Am I going to survive this? Probably not.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Some Old Writing
The Northern Lighthouse
When you cross the threshold of a church, there are three crucial items to locate immediately: the free coffee, the bathrooms, and the exits. At the Northern Lighthouse, every congregant knows where to find these essentials. Especially the exits. There are two doors and five windows. Two of the windows are on the walls of the stage, eliminating the possibility of a escape during the church service. One window is in the Welcome Room, and there is another in the nursery. The last window is the easiest to locate, and is, in my experience, the best for a timely break out; it can be found at the end of the back hall that leads to the bathrooms. Most first-timers have considered it necessary to have these routes memorized, but in the end we’ve never really had much trouble with people breaking out of church; the real problem is with the semi-frequent break-ins.
Situated east to west on a five-acre lot, the building itself is relatively small compared to some of Lincoln’s other churches, somewhere around 2,000 square feet. The parking lot running alongside it has two lanes of stalls and had to be expanded to accommodate our ever increasing numbers. On the north side of the building is a circle drive, which is also becoming increasingly difficult to maneuver. At any given time, there will be at least four vehicles parked at a variety of angles. We have a fifteen-passenger van painted white with the church’s logo (a cartoony looking lighthouse) and the phone number. The other van, Big Bertha, used to belong to me until I hit a deer, totaled the van, and donated it to the church. Some guys from the church fixed it up, and occasionally it works. The greatest space taker is the old school bus, and the fourth car—well, no one really knows who it belongs to or why it’s there. At the crest of the circle drive sits a house that was donated to the church back when the it was just beginning; it has become the official headquarters for the powers that be on earth, otherwise known as the Northern Lighthouse Pastoral Constituency. North of the church building is a playground built by volunteers from another church in Iowa. Even in the middle of winter, the kids in our church successfully find their way to the wood and plastic structure. From the road, the property scattered with beat-up cars, a playground, and our little church building may seem strange. We used to think we would never outgrow this place, but the truth is, no matter how much space we have, we always need more.
The first thing that usually alerts me to some of the NL’s intrinsic differences is the thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke. Despite pleas from most of the congregation, not to mention the pastors, our favorite place to smoke is on the sidewalk right outside the main doors. There are a few octagon-shaped “smoker’s” picnic tables on the lawn between the house and the church where the bleary-eyed sit on Sunday mornings before the service begins, but if there’s mud or snow, everyone migrates to the sidewalk. At one point, there were more smokers coming on Sunday than non-smokers. It may still be that way. I don’t generally count.
Traffic slows as a colorful group of church-comers pile in through the single front door. As soon as I reach the glass doorway, we engulf each other in a flurry of handshakes and hugs, though we try to tone it down for newcomers, satisfying ourselves with just one emphatic shake. By the time I’ve survived the onslaught of friendliness, someone will have shoved a cream-colored bulletin into my hand, which I’ve noticed is usually used for doodling or note-passing. But when I open it, I find columns of information littering the inside, and between the folds of the cream paper, a half-sheet of clean, white paper with the current sermon outline and room for notes. The volunteer schedule for the nursery, offering, and soundboard duties is always printed on the back of the bulletin, tentative though it may be. Before we grew, there was only one person per duty—hardly a schedule.
When I began attending the Northern Lighthouse, I only came because I had become friends with the Keyzer brothers through another friend named AJ. They were always talking about their church and crazy things that seemed to happen almost every week. Eventually I found out, their father Sam, was the senior pastor, and their brother-in-law Jeff was about to become a pastor there as well. I couldn’t conceal my dislike for church, but after much insisting that I, at the very least, “check it out”, I joined them bright and early one Sunday morning.
The Northern Lighthouse wasn’t anything like the churches I had been raised in. Rather than the thousands of people and paid employees, the church functioned solely on the efforts of the Keyzer family. Their mother Karen walked around the room with a little white basket for the offering, and if you watched her after she finished, you could see her in the back, head tilted slightly upward and a finger ticking off heads as she counted. Sam preached, Karen counted, Jeff administrated, his wife Beth nurseried, the older son Jon youth-grouped, and the younger son David sound-boarded (and computer-administrated). They were one big happy family, and at the time they comprised close to half of the congregation. It made me feel comfortable, because everyone knew and liked me.
The sanctuary is usually crammed to the limit these days. I don’t ask my pastors if we’re violating fire codes; I don’t want to know the answer because of the inevitable moral dilemma. Every Sunday, a wide clump forms around the three percolators, completely hiding the free coffee from people just coming through the door. We’ve also begun setting up chairs all the way to the edge of the carpet, giving those that come through the door only a few feet to maneuver in the back before joining the clump for coffee or finding their way to a seat. If I pause uncertainly at the entrance, there’s a serious risk of getting trampled.
