I am a Minister, Not a Professional

I am a mutant. I possess uncanny and otherworldly powers on par with Stan Lee’s X-Men.

For example, I can position myself in a seat at the right angle at the right time of day to perfectly capture a beam of the sun’s oppressive rays directly into my eyes.

I cannot hide my supernatural abilities, especially around campfires where I can draw clouds of cough-inducing smoke to follow me no matter the direction of the wind.

Without thinking, I can drop the last Tylenol capsule in the house and know without fail it will fall, bounce, and roll as if pushed by a phantom hand under the refrigerator. Telekinesis or Murphy’s Law? You be the judge.

If these feats don’t earn me a classified folder in the parapsychology labs at Duke University, the next should. I possess a flexibility worthy of a boardwalk freak show in how easily I can insert my foot in my mouth.

Over a lifetime, I’ve collected awkward moments like some people collect charms around a bracelet. I do not know why I am this way, where my thoughts move as fast as a kid bolting for the toy section at Target.

I first became aware of my knack for making all parties uncomfortable while working a manufacturing job in my early twenties. It happened around Easter, as I shared with co-workers that the cuddly and slightly creepy cryptoid Bunny still stopped by my parents’ house to leave my adult sister and me baskets filled with Cadbury Creme Eggs and pastel-colored Whoppers.

Wrapping up the tale, I noticed my supervisor standing off to the side. He had appeared the way most supervisors do— without warning, out of nowhere, and with little if any idea of what was going on.

“Man, I wouldn’t tell such a thing,” he said. “A grown man getting an Easter basket?” 

He laughed and continued to try and embarrass me over the fact my parents treated me like the child I was to them. I let him finish. 

Before fully processing what happened, my foot made a beeline for my kisser. I was vomiting words.

“You know, if I had any respect for you, that might have hurt my feelings.”

Crickets.

Eyes shifted down. Everyone found a reason to see if their boots were untied.

There was at least one stifled laugh, but I was too busy holding up a shit-eating grin to see who it was while I stared back at him. His cheeks flushed like he had just run a mile. I was never a big fan of the guy, nor was he of me, but this certainly didn’t help our relationship moving forward.

That moment seems like forever ago. I like to think I have matured in realizing that as much as I enjoyed saying what I said, I know I didn’t act appropriately. Seeing this play out at a place of employment, my actions were far from being what many would describe as “professional.”

This memory recently returned when I was poised for another cringe-making exchange. This time, I wasn’t nearly as crass, but the conversation did lead me to question if I ever stood a chance of being professional?

But before I share the story, let me wonder aloud: “Can someone be a professional minister?” According to all things Calvinistic and Reformed, John Piper, the answer is no. 

In a book I found on a rarely used church library shelf, Piper’s “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals” argues that ministry should not be viewed as a guild. Piper builds his thesis by saying there is no such thing as a professional pray-er or professional distributor of the gifts of the Spirit.

He quickly goes off the rails for me soon after this, but as crazy as it sounds, I’m in a rare state of agreement with Piper.

I want to claim my bias and admit to associating the term professional with athletes, business types and engineers— the latter I’m prone to believe don’t have emotions or souls. This comparison helps me to understand Piper’s point: Amateur or professional labels don’t work for church leaders.

Yet, I know there are some practices even ministers should consider adopting. Here are a few ways ministers might consider being more professional.

Timeliness

This should be a given, but I’ll list it first and foremost. I am the type of person who needs to get to the movies early. I calculate the time I know it will take me to get to a theater, grab overpriced popcorn and sit down to enjoy the handful of trailers. 

I treat everything this way. Dropping the kid off at school, staff meetings, and dentist appointments.

Patron Saint of Opinions Anthony Bourdain said it this way during an interview:

“Show up on time. I learned this from the mentor who I call Bigfoot in ‘Kitchen Confidential.’ If you didn’t show up 15 minutes exactly before your shift — if you were 13 minutes early — you lost the shift, you were sent home, and the second time, you were fired. It is the basis of everything.

I make all my major decisions on other people based on that. Give the people you work with or deal with or have relationships with the respect to show up at the time you said you were going to. And by that I mean, every day, always and forever. Always be on time. It is a simple demonstration of discipline, good work habits, and most importantly, respect for other people.”

