In 2010, I had just finished my second year of seminary. I lived in an apartment in Brighton, Massachusetts. I had enrolled at the “school of the prophets,” (Boston University: School of Theology) in August of 2008. A strange experience with the Holy Spirit in 2007 at the baccalaureate service of my liberal arts college led me to reconsider my atheist convictions of undergrad. I searched for a school that could help me to ask the big questions and equip me to know how to effectively serve the poor. On the phone with BUSTh officials, I was assured that the school was oriented to help me do both. I concluded near the end of my first year that I had been lied to. My seminary was hostile to the big questions, and it had no idea how to help the poor. I reckon I will write something up about that some other time.
My lifestyle in the Boston area was not particularly healthy. While I rode my bicycle around a good deal, I drank a lot of beer and kept irregular hours. I was quite miserable there, and lonesome. The East Coast cosmopolitan aesthetic was self absorbed and simultaneously detached and hedonistic. I didn’t have the energy for it. I sought the company of women and found some of it. Yet I wasn’t able to find a friend or a mate who could connect with me deeply. I would sometimes go days without really connecting with anyone. I would ride public transit, sitting in close proximity to a dozen people or so, breathing their air, and yet none of them would acknowledge me or look me in the eye. My classmates often took great offense when I would speak, so more than once I simply chose not to speak at all while on campus.
It was a very alienated time. I remember walking along Commonwealth Avenue one time and glancing to the side to see inside an apartment building, a living room with four or five happy twenty-something young ladies. I stopped and just watched them, wishing I had a happy bunch to be with on what should have been a perfect Spring day. After a few moments, one of them saw me and grimaced. “Creep!” she yelled and pointed at me. They all ran for the door. I was humiliated and panicked. I ran away before they could publicly shame me on the street. I’m still so embarrassed as I think about it now.
So it was that kind of life I was living when my school required for me to get a work/study position. Despite my continued conviction that the historic Christian faith was an oppressive force of patriarchal injustice, I wanted to go into pastoral ministry so as to motivate people to social justice from within the church. I knew I needed to start working within churches in order to know what I was doing, so I started shopping after attending seminary for a year or so. That’s right: I spent more than a year in Boston, enrolled in seminary, without attending a church.
I eventually found St. John’s United Methodist Church in Watertown, MA. It was a beautiful stone building with a capacious, resonant sanctuary.
The pastor there was reluctant to host my work study program, but he eventually relented after I visited with Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” in hand. He had fond memories of the book, which endeared him just a bit to me. For a year, he let me serve in a pseudo-leadership in that community. I preached a few sermons, sang in the choir, made a few hospital visits, attended some committee meetings, served in a weekly food ministry. We had a bell choir for a little bit. On Easter Sunday, I didn’t show up until the last minute because I was hung over. They had replaced my position in the bell choir out of frustration with my absence. Such was life in that church: They were friendly enough, but I think they could sense that I had divided loyalties.
I continued to worship there after my work study program ended. When I eventually graduated and left, they gifted me a stole over a goodbye party and sang to me. I was never able to actually wear the stole, as three annual conferences refused to ordain me. I finally wore it to lead worship the Sunday after I was ordained in the Global Methodist Church this year. It was a long time coming.
Back to the summer of 2010. The pastor at St. John’s UMC had a wife who was also an ordained elder in the UMC. She served a church north of Boston in Arlington, Calvary UMC, which had a youth group. The youth group was scheduled to go on a mission trip to West Virginia to volunteer for Appalachia Service Project, which partners with local impoverished households to do basic repairs on properties. I’m sure they do more than that, but that was what our crew signed on to do.
I didn’t want to go. I didn’t enjoy my teenage years (not that my early-20s were a blast, either), and I did not think I would enjoy being in the presence of a bunch of hormonal people tied up with concerns I had largely left behind. Even so, while my life at that point was all about me, this faith thing was starting to mess with me. I was bored, and I didn’t have anything else going on. I said yes.
I showed up on Saturday morning, July 24. I did not know a single person on that trip. I’m sure they felt strange about having some strange man show up to hang out with these teenagers. I know I certainly felt strange. The only other trips I had been on with teenagers were ones I had been on as a teenager. As a teenager, I was looking to sneak around, to chase some girls, to misbehave. As a 25-year-old seminarian, I wasn’t sure who I was in such a group. What was my role?
Much of that trip is lost to time. My mind doesn’t hold onto details like I wish it would. The photos I took show a geolocation around Mullens, WV. Google Maps says a drive there from Boston takes roughly twelve hours. I do remember stopping and staying the night at a church along the way. The information on the photos I took indicates that we stayed in Mullens, WV for four days before returning.
I grew up participating in the United Methodist youth group at Claremore FUMC in Oklahoma. It was a relatively normal experience for me to hop into a 15-passenger van and go to a campground or a mission trip. When one is in such close proximity with others, bonding takes place easily. I remember getting a sense for each of the youth.
There was the nerdy skinny black girl who couldn’t help but laugh frequently at the kids around her. There was the ginger boy with braces who loved sports but was at the long, lanky period of growth. There was the cool white girl who was comfortable in her own skin and knew all of the contemporary references. There was the dorky black boy with a lisp who was a genius on the piano. During off times, he would go to the auditorium of the school we stayed the night in, and other youth would gather to hear him play pop songs he had interposed into piano music. And then there was the handsome young man, Stephen, who was a little too confident in himself. I identified with him. He was me in so many ways. As the group rolled their eyes at him and loved him, they didn’t know it, but they were ministering to me, as well. I hadn’t really ever recovered from my teenage years.
There were a few others. I don’t remember all their names. I remember their faces as they laughed.
