So Here I Am

I remember lying in bed at the age of 11, on the top bunk of the room my brother and I shared, in my family's little two-bedroom apartment. My dad was in his second year of seminary at the age of 39, having moved our family the year before from my birth-town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to nearby Tulsa.

I was lying there thinking about how my dad was about to become a pastor. Then I thought about how his dad was a pastor and evangelist, moving the family around Iowa and preaching in many churches before getting a divorce and taking up a career with the Corps of Engineers. Then I thought about how his dad was a pastor, immigrating from Sweden at the age of 16, and preaching in Swedish-language churches in the midwest.

Suddenly I felt a sense of destiny... no small thing for an 11 year-old. Preaching seemed to be a family business of sorts, and I was next in line. My dad didn't hear the call until middle age, but I'll be darned if I was going to wait that long. If I was going to be a pastor, I wanted in on the ground floor.

The thing of it is... I didn't want to be a pastor. Pastors, to me, were a certain special type of individual. They carried an air about them... a self-conscious-model-of-righteousness air... a sense that every word they said and everything they did was of monumental importance... as if failure was not an option. They seemed so... dignified. They loved making jokes, but didn't know how to be funny. They smiled a lot when they were around people, but never seemed to be truly enjoying themselves. There was just something wrong about pastors to me, and something wrong about the way people behaved in their presence.

Consequently, I did not embrace my "calling" wholeheartedly. I got embarrased at the way people would respond when I told them about it. I lived a life that was agreeable enough, but fell far short in terms of discipline and spiritual growth. Eventually I got so uncomfortable with the idea that I became convinced I had not heard from God at all. I decided I had simply looked at my family tree and jumped to conclusions.

This was the beginning of my foray into architecture. I found that I loved designing buildings and floorplans... so it seemed natural to play that field a bit. I put away thoughts of vocational ministry, and by the time I was 17 I was accepted into the School of Architecture at Kansas State University, and had secured a scholarship and a place to live.

The next part of my story could easily fill ten pages, so I'll abridge it for you. During my senior year in high school, I was learning how to play the guitar, and leading worship for my itty-bitty youth group that met in the leader's basement. Humble beginnings, to be sure. But as I grew in worship, and developed friendships with people who taught me how to forget myself before God, I felt my heart begin to turn. After graduating from high school, I found myself at a Promise Keeper's rally at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, among 65,000 men singing their hearts out to "A Mighty Fortress is our God." It was unbelievable.

I always say that God can speak to us anywhere. There is nothing magical about a church building, or a worship song, that God has designated to serve as a vehicle for his interactions with us. But for some reason my rare moments of absolute clarity from God tend to occur in those very settings. And yet, in those moments I also feel disconnected from them... as if I wasn't really there at all.

What I'm saying is, God spoke to me at Arrowhead Stadium. He said he wanted me to turn a corner in my life, and become a worship leader.

So I obeyed... I studied music and Bible, and took every opportunity to increase my experience and skill both musically and worshipfully.

By 2004, I had a bachelor's degree, and a wife who was ready to go with me wherever God pointed us, to lead people into his presence. But instead, in another church service, he told us to stay put and start The Core (read that story.)

So we struck out on the path God gave us, and soon made friends with Matt & Melissa Stephens, who had a similar vision. We decided that Matt would be the pastor of The Core. I, then, could lead the worship (among other things,) thus fulfilling the call I'd heard in Kansas City.

But now Matt and Melissa are gone. They moved to Chicago so Matt could attend seminary. I like to say that, when I backed out of my calling to be a pastor, God very gradually "backed" me back in. It's almost as if he tricked me.

So here I am. Pastor of The Core. I want you to know that I'm still not sure what to do with that. I'm not a preacher. I'm not remarkably funny or popular. I have trouble with names. I talk too much, and I stick my foot in my mouth with startling regularity. I'm a mediocre listener at best. I have very few Bible verses formally memorized, and my daily devotionals are a bit spotty. I'm a people-pleaser, and have difficulty speaking up with the hard truths. But that doesn't stop me from being controversial or argumentative. I'm prideful. I tend to think I'm the smartest man in the room. I'm also absent-minded. I am simultaneously a reckless optimist and a worry-wart. I have NO experience. I fashion myself a worship leader, but my voice is unremarkable and my guitar and piano skills are painfully basic.