This isn’t always so cut and dry in ministry settings. Your afternoon meeting with someone can be interrupted by an urgent phone call, not to mention the random person stopping by your office. 

This happens,m and when it does, take the time to call someone and let them know you are running late or need to reschedule. This leads to my next point.

Courtesy

Such a low bar qualification and one demonstrating you are a somewhat functioning relational human being.

If someone sends you a text or email, answer it. If you can’t, find thirty seconds to respond with “I’ll get back to you soon.” 

Don’t ghost or leave them hanging. Follow up when you can.

I know this will sound wild, but when talking with someone, fight the urge to interject. Give the person a chance to finish their thoughts and sentences. This should be the norm.

Acknowledge someone when they walk into a room. Let them know their presence matters.

Hold a door for strangers even if they don’t need you to. I know what you’re thinking. Geez, isn’t this just common courtesy?

Yeah, it is. And I wish I saw more of it in professional settings.

Authenticity

This word gets used a lot. Authenticity runs as the antithesis of being professional, as it means being who you are and not what people expect you to be. People want to be able to be themselves and ministers are no different.

For me, this means wearing leopard print pants and shiny Doc Martens boots. It means I don’t have to hide my Southern accent or think about code-switching depending on who I’m around. It means I can say hello to you in a liquor store and let out an expletive in the church’s kitchen if I burn my hand taking a pan out of the oven.

For far too long, ministers have been viewed as the folks who are supposed to have it all together. It’s a charade that has done more harm than good.

I have found the freedom to refute this stereotype. Now, I let people know how much I, too, deal with insecurity, imposter syndrome, and the fear that everything is burning down around me. Being authentic enables me to lay all this on the table and say my vocation doesn’t shield me from the hardness of life.


You might be wondering where all this is coming from. As someone who resists the “professional” moniker, I found myself wishing someone I was trying to introduce myself to had acted more professionally.

Peers kept telling me how much I needed to meet this individual and Lord knows I tried. Several emails were sent. 

A couple of phone calls went to voicemail. The response? 

Zip. Nothing. Nada.

After these failed attempts, I threw in the towel. I never thought of them as terrible people, but I did write them off.

And then I ran into them.

I fought the urge to ask why they never returned my calls or emails? My tongue was coiled and ready to strike; it wanted to form a string of contemptuous words, but it didn’t. Instead, it rolled around my mouth, assessing the damage like it does after a painful bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

Unlike with my former supervisor, the more mature me didn’t say anything out of the way. I held the passive-aggressive comments at bay. 

I was courteous in our conversation. Sincere, authentic even, when I said it was a pleasure to finally meet them. We parted ways with nothing between us but mundane pleasantries.

Was I professional? I don’t know.

Afterward, I thought a lot about why I didn’t say anything. Maybe it’s because I’m growing older and wiser. That could be the reason. 

Or it could be because I know somewhere to somebody that I’m that person. I’ve done the same.

I have a long list of casualties in my rearview mirror. People I unintentionally blew off, didn’t show up on time to meet or forgot to call. 

I imagine some of this was because I was already trying to do too much and didn’t possess the vulnerability to admit I couldn’t be all things to all people all the time. In the last several years, I have tried to do better by owning my shortcomings.

What I found is when I do, it’s generally well received. People get it. 

They extend me the grace that I need and am uncomfortable with at times. I’ve taken this grace and passed it on to those who need it, too.

Call it decency, empathy, a superpower, or even being professional. It’s not a bad way to move through the world.

Me and Mrs. Womble

Her last name was several feet tall. Spelled out in chipped bold letters that had seen more hurricane winds than fresh coats of paint. Colored red as if Jesus had spoken them.

WOMBLE the sign read above the hardware store.

A short proclamation followed underneath.

“If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”

A provincial pushback to those believing you had to ride into the city to have your needs met.

Because of this, I knew her name before I knew her. I mouthed it between expletives while traveling down U.S. Route 421 in Eastern North Carolina. A highway in name only, the modest two lanes of cracked pavement attracted tractors with torched-skin pilgrims perched on top, along with boat-sized Oldsmobiles piloted by petite blue-haired captains. Their heads obscured by towering front seats. Their odometers set 10 below the recommended speed limit.