The youth leader for the trip, a woman named Susan, had a great demeanor. She was funny and fun-loving, but also calm and organized. On the first night on the road, staying in the fellowship hall of a church on the way, she smoked Stephen in a pushup competition. It was awesome. There were two other adult leaders, a young woman and a middle-aged man, who were both nice and agreeable, but with whom I didn’t talk a whole lot. The most influential person on the trip was a fellow leader, a guy named Matt. We were at the same stage of life, unmarried young men in our 20s. He was likable, funny, and earnest. We enjoyed riding in the front of the van together, him driving and me navigating.
We arrived in Mullens, WV to combine with several other youth groups, all staying in an elementary school that wasn’t being used that summer. The organizers of Appalachia Service Project got the teams organized and deployed them around the county at the houses of different people who were ostensibly in need of home repairs. They put these youth to work, under the supervision of adults who may or may not know how to do home repairs, as they laid new vinyl flooring, stripped roofing, or any number of simple projects.
There is much to be written, and has been written, on the particular socioeconomic challenges of Appalachia and the means by which well-intentioned upper middle class folks try to help the people there. That isn’t really the point of my writing this. Rather, the most influential lesson I learned on this trip had to do with the purpose of my life, and how it is that I came to understand that I needed to spend it.
You see, these days were spent in constant service to others. Every morning, Matt and I would wake up before everyone else and go to the school kitchen, where we would make coffee and visit, standing at the kitchen island. We would joke around a bit, talk about the kids under our care, plan for the day, and encourage one another. I wasn’t very strong in my faith at that time, so we didn’t pray together. I wish we had prayed together.
After 30 minutes or so, we would go wake the kids. And for the rest of the day, we would care for them, getting them up and moving, taking them where they needed to go, encouraging them, correcting them, getting them fed, facilitating their fun, and getting them to bed at the right time. There was not free time to be by myself, to have my own space. Rather, from the moment I woke to the moment I slept (and I slept very well on this trip), I was thinking about and working for the good of others. Matt and I were co-captains in the care of these young people, modeling hard work and responsibility, while also caring for their needs.
The youth pretty quickly determined that I was alright. It was a joy to be so readily integrated into the group. Perhaps the funnest part, for me, was when I taught all of the youth groups a game I had learned at a previous stage in life, called Jedi Mind Game, which all of them then played together:
There were plenty of sweet and fun times. I could spend a lot more time typing out a lot of anecdotes of each of these kids in our care, what made each of them so charming and great. I am still surprised at how quickly feelings of care came within me for these youth.
Before I left on this trip, I had been living a solitary life. I spent hours of my day alone. Even while around other classmates, neighbors, roommates, I was largely alone. On this trip, people saw me and appreciated my attention. For my part, I rejoiced in pouring myself out for them. The time with my coworker, Matt, was most treasured. The beauty of the bond of friendship, solidified in the care of more vulnerable people, is something that escapes my description even these many years later.
We drove back to Massachusetts, and it was time to say goodbye. They dropped me off outside of my apartment in Brighton. I went upstairs to my room, laid my luggage on my flood, sat on the side of my bed, and cried for hours. I was alone again. Nobody cared about me, and I had nobody to care for. I took this picture to remember the pain:
I guess it is a little emo in retrospect. But a young man can be a bit emo.
I resumed a solitary life, and the pain of loneliness again became manageable and commonplace. The youth group summoned me to an event a month or so later, where we reviewed the pictures and video I took while with them. It wasn’t the same, of course. The reality of our daily lives interrupted the bond we had shared for those few days. What we had was a moment in time that had passed, and that is as it is supposed to be.
Yet I learned that my heart’s yearning is to care for others. That my life is best spent pouring myself out for others. That any friendships I have need to be oriented towards the care of others. That, from sun-up to sundown, my life should be spent too concerned with others to allow myself to be prone towards self-pity or narcissism.
When I met Sara Beth the following year, God gave me my heart’s desire. Together, she and I have built a life oriented towards others. We have built up five church families, ministering to people we have truly loved. We have also had the joy and honor of ministering to four children the Lord has given us. From sun-up to sundown, we are caring for vulnerable creatures. My wife and I wake up early each morning before the kids get up, and with warm drinks in our hands, we joke, compare notes, and make plans for the coming day.
I do not know where Matt is. I wonder about him often and hope that he, too, has been able to design a life for himself oriented towards service and care of others. The church I served on that trip is a pretty liberal/progressive church. They probably do not care for my theology or agenda as I continue to participate in the same social fabric as them. Even so, I carry nothing but gratitude towards them for having allowed me to care for their youth and to learn about myself through them.
I once heard a pastor compare men, in particular, to trailers. He explained that a trailer without a load is a dangerous thing, easily able to lose control and cause much damage. It is when one puts a good deal of weight on a trailer that is gains stability. I have experienced that to be true in my own life. While many of my peers have continued to focus on themselves in life, designing lives around their own comfort and entertainment, I cannot help but notice their dissatisfaction and anomie. Meanwhile, my humble wife and I celebrated eleven years of marriage yesterday, and we could not possibly be happier with the life we share together. Our culture has a warped view of self, of the purpose of life, of the nature of happiness. We are honored to stand in contradistinction to the present age. We hope to lead others in this direction, as well.
The bible’s image of the Kingdom of God is not of solitary care and comfort. Rather, the portrait is of a community of ruling laborers in the garden of God, perpetually in his company as we praise him together. It is not good for man to be alone. I, alongside all true believers in the household of God, await the coming day on which we will be united together in glory. In the meantime, God has given us one another for a foretaste of that future eternal union.
Maranatha!
Thanks so much for sharing in such an honest, vulnerable way.