Directly to the left of the sanctuary is a little room that’s always been crammed full of odds and ends. There are stacks of broken chairs, boxes of books and clothes, and folding tables resting against the wall. Recently, this room became the Welcome Room. During the church service, the pastors will encourage newcomers to fill out a yellow card that asks all the pertinent information, and at the end of the service, they’re invited to drop the card off in the Welcome Room where they will also receive a free gift (a Northern Lighthouse coffee mug filled with candy). I personally thought this was a wise use of space; the old Welcome Table was awkwardly crammed up next to the sound booth (navigation in that corner has always been something of a challenge). The Welcome Room has solved some of these problems so that now, after shifting most of the stuff and piling it on top of itself, there is enough room to add humans to this odd assortment of junk.
The Northern Lighthouse has a few quirky and sometimes irritating physical problems. Since the church was built outside of the city limits, all of the water is well water, which leaves a rusty, yellow-orange film on the floors, walls, toilets, sinks, and any other imaginable surface. On occasion, someone will try to drink the water from the completely useless and regrettably deceptive drinking fountain, and six pairs of hands will reach out in an attempt to stop the poor soul. Of course, well water won’t kill anyone, but its sharp metallic taste sulpheric smell turns even the strongest stomach. There have been a few unfortunate meals served at the church where the cook has accidentally used the well water, but for the most part, people know to avoid it.
Of all the frustrating physical deformities at the Northern Lighthouse, the broken stalls in the women’s restroom cause me the most annoyance. According to legend, the psychotic high school youth group kids broke the doors several years ago. They’ve never been able to properly shut in all the years that I’ve been going there. The middle stall door will stay shut if I jam it up against the side, but this is not a permanent solution, since it will pop right back open if someone tries to shut any of the other doors. Most of the time, at least one toilet is clogged, and none of the handles work correctly. There’s also the pervasive smell--not the typical bathroom smells, though. It’s that tangy sulfur smell from the water, and it’s especially bad when someone uses the hot water in the sink. If I can help it, I don’t visit the restroom very often.
Across the hall from the women’s restroom is the nursery. Church nurseries are very unique places. Most of the toys are broken, and there are never enough baby wipes. The same is true for the Northern Lighthouse nursery. There are hundreds of broken or ancient toys complete with lumpy, naked dolls; deflated balls; and a vacuum popper that makes the nursery workers cringe. There are also a few couches where you may find a volunteer sleeping before church, especially if those volunteers work third shift. It used to be that during church, there could be anywhere from one to ten children in the little room, and they could be almost any age. We solved that problem by starting Children’s Church. Even with the nursery and children’s church though, there are always a few kids crying, talking, and laughing during the service. But the overarching attitude toward these kids, and toward most of our problems and quirks, is a resounding “whatever.” In spite of all of this, the church’s carefree attitude is one of its biggest attractions.
One of the first things I noticed about the Northern Lighthouse when I began to show up on Sundays was their considerable disdain for conventional seating. Several round tables are situated in set positions at the very front of the room. When we began running out of table space, we moved them closer to the stage and began adding rows of folding chairs. At some point, we got rid of a few of the tables to make room for even more rows. But the tables are still there. No matter how big we get, the tables remain. It might seem sort of foolish considering our space problems, but not long ago, the pastors attempted to explain our “chair crisis.” Our folding chairs were beginning to deteriorate, but even after praying for funding, the church could only afford sixty of the chairs one might find in other churches—the soft, comfortable chairs that make it a little easier to fall asleep during the sermon. Combined with our old, ugly, broken-down chairs, we have around 160 seats—and we usually use all of them So the tables have stayed. In many ways, the mix-matched tables and chairs represent the mission of the church in total. The idea that, though they’re out of place, we keep them around because we like them; we keep pulling them out and putting them up because they enable several separate people, often weird and habitually ostracized people, to come together and share an experience. That’s why the Northern Lighthouse is packed with people despite the building’s size, the unappetizing water, the disintegrating bathrooms, or the cramped seating. We’ll take anyone.
***
I’d never been to a church where the number of inmates attending on a Sunday morning was greater than the number of those that weren’t incarcerated. For a few years, that was how it was at the Northern Lighthouse. A lot of people came and went in those years because of the program we had with the Community Correctional Center. Sometimes it was chaos. But for some reason, the pastors felt drawn to these marginalized individuals.