In vacation Bible school, I was taught the book of Proverbs says the Lord “hears the prayers of the righteous” and I knew gripping the steering wheel that I must have been counted amongst the wicked. My pleas for traveling mercies in the form of fellow speeding motorists went unanswered as I moved like molasses in January past streets connecting old neighborhoods to old families with community ties as strong as buffalo leather.

Hope is all you have sometimes, and while I hoped for an upcoming passing lane, I’d see the Womble sign at the town limit and know my destination was getting close. I was starting to dip my toes into divinity studies at a small university with Baptist roots. My enrollment coincided with my first call at a church just down the road from the school. Seeing the Womble name let me know I was almost where I needed to be. It became a beacon of reassurance.

So would Mrs. Womble.

I met her in the same place men have claimed to meet good women in the South for years — I came across her at church.

I was the young, eager, fresh-out-of-crazy youth pastor. She, the stalwart Sunday school teacher who’d already forgotten more Bible verses than I’d ever memorize.

I could count on her presence at church like I could the tin tiles on the sanctuary ceiling. She was a fixture before my time there and after. A living piece of stained glass that had somehow managed to break from her housing, she walked among us, beaming a holy radiance I could see but like the Apostle Paul couldn’t describe.

“Not once did I ever have to guess what was on Mrs. Womble’s mind.”

In her incarnate form, her hair appeared stark black, like a buzzard draped across a clear blue sky. She had as many pantsuits as Golden Corral has buffet options and glasses highlighting mischievous eyes. Her genuine but slightly upturned smile let you know she knew something you didn’t. Her facial expression always appeared amused, and she spoke with a sincere but frank honesty that I wish more politicians invoked. Not once did I ever have to guess what was on Mrs. Womble’s mind.

The two of us embodied different times, qualities and theological convictions but got along fine. She seemed to favor me. Perhaps I reminded her of a grandchild who meant well but didn’t have good sense. Southern grannies have a way of loving people through their shortcomings. Be it toleration or acceptance, she lined up every Sunday outside the narthex to shake my hand and shake me out with her kind and straightforward quips.

“You get into any trouble this weekend, Justin,” she asked?

“None that I can tell you about Mrs. Womble,” I said back.

“Well, if you can’t tell me, tell somebody, and then have them tell me,” she said. Her hand was soft, from what I imagine was the daily application of moisturizing lotion. However, her grip was firm and as secure as a fox’s hold around a chicken’s neck.

I knew she didn’t fully get or understand me, but I never doubted she respected me.

And that’s something I don’t always feel in churches anymore.

When it came to faith, hers was uncomplicated. Sure of who Jesus was and her salvation through him, Mrs. Womble never seemed to fear death. Often talking openly about dying in such a matter-of-fact manner, you would have thought she had it scheduled on her calendar.

“When it came to faith, hers was uncomplicated.”

One evening at a deacons’ meeting, she laid back the ears of those gathered around the table while discussing the future of her church.

“What do you think?” the committee chair asked Mrs. Womble. “What do you want to see happen in the next decade?”

“Well, I’ll be dead by then,” she said. “I’ll be gone on down the road to glory. So I ain’t that worried about it. That’ll be up to y’all, and you better get it figured out.”

If I hadn’t seen her with my own eyes, I would have sworn she was a fictional character. Easily lifted from the pages and table settings of Fannie Flagg’s Whistle Stop Cafe.

My time in this community saw turmoil. A thundercloud of controversy had gathered over the steeple. The senior pastor had stepped down or been dismissed, depending on who you asked. My arrival came in concurrence with such ill news. Trouble had been brewing for some time, but I was the crow flying ahead of the storm.

In the by and by, I helped fill an empty pulpit while an interim pastor could be arranged. Afterward, I continued to preach the early service regularly and occasionally at 11:00.

If ministers are honest with themselves, they’ll tell you those who sit in their pews rarely remember their sermons. Hell, I don’t know the one I preached last week. Likewise, if most congregants are honest, they’ll admit the same.