There you have it, the Pastor of The Core.... let me know if I left anything out.

______________________

So we've established now that I'm not on anybody's short list to plant a church. And yet, it seems that God doesn't care about our short lists. He consistently taps the rejects. It's as if he were the captain of a pick-up basketball team, and he picks all the short heavy kids, just to prove that he can beat the other team all by himself. But then he manages to win the game as a team, just to prove he's not a ball-hog.

Having accepted the fact that God has indeed chosen me to do this thing, I have had to struggle to understand my identity in all this. When I was 11, I knew I didn't want to be a shiny-veneer-type pastor, and I don't think God wanted me to, either. That's why I'm pastor of The Core, and not Third Methodist, or something. And yet, I find myself always observing all these other pastors to see where I'm falling short.

Lately the guy I've had my eye on is named Mark Driscoll, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. This guy is hard-core. His sermons are sarcastic, funny, hard-hitting oratories that last upwards of 60 minutes. And people listen, dad-blast it. In Seattle!

Just so you know, I have no interest in modeling myself after Driscoll. He is a borderline chauvinist. He has a dirty mouth. He has to be so damn certain about everything he says. He's a virtual monolith. Mars Hill has multiple locations, but each one of them has to hear him preach every Sunday. Consequently, he runs himself into the ground, endangering his health over and over.

Nevertheless, I wondered if I was falling short by not "proclaiming" the way he does. By not stomping my foot, and saying "This is sick, and it's got to stop!" The fact is, I just don't do that. So who's wrong? Him or me?

Maybe neither of us. Driscoll has a death wish to transform the city of Seattle. Where the darkness falls like a heavy curtain, drastic measures are all we have. The fact is that almost nobody in Seattle is standing up and spewing light with passion and conviction. So when somebody finally does, it's like that first gasp of air for the man who nearly drowned. Some people will smear you all over the media, but others will flock to you for healing. And that's exactly what's happened in Mark Driscoll's case.

I have come to the conclusion that Springfield, in for the most part, is just as lost as Seattle... but in the exact opposite way. We have light here, but it's not natural light. It's not the real stuff that streams through your eastern window at the crack of dawn. It's been replaced with those flourescent bulbs that buzz constantly, and make everybody look 15 years older.... the ones that sap your energy by 11 am and turn yellow after a few months.

Will somebody please stand up and say that the Bible is the Word of God??? Sure... in Springfield there's thousands of them. Will somebody put their foot down regarding moral relativism? We've got that. Will someone please tell these young boys to quit moving in with their girlfriends? Those preachers are everywhere.

So what does Springfield lack? What kind of pastor does God want me to be? Honestly, I don't know for sure. But so far I have concluded that this city does not need another monolith, another gospel broadcaster, another... preacher. I am thankful that we have the ones we do have, make no mistake. I want to work with them, to receive their encouragement and accountability. I want to spur them on to a ministry that emits natural light, and tosses the flourescent bulbs in the dumpster (with that cool gun-shot bang.) And I will speak the truth right alongside them, albeit in a less proclamatory fashion.

But I believe God is calling me to fill the gaps they leave behind... to reach the people that have fallen through the cracks... to live out among them, relationally, what they have so far only heard from a distance, and to avoid the kind of communication that has convinced them that there is no real love amongst the followers of Christ.

I suppose I have had my fair share of detractors so far. Some are only interested in knocking me down. Others have criticized me out of a genuine desire to lift me up. Both groups have been partly right, and partly wrong, and I am honestly thankful for everything they've said. If you have been among them, please know that I love you, and I am as eager to see me become God's man as you are. Don't lose your cool, but don't lose your edge, either. I need it. I cannot do this by myself.