The Community Correctional Center of Lincoln is a transitional center for some of Nebraska’s incarcerated men and women that are on their way to either a more secure facility or a parole hearing. Most of the time, the inmates at CCCL are on their way out of the system and spend no more than eighteen months there. Because it is a low security facility, the inmates are given a lot more freedom. Someone that knows an inmate at CCCL can be approved as a sponsor, and inmates can earn a variety of privileges like four, eight, or twenty-four hour passes. They also have the opportunity to get Work Release, which enables them to work outside of the center and save money for the day when they will be out on their own again.
Several years ago, volunteers at the Northern Lighthouse began sponsoring inmates for Sunday morning church. Shortly thereafter, the church began the Re-Integration Program, a weekly meeting that not only utilizes the twelve-step program taught by Alcoholics Anonymous but also teaches life skills, like balancing a check book or filing taxes. On Saturday morning, the inmates and sponsors volunteer at the church for a program called Charity Autos; behind the circle drive, a makeshift garage has been set up to do car repairs for low-income individuals in the community and the church.
I won’t lie. When I started coming on Sunday morning, the inmates made me a little nervous. I worried about things like my car keys and cell phone getting stolen, so I watched them out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes the men would flirt with me. After awhile, I actually became a sponsor, and I began to interact with the inmates on a different level. Every Thursday night, I drove the church van into town to pick the church’s cleaning crew—a group of women from the CCCL. I felt ashamed of myself for being so typically suspicious. The cleaning ladies were some of the nicest people in the world. There were a few that would ask me about my love life. If I was ever involved with anyone, they’d drill me for information and tease me about it all the time. In turn, I found out when their court dates were or when they would be having parole hearings, and I’d go out there and sit with them in an attempt to be an encouraging presence. On one occasion, I sponsored a girl for two back-to-back eight-hour passes so she could be with her mother during heart surgery, and I acted as a representative in the hospital when she wasn’t able to visit on the third day. I also acted as a witness during custody battles and parole hearings.
Being involved with the inmates could be really fun, but it was also hard. Sometimes they’d be coming for months while they were out at CCCL, but when they would get paroled, they would move back to whatever town they were from, and we’d never hear from them again. Other times, they’d get out of CCCL and disappear, then show up at church some Sunday morning, incarcerated again. There were others, though, who changed; the pastors like to refer to this as a “transformed life.” When they paroled, they would be right back at the church the next week. Some of them became sponsors themselves. And then their families would start coming, and their friends would shortly follow. This was when the growing happened. This was when the church’s seams began to rip open.
***
Not long ago, I invited Jeff Heerspink, the administrative pastor at the Northern Lighthouse, out for coffee. He and I have been at the church for almost the same length of time, and we both agree that the church has changed us both. Even when he began to work at the Northern Lighthouse, he wasn’t convinced being a pastor was really the path he wanted to take. But he saw what was happening at the Northern Lighthouse--their incredible emphasis on acceptance—and soon he was hooked. As he puts it, “Acceptance is the root of being a grace-filled, loving church.”
The pastors are great at reminding us that Jesus was all about acceptance, partly because they mirror Him. In a world where individualism and self-gratification tends to thwart compassion toward the less fortunate, pastors have an even harder job description:
1. Learn to not be selfish.
2. Teach Christians not to be selfish.
3. Love first, ask questions later.
4. Show people who Christ is.
5. Take care of their families.
6. Take care of themselves.
Maybe that’s why pastor’s lose their minds. They become disenchanted, often exhausted, drawn, gasping for air, and begging for more time. There are never enough hours in a day. We hear that about a lot of jobs, but for a pastor there really aren’t—but it isn’t that they wish for more time so they can work more. Pastors wish for more time so they can regroup. The pastors I know could happily pray for hours or days at a time. This life was what they dreamed of, what they worked toward. No one told them they were going to live like an emergency-room doctor—frantically running around, stitching up cuts and giving out pain pills.
Some of this is part of the job description. “You have to meet everyone’s needs right away,” is what their lives begin to look like. But I can see it on their faces when problems come up. Whenever they have to make a difficult decision, their faces go white in a kind of panic because this decision could make or break them. Not many people say it, but a lot of people subconsciously expect pastors to know what God is thinking. So if something goes wrong, if someone gets hurt, both pastor and God get alienated. The amount of responsibility we put onto one person is astounding. There are successes, though. Sometimes, the message hits a room like a bomb, and the silence or the tears or the glow that comes over everyone’s faces means everything.