What people do remember is how you show up for them when they need you. They’ll never forget you if you say yes to marrying their son who hasn’t stepped inside a church in years or if you sit with them as they mourn the loss of their mother. Folks will recall your name with ease, maybe even remember what you were wearing the time you visited them in the hospital when they had a scare with a series of life-changing chest pains.

“I did what I wasn’t qualified to do but tried nonetheless.”

In this way, the people of that church came to know me. I did what I wasn’t qualified to do but tried nonetheless. They saw my efforts and appreciated them. I already had their love but earned their trust during that rocky season.

Lord knows I didn’t give them much to work with.

I’ve never had what some might call a normal appearance. My wardrobe always has been controversial. In middle school, I’d sneak into my mother’s dresser and confiscate a pair of her pantyhose. Arriving at school, I’d slip them on under a pair of shorts, and promptly rip holes in different sections. In warm weather, I donned T-shirts that read Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and Led Zepplin on top of heavy thermals. I bought a biker’s wallet from the mall and attached a chain to it big and heavy enough to keep a mastiff in place. My green and white Converse Chuck Taylor shoes were covered in writing and falling apart. I used duct tape to hold them together.

If this wasn’t enough, the pièce de résistance was my hair. Already an exotic Opie Taylor red, I grew it to my shoulders and dyed it with powder paint I found in shop class. And then, on a whim from an MTV music video, I shaved my head save one small section at the crown. This I braided à la David Carradine’s character in the show Kung Fu.

“He’s creative,” my mother said.

“He looks homeless,” my father said.

My younger sister said nothing. Content to fly low under their parental radar.

I got out of that phase and into others. By the time I stood behind a pulpit weekly, I’d toned some things down. I still sported a chain wallet — smaller, mind you — and decided to push out and adopt a bushy beard to cover half my face. My hair was still long but now stood in the opposite direction. It was high enough to make Dolly Parton proud and Snoop Dog blush.

“It was the hair that caught Mrs. Womble’s attention.”

It was the hair that caught Mrs. Womble’s attention.

It was after a service where I led worship. I’m sure what I said was only half heretical. Expectations are low when you’re a wet-behind-the-ears preacher.

I made my way to the open doors at the front of the church, watching the faithful exit and enter a world that needed them. Over their heads, I glimpsed a man named Darrell talking with Mrs. Womble. Darrell was the person every church needs to have. He kept things in motion, moving forward, doing the work behind the scenes. Country churches are filled with such saints as they are with altar calls and preheated baptismal pools in case a soul needs a sanctifying dunk after a rowdy Saturday night. Darrell was a big supporter of my being there, even when I didn’t fit the demographic.

Mrs. Womble caught Darrell by the arm and pulled him off to the side.

Looking at him, she said, “Well, that wasn’t bad at all, was it?”

“No, ma’am, I think he’s going be all right.”

“Yes, I think he’ll make a fine preacher, however …,” her voice trailed off.

Darrell smiled in the polite way a Southerner smiles when they know the other shoe is about to drop.

“However, she continued, “I wish he’d do something about that hair. My God, it looks like a squirrel’s nesting in it.”

Darrell hollered with laughter before adding, “Yeah. It’s pretty wild.”

They stood in silence. A few seconds passed before Mrs. Womble spit out a little more wisdom wrapped in grace. “But if that’s the only bad thing I can say about him, I suppose I shouldn’t say nothing at all.”

Her quietness a testimony to her affirmation of me. Her maturity and humility in knowing when to look past the clothes, the beard, the massive pompadour and see who was underneath it all was a witness to her character.

My grandmother would say she was raised right.

Later, standing on the church’s steps, Darrell would share with me this story. Tear stains were still on his cheek from laughing so hard over her deep and rich observation.

“That old woman thinks a lot of you. You know that, right?”

“I know she does,” was all I could say.

I’ve known people like Mrs. Womble all my life.

“I’ve known people like Mrs. Womble all my life.”

Such folks tend to have arms that are always open and tables with an extra setting just in case some unplanned company stops by.

They are fashioned from bloodlines that struggled to make ends meet, worked hard, did better and wanted even more for their children. They reared families where unconditional love was doled out like second helpings. They knew their God so intimately that their certainty intrigued and worried me. It still does. Theirs is a confident faith, and