. The two of them had a little girl (my second cousin Brandy).
My cousin Roy, Sandy’s brother came along with me form Houston, Texas for the visit. He brought along a plastic red colored skateboard. I decided after a few tries down the street that I could ride the thing.
So I took it for a spin one day down the residential street and around the corner in their suburban neighborhood. It handled pretty well and as it turned out this road was a pretty good place to test it out. This neighborhood was built in the hills near Oceanside and all the roads either were up an incline or down one.
After several passes of this one particular street with what looked like a sudden 45 degree drop I decided to just throw myself down the road on the skateboard to see if I could successfully maneuver the right turn at the bottom of the hill.
Well as you may have guessed something went terribly wrong. I got about a block into the decline and I noticed that the board was beginning to get incredibly wobbly. It was shaking below my feet and it became a challenge just trying to stay on top of the thing as the two of us picked up speed down the hill.
Halfway down I got scared that I was going to have a serious crash and decided to just stop. My method of halting was to jump off the board and reach down and grab it off the street before it got away from me.
This method was just fine when coasting at a moderate rate of speed on a flat surface with no real incline, but there were a few factors that contributed to what would soon ensue.
I was traveling down the incline at about 35 miles per hour. I was descending a rather steep hill. I was inexperienced on a skateboard. The skateboard I was on cost about ten bucks at Kmart.
Needless to say, I crashed. I jumped off the board and reached down in one fluid motion but since I was going so fast my feet never landed solidly on the ground. They flew out behind me and since my hands were out in front of me they hit the ground first.
I slid down the hill on my elbows and hands and knees for several feet not slowing down at all. The downward momentum of the hill and the speed at which I was going caused the asphalt to really dig in shredding most of the skin from my elbows and knees.
The pain was excruciating and so I decided to roll a bit to take the pressure off of them. I rolled forward onto my right shoulder thinking I would be propped up into a standing position and be able to escape my fate. Unfortunately my shoulder dug into the asphalt a bit more than I expected.
Soon I arrived at the end of the descent and that is when I was able to plant my feet and stand up just in time to take the guard rail at the end of the road with my rib cage. The guard rail was just high enough to catch my lower ribs, it was not high enough to stop me from falling over the cliff that was on the other side of the guard rail.
It was a twelve to fifteen foot fall to the beach and the next thing I knew I was lying on my back in sand bleeding from just about every part of my body and the skateboard was nowhere to be found. My clothes were all shredded where the road rash had occurred. No one was around to see me fall or see me in my current state.
After a few moments of lying stunned in the sand, I sat up, then stood up amazed I had not broken a bone or two, shook off the pain, then walked back to Sandy’s house. I remember having a lot of pain and discomfort during the recovery time that summer, but what seemed worse for me at the time was telling the story to everyone that I met. It was embarrassing. But everyone would ask because I was pretty banged up and lost a lot of skin.
It took the summer and the rest of that year to grow back all of the skin I had lost and even then there were obvious scars left on my knees and elbows, and back. I never rode a skateboard again. I learned that summer that I most certainly was not invincible. I could be hurt. I could have died. In my fast fall to the beach I flew over a metal staircase descending the cliff side. If I landed on those stairs who knows how that would have ended up. Instead I jettisoned over them missing the steel and concrete and landing on the soft sand. So many things could have happened that didn’t. In a way I was saved from a much worse fate.
Scar Stories
What got me thinking about this story was the memory of something that happened a few years later while I was hanging out with some friends from school. Joe and I were 15 and John had just turned 16. We were all talking about stupid shit we had done in our lives like the time that Joe crashed his motorcycle, and the time that John broke a window with his hand. I talked about the skateboard crash and as guys tend to do at times each story was preceded by revealing one scar or another.
If someone had been observing our conversation from afar it would seem like these three guys were anxiously showing certain body parts to each other. One would pull up his sleeve while the other pull up a pant leg, still another pulling off his shirt and turning while the other two stare intently at a spot on his shoulder.
With each blemish or long thin line in our skin we had a story to tell. I learned that John had been in a very serious incident at a race track when during a race a car crashed in front of the place where he was sitting. Glass and metal flew at him nearly shredding his arm and he did have the worst scars to prove it.
From that point onward I made sure that if I were ever going to a race, I would not choose a place close to the track unless it were well protected. I would never let my kids do that either. After sharing our stories and showing the scars they left the three of us became an inseparable force to be reckoned with. Some of those stories were about stupid shit we did and others were about stuff that was done to us, like the scar left from a cigarette by Joe’s stepdad.
The reason I was thinking about this story today is because I woke up with the sudden realization that people who are in community need to share there “scar stories.” I am not talking about just the physical scars and where they came from, but even the deep emotional ones. If there is ever a safe place to talk about these things it should be church. Our tendency however is to go to church and spend the next couple of hours hiding the scar stories and pretending that everything is okay and has always been okay.
