From High Brow Pirate to Hometown Pastor

YASO is one of those exciting things I have not been talking about, but I should have been.  It pretty much found it’s humble birth at the beginning of the new year.  It was an idea that has been rumbling around in my head and heart since I started volunteering at Coffeehouse.  For those of you who are new to the blog, ***Background Alert***Coffeehouse is a youth out reach I volunteer at.  The point of Coffeehouse is to give kids a chance to have fun on a Friday night without drugs, sex, beer or danger.  It is a different theme every week.  One Friday it is karaoke, the next dance night, the next open mic, then local band concert night.    We meet on the same space they do and the space (and coffeehouse) are owned by the First Congregational Church of Lockport.***End Background Alert***  The idea was to simply dig deeper into the lives of these teens and young adults and get them to talk and get them to act.  I have told a few people in leadership at the Coffeehouse that I think there is a lot more to these "kids" than meets the eye.  Something that we can learn a lesson from and grow from and the community could be enriched by.  Some agreed and the Coffeehouse actually used to intermingle some ministry into the formula, but nothing in the coffeehouse really changed.  Now, understand, I am NOT slamming coffeehouse.  Their mission is fulfilled every week when kids come.  The kids have something to do of Fridays in a safe environment. 

I thought about it and prayed about it and wrestled with it and I finally told some of the younger people in my circle about the core of my idea and asked them to give it a name, a symbol, and then we  invite some of the coffeehouse kids to sit in a room while I pitch the vision and let them tell me what they do and do not like.  It needs to be theirs and they need to help me form it.  The name was chosen by Dana who decreed it YASO (to speak out and it is also an acronym for Young Adults Speaking Out). The first meeting was a chilly Friday night in January. 

The first part was the Thursday night meeting with some of the youg adult volunteers who wanted to help. This one was fun but it gave us as leaders and volunteers a chance to get to the core of things. The fun part was I was surrounded my a group of people who were just as irreverent as I am. We compared this vision to Fight Club and Vegas and Avenue Q and Jesus all rolled up together.

On a serious vein we talked about the hindrances some may be having about coming. It came down to two things…trust and knowing that this is not coffeehouse. The trust thing comes in time. Coffeehouse is for fun, but the kids feel the rules are too restrictive to allow them to be themselves, they perceive there to be an inner circle, and there is a double standard and trust there has been violated by others. The irony here is that the Coffeehouse has been my bridge to their trust and it was also the thing I had to distance myself from in 24 hours. But we also needed to make sure we did it in a positive way as opposed to a negative fashion because to discourage them from cofffeehouse would be wrong.

Then we talked about the order. Our proposal was chilling for about half an hour with pizza and pop, do the talk, end with my Christian perspective, then close and offer those who want to stay and talk or pray the opportunity. For this first one though…we just tell them all this and get their feedback.

Then we closed with discussion on how many pizzas to buy. I said ten, Dana said five….I bought 6.

The second part was the meeting itself. I ordered the pizzas, set up 2 tables, and then moved chairs around the tables. 3 of the young adults who offered to help showed up and one of them (Dana)  simply said, “this is not what I pictured.” So I told her to set it up however she wanted to, grabbed one of the other people with her and went to pick up the pizzas. When we came back, the large tables were gone and replaced with a big ol circle of chairs and some small card tables surrounding the circle. 7 PM hit and we had maybe 6 kids and I am cool….7:15 hits and we are more than 20. Twice during the evening we had to break out more chairs to expand the circle.

I opened up first telling them about me and my suffering abuse as a child and my perspective as a parent who does not hit. Some of the other adults shared as well. This was the first salvo. We cannot have them trust us if we do not show some vulnerability. We opened it up for discussion in the circle. They do not want to discuss porn…cool. They fear the day when trust gets broken. I told them that I cannot promise it would never get broken, but in the meantime, let’s build as strong a community as possible until that dark day comes so we can weather the storm. Then came the close at about 8:30 for this first one and not one person left until ten. There was laughter, misty eyes, and many other things. In essence there was sharing and bonding in a palatable honesty. No one has a crystal ball, but the beginning looks promising.

Third part. A troubled young man with a reputation walking up the path. I saw him in the distance and I thought…nah, couldn’t be him…then others looked and there was a silence. Some kids left and two remained to greet him in the parking lot. He was hugged and brought in to the room with me and a pastor buddy. I won’t disclose what was said in the room. But it was intimate, honest, and gut wrenching. The next day, his mother put him in an institution for rehab. She was there with his pastor and his friends to hold the hand of a young and angry and scared young man. 