***
I had been raised in churches, and I had also been excommunicated by them. I’d attended Christian school for years, most of them bitter, and in my experience, Christianity only works well when those that ascribe to that belief actually choose to believe it on their own; what’s left are the indoctrinated that give Christianity a bad name. That might be the most striking feature about the NL. In the whole church, there were only ten trained-from-childhood Christians. The rest were a different breed. They were the ones who had emerged from a drug and alcohol induced stupor to see the radiant glow of a Savior, while kids like me had only seen an overly familiar Jewish carpenter. The difference is like night and day.
We used to get visitors from other churches, particularly the churches in Iowa that sent us money. They would sit in the back, looking stiff and uneasy, and they would just watch the people around them. People wore dirty clothes, torn up jeans; some looked like gang-bangers. Sometimes the ladies wore short skirts. There was the chaotic struggle for coffee before the service started. People whispered, giggled, and wrote notes during the sermon. If I had been one of those visitors, I might have wondered what good my money was doing. I’m even tempted to think that way now. But sometimes, I imagine Jesus is one of those pushing and shoving for the coffee in the back, that it’s his quiet laughter during the church service. He would have loved the people at the Northern Lighthouse. I know because that was His crowd back in Israel when he was walking around preaching. Jesus liked the ones that no one else wanted. And whenever I felt some aversion to people in the congregation, whenever they made me feel indignant or irritated, I would remember that, according to Jesus, I’m no better than anyone, and He loves us all the same.
***
About a year ago, a woman broke into the Northern Lighthouse. She was high on meth and losing her mind. There was only one person in the world she wanted to talk to, and that was Pastor Sam. She knew that he would listen. She had heard that he wouldn’t judge her. That was why she had to break into the office. She didn’t have his phone number. As she tore the rooms apart, she had no doubt that this was the right thing to do. She called him from his own office.
It was the middle of the night, but he answered the phone when it rang. She told him the truth, that she had broken into the church because she needed to find his phone number. She was just waiting for him to yell at her or call the police. “I’m coming to you. Just stay there,” he told her.
For three days, days of draining that terrible drug from her system, she clung desperately to the love Pastor Sam and Pastor Jeff offered her. They prayed with her; they fed her; they gave her a place to sleep and clothes to wear. To this day, she calls those days her own “three days of resurrection.” Today she is clean and has reunited with her family. But she’s even more than that. She’s been transformed into a person who loves and a person who hopes.
I look around my church, and I still notice all of its flaws. I look at the kids making a mess in the kitchen. I see people that society normally shuns smiling and laughing together. I think of the woman, sitting in Sam’s office, hoping he would love her like Christ. And I wonder, what will next Sunday bring?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
8 year anniversary
Do you want to know something crazy? I’ve been using this blog (this particular site) for 8 years. Eight whole years I have been writing things on blogger, telling the world about my life. Now, granted, I never really expected anyone to read it, and so far that’s remained semi-true; no one really reads this thing anymore. But either way, here are some memories:
I started this blog when I was an exchange student in Sweden, back in 2002.
I remember updating this thing from the computer in The Bean (the coffee shop at Dordt).
I know I vented about David pretty profusely.
So, over eight years, what’s changed? Take a 16 year old girl stuck in a foreign country and imagine that girl becoming a 24 year old girl in Lincoln, dating an amazing guy that lives in South Dakota, with few prospects for a real future because of her own mistakes, friends that are only around half the time, and a family that’s beginning to fall apart (or fray at the edges, if you want a metaphor). It’s been strange to think about where I was eight years ago, because it seems like forever, but in a lot of ways, I’m still stuck back there. I’ve changed for sure, but there are so many things that are the same (personality wise) that I feel like I’m still that kid that I was when I first started this blog.
I was looking over the stuff I used to publish, and I was literally obsessed with telling stories. The difference now is that I like to actually live my story. But, you know, I always thought that romance would end up being a lot simpler than its proven to be. Either way, I’m happy to be in love (most of the time).
Either way, December will always have a ton of significance to me, because of my story. No matter how often I tell it, my story began with Sweden and ended with Jesus.
Here is a soundtrack for my December:
Always on the Outside : Common Children
Entertaining Angels : Common Children
Even if It Kills Me : Motion City Soundtrack
Decode : Paramore
Roses : Tonic
Take Me As I Am : Tonic
Count On Me : Tonic
Head On Straight : Tonic
Ring Around Her Finger : Tonic
Breathe : Taylor Swift
Miracle : Paramore
We Are Broken : Paramore
When It Rains : Paramore
No Air : Glee Cast
Chances : Five For Fighting
Turn Back Around : Lucy Schwartz
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