We generally don’t have a problem listening to other people’s stories and shaking our heads and offering to pray for them, but god forbid we show signs of weakness. There is a story in the Gospels of the disciple Thomas becoming a true believer when after Jesus’ death and resurrection he meets Thomas and “shows him his scars.”
So as followers of Jesus I believe that it is our duty to show each other our scars. Not to revel in our misery or take pride in our adventures getting them, but to look at one another and say “see, I am like you.”. We all have scars. Maybe they are there for a reason. Maybe they are there to tell the stories we refuse to tell others or even ourselves.
What does emotional and relational scarring look like?
Sarah, is one of those people that never can have a prolonged relationship or friendship with other women. For some reason she has always connected with men in that way. She doesn’t really like other women that much and thinks that they never really understand her or get what it is she is saying when she has tried to connect with other women. Men just seem to make better friends and so at this point in her life she has not even tried to start relationships with other women.
As a child Sarah grew up with a Mom and a Dad in the home. She had everything a girl could want growing up – a nice home, plenty of toys and dolls and dresses and stuff, even a room of her own. Her dad adored her and spent as much time with her as his 12 hour a day job would afford. She grew up with an older brother and a younger sister. Her mother, Tina was a stay-at-home Mom and had all of the time in the world to spend with her and show her love, but Sarah never really felt loved by her.
Tina would deliberately make phone calls to brag about her son, but rarely mentioned Sarah unless she was upset with her. Tina even seemed to adore Sarah’s sister, and so it was not a gender issue. In Sarah’s mind her Mom just did not like her very much. As a child Sarah would do obnoxious things to get her Moms attention, but her Mom seemed dismissive at best to her pleas. By the time Sarah is a teenager, she no longer cares about getting any kind of attention from her Mom. She has given up on trying to demand love from her Mom and in a sense has written off her Mom in that area of her life.
To her this is no big deal, but in her something strange is happening. Not only has she convinced herself that attention and love from her Mom is not necessary for happiness, she has projected those feelings on all women. This is her scar. The sad truth about this is that Sarah may not even see the scar. The good news is that we in community may see her scar if she were in our circle. Maybe we suffer from the same wounding and have learned from our mistakes how to forgive our Moms and move on in life loving others correctly.
True Community
When we begin to share our scars stories, we help people to see their own scars. We reveal something in them that has remained hidden for years possibly. We turn the lights on so to speak, and others may then be healed in the light. This sort of thing yields true friendships based on reality, not on how I want to look to you, but who I truly am before you. True community success can only occur when we are our real selves before others and we still feel loved by them.
This kind of church success is not the kind you hear about, but it is more important than how many people walk through the door or whether the bills are paid on the building, or whether or not anyone has been baptized or saved. Don’t you think?
Jun
1
2010
This week we began a series of discussions that seemed light and therefore appropriate for the unofficial beginning of summer – the meaning of life. Our Biblical portion of things will start with a look at Ecclesiastes. We talked briefly about Solomon and his wisdom, wealth and women (about 700 wives and 300 concubines). The main focus of this week was our own values; what does life mean to us?
So to you, I will pose one of the most challenging questions we struggled with: What activity or event gets you out of bed in the morning with a feeling of joy and anticipation?
It is a tough question. What do you dread? What makes you want to hide under the covers? These are easy and plentiful, but as for the joy that moves you up and out – that can be a greater challenge! So tell us what is your life giving event.
May
26
2010
…the sum of a combination of factors including what you have been taught, what you have read, what you think you have been taught, superstitions you developed in your youth, …
Not to say that it is wrong of course.
In our discussion on Sunday, we read the gospel reading from the lectionary: John 14 v8-17. In fact, we read to the end of the chapter, because that’s the kind of folk we are! I was challenged when I read it by how much I am tempted to read it through the lens of what I believe rather than allowing what I read to inform, challenge and shape what I believe. So, I passed the challenge on, asking us all to pause and discuss which of a series of simple statements were supported by this particular passage. We did not ask which we agreed with, nor which were actually correct – but allowed this particular passage to speak to us about what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit.
These are the statements we used (one at a time) for our little exercise:
Some of these caused a fair deal of discussion as we tried to separate difference of intent from simple semantics. The last two took the conversation in an interesting direction as we decided that saying anything is ‘the key’ jarred with our approach to our faith. I hope it was a healthy exercise in seeing how our background and our world-view influence our interpretation of the Bible. After that, we watched the Nooma video Rhythm – in this Rob Bell suggests that we should not look for the intervention of a God who is elsewhere ‘helping one person find things on sale and another a parking space’ but rather to see the living God as in all things and we can choose to act in harmony with him – in love and justice for example – or not.
We ended by reading the passage again – one participant likened it to having a pair of tinted shades taken off his eyes as he saw Jesus’ words in a new light.
For me, this exercise in re-examining well-rehearsed beliefs – sometimes dismantling them or putting them aside altogether, is a microcosm of my life over the last few years. I hope and pray that we all will become stronger, more whole and more faithful followers of Jesus as we engage openly with his teaching.
