How We Became Youth Pastors

We trade high school stories
of Christian rock bands,
bands that toured
with Christian rock bands,
or any band that played
all ages shows in the late 90’s--

so many questions? Do you remember
Five Iron Frenzy or Roadside Monument,
Waxwing, These Arms Are Snakes,
when we stopped liking ska,
when skanking ceased to be cool, but
hardcore dancing still, somehow, was.
Older siblings talked of Soundgarden,
Nirvana, or Modest Mouse--handmedown
musical taste mixed with youth group piety:
Church youth rooms became venues,
ping-pong tables were folded-up
frankenstein-half stack amps wheeled in,
cops called on noise complaints: the legends
that got youth pastors fired and worshipped.

More questions: were we actually cool?
When was the last time you listened
to a Tooth and Nail band? We were cool.
Thrift store Doc Martens, Dickies slacks,
and band t-shirt with unrelated graphic.
We were seeker-sensitive-missional-
emergent-artisan church before it was...

We’ll be thirty soon, and then what
will be cool? More bands? Or singers from old bands
new solo project? A collection Motown on vinyl?
Scotch whisky, homebrews, secret garage stills?
Werner Herzog documentaries? May it never be!
Will the category cease to exist, and all the scenesters
turned socially-conscious progressives
ease into poorly paid professions
dress sensibly, eat ethically
raise poorly behaved children
with aspirations to become artists,
or worse yet, poets.

Esther: The Sunday School Version

I never understood the story. I thought it was weird when I first heard it in Sunday school, and I still do. I was right about most things then, except guacamole—while it may be green and gross looking, that stuff is delicious.

Esther is a story that doesn’t make easy sense. The heroes aren’t obvious. Everyone is a victim or a villain. The story doesn’t make sense, but it sticks with you like peanut butter on a dog’s tongue. The villain sets a trap for the apparent hero, and then the trap is turned on him. One mass murder is traded for another, because of one woman doing what her uncle told her to. And God takes a breather through the whole story, comes back in the next book, Job—which another weird one.

But these stories are in bible, so we have to preach about them, we have to extract morals, we have to reduce them to three-point propositional statements that don’t lead to more questions—there’s too much ambiguity and questions in our lives already, we don’t come to Church for more complications. So ignore the blood bath at the end, and the less-than consensual sex—make Esther a children’s story where Esther the Hebrew Barbie and her wise uncle Mordecai save the Jews from ancient Hitler. Simple. Easy. Moral. And this helps us Sunday school kids understand and cope with the world we find ourselves in. 

Lost Keys

At the mission drop-in center

I stand and stare half-asleep

into half-light as clients

shuffle-in, leave garbage bags

as place holders before lining-up

for coffee and sugar.

They smell like the street—

mouthwash, liquor, and sweat.

Addicted and tired with problems

beyond us. But we try,

we do what little we can--

which for me includes 

handing out socks, coffee,

and the occasional bag-lunch.

After they sit-down again

a chorus of heavy-breathing

and snores hum under

Christmas music—

I continue half-sleep prayers.

A rush of sweatpants

rages past—“I’ll fucken kill ‘em,

I don’t even fucking care.”

I ask a stupid question—“Hey man,

how’s it going?” And he answers

with a parade of expletives. His keys.

He left his house keys by the computer.

And they weren’t even his keys.

And now they’re gone.

Receipts erupt from fleece pockets,

no keys. The phone area is hastily reorganized,

no keys. Steps retraced, condescending questions asked

“Are you sure. . .” All we could do is done. And still

no keys.

He looks at us like we have a secret

room in the back where we keep spare keys

for everyone who comes into the drop-in center;

if he asks the right way, in earnest, convincing us

of the gravity of the situation—

then we would solve this problem.

But we have no secret room,

no mysterious connection with the Divine

to guide us to the whereabouts of the lost

keys. They were lost and beyond us.

We offer the obvious,

boring, and responsible.

And he realizes we have no magic,

and walks to the corner,

stares out at the other clients

mumbling to himself and

running his hands through his hair.

I return to half-sleep prayers,

wondering if I was asking

in the right way, if God knew

the gravity of the situation.