Final part for this first installment.  The kids, while sitting in the circle that first night on the ninth of Jan told me that they not only wanted the help of YASO, but they wanted to be an integral part of the solution.  They wanted to not just have the over 30 crowd talk to the kids, but the under 30 crowd as well.  Them.  Peers talking to peers and changing each others lives with the simple act of listening, loving, and breaching the lonelyness that pervades all our lives and makes us feel isolated and disconnected.  When I asked how many really felt this way…16 raised their hands.  I was moved and I was touched and an idea was starting to take form and shape and be put into practice.  More to come.  

I struggled a bit with what to write next…soooooo…I stopped writing.  A little over a year ago it got in my head to start a church and I thought God may have put this idea there.  So this chronicled the good, bad, and ugly of how we got there with a few temper tantrums along the way that seemed to have provided mass entertainment. But then what?  After that first service I was in figuring it out mode.  So my writing was getting stale and my thoughts were overly pragmatic.  No, that is not true, my thoughts were very deep.  It’s just they were so deep that I had no idea how to get them out.  So all that would come out as I tried to write was xx people came today and tithed $xxx and they liked my sermon and the music was okay.  And while that is factual, it is not very helpful…..or interesting. 

Truth is, I started trying too hard.  I also found myself caught in traps that I was claiming to be raging against.  The worship area looked like a stage and I hit behind the security and comfort of a mic.  I used notes to refer from and did everything in three little points.  I worried too hard about the music being something people would sing along with.  I struggled with communion.  It became a miniaturized version of what most small evangelical church plants are.  In practice, I really had no idea WHAT I was doing and I had more seasoned pastors nodding and smiling as if I learned some life lesson and now I was one of them raging into the machine of conformity and claiming to talk about a rebel and radical Jesus while knowing inside I was blowing this.  But I was not merely blowing MY vision.  I was blowing the renewing that was given to me in my heart by God and confirmed by men and women of action in their faith who lived and wrote about this stuff.  Bonhoeffer, Assisi, Wright,  Theresa, Mandella, McLaren, and some guy named Jesus of Nazereth. 

Over a year of planning and praying and dreaming about movements only to find that the establishment still co opted my practice.  This was not the Jesus of the Gospels, this was the Jesus of the movies with the glazed look on his face, monotone voice, and feathered hair.  This was the Jesus of the WWJD brigade who have carefully stuffed God in a box and gave us permission to be Pharisees again.  I quote David Byrne when I cry out, "My God…what have I become?"  

So, in usual Pat Green fashion I sung the pendulum to the other extreme and had me a sermon where I essentially said, "Hey, ya know that ?  I can’t be that pastor guy you see in consumer church and here are some quotes from the purpose driven church book and why they suck."  Did you know flipping the bird verbally to the establishment who some people see value in does not warm people up to you as well as Jesus like behavior does (now Jesus did go after the system and the pharisees, but it was all in balance).  Insulting systems and establishments does not a movement make.  I am hearing Dan Kimball and Jay Bakker and others saying the same thing, but I did not listen for a spell.

Life seems to forever intertwine great beauty hidden in the midst of confusion.  Some of natures examples are pearls erupting from irritation, a yellow rose in the middle of a desert, and the giggle of a toddler in the middle of a hell called haiti who is too busy spinning in circles to know he is poor and destined for a life of pain and struggle. While I allowed vision to languish in the sea of pragmatic delight, birth was being given to something that would force me to dip deeper into the well of idealism and hope more than ever before.  A youth outreach with more beauty and God in it than anything I have ever seen in my life.  There are no books written that describe what is going on here, no formula, no nothing.  Yet, it is working better than anything I have ever seen in Christiandom.  I would like to say that I am an evil genius, but the truth is, I feel like I am just the guy who picks up the pizza and sets up chairs.  I am humbled, scared, and renewed and these moments of beauty have allowed me to put into practice what has been in my heart.  When you have a dream that is bigger than you, it can be intimidating, but when you start to live that dream and taste it, things start to click.

In a matter of weeks, stadium seating became a semi circle, microphone and a podium got replaced with a chair, notes are no longer needed, intimacy abounds.  As far as the music, I am being most literal when I say that Savage Garden and The Black Eyed Peas have become worship music that people sing along to.

In future entries (coming SOON, I promise), I am gonna tell you about a vision called YASO and the kids within it.

A little nugget for you.  6 years ago a 13 year old girl tried to get me to come to coffeehouse on ninth street.  4 years later I finally went and the road to ministry began. I tried to start a church in Bolingbrook and I ended up back in that building on ninth.  I tried to start a church for single moms and homeless people, and the kids on ninth cried out in the darkness.  Turns out it begins with them and it began with them.