May
25
2010
I recently read a blog post created by someone who I met at a conference a few weeks ago that sparked my memory about something pretty significant that I may have missed. You know how when you are close to a situation it is easy to be blind to what is really going on.
My story is about a girl named Samantha* who hung out at my youth group when I was the youth pastor. As a youth pastor I always tried to prepare a special message each week for the kids in my care. I preached as if I had a room full of serious minded adults looking for an ounce of truth and compassion. I preached about things that were important to me. Ultimately, my goal was to lead some of those kids to a decision for Christ.
Each week I tried to crawl into their minds and truly teach on a subject that might be near and dear to their heart and occasionally I would scratch the surface of emotions and then be there to observe all of the cool stuff that God normally does in those types of situations.
Well, like I said Sam was a regular at Youth Group. She came almost weekly and would disappear once in awhile for a few weeks only to reappear with a new story about where she had been lately. Sam was a known heroine user and had led a life of certain instability. She was this pretty petite girl that could easily be missed if you didn’t know better.
I remember wondering why it was she came to Youth since she was actually 19 years old and a High School graduate. I many times consulted other adult helpers about Sam to make sure it was a good idea to let her participate with us since she was not a leader, nor did she have any other reason to be there, and sometimes could come off as sort of a bad influence to the middle schoolers and high schoolers in the group.
My training told me to politely ask her to stop coming and to attend the adult services offered by the church, but there was something intriguing about the way Sam listened to my messages. Not like the kids at all, she would sit and watch and listen truly digesting all that was said.
One night I preached on rejection and told my story of being rejected by a girl I knew as a teen. I described in detail how it felt to be excluded, unloved and ignored. Afterwards I asked people to come up for prayer and Sam came up with eyes full of tears.
She spoke of the rejection she had felt by a man in her life and told me that what I said was meaningful to her and that she wanted prayer. I did what I felt was right. I prayed for her and tried to console her. She was really a mess. There were so many things going on with her I didn’t feel like I could properly devote the kind of attention and time she deserved as a Youth Pastor with responsibilities towards the youth.
A few other times she came up for prayer and she spent some extensive time in counseling with her old youth pastor before I didn’t see her again for months. Then on a Sunday, I happened to see her at the service. It was kind of shocking to see her since it had been so long. She was smaller somehow, thinner. She got my attention asking how things were going and how I was doing.
We had another conversation where she proceeded to tell me the reason she doesn’t come around anymore is because she is working at a bar and does not get off work until after 4 in the morning. I wanted to ask her so many questions then like “what kind if bar?” “Why so late?” “Are you stripping?” “Are you still doing drugs?” But instead I smiled at her and told her to try and make the Sunday service more. I also invited her to my home group.
There was a barrier there that I could not cross. I did not know why at the time. But, I realized that if I was to ask her those sorts of questions, then I should be ready for the answers. I could not just walk away then. I would be bound to the relationship by what I knew. And for whatever reason I felt that I just could not be bothered with it. I believed that Sam had other friends to talk to like her old youth pastor. I believed that someone would be able to help her, but that was not going to be me. I believed that we had plenty of time to help Sam.
Two weeks later, I heard that Sam tried to take her own life. She swallowed a bunch of pills and was in the hospital. I knew then that I needed to get involved. I knew that she needed help and I felt that God wanted me to stick my neck out for her, like she was my own daughter.
However, because I never dealt with mental hospitals before that point I was unsure of how to go about visiting Sam. I called a few times for her and she would not accept my phone calls. I asked about visitation and kept getting put off by the care providers at the mental hospital.
After several calls, I finally got through to the head nurse of the place where Sam was at only to be told that Sam did not want to talk to me or see me or anyone else for that matter. Then the nurse said that Sam was much better and would be released soon and that I could catch up to her then.
On the evening that Sam was released, she took her own life in her Daddy’s front yard with a shotgun this time. I never got a chance to talk to her. I never got a chance to apologize for being so preoccupied with my own life to care about hers. I never got a chance to tell her I loved her like a daughter and that I could take care of her if she needed that.
I remember going to her funeral, the whole time thinking that she was going to get up and this would all just be a cruel joke. She looked like she was just sleeping there. I don’t remember a thing her pastor said about her, but I remember thinking that he didn’t really know her the way I had gotten to just recently.
I remember thinking that all of this is going by way too fast. She had just died a few days ago and we were already putting her in the ground to be forgotten about.
The last thing I remember saying to her was, “well make sure and go to the Sunday morning services then, I understand having to work.” I remember being relieved that she was not going to be around the youth much anymore.
When I look back now, I realize that I was more focused on preaching a good sermon with plenty of evangelistic results then I was about this poor girl that came to my sermons hoping to be changed, and not finding what she needed. Instead she found a guy that was just like all of the other preachers and pastors she had encountered. A lot of talk, and so little love.
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* Samantha is not her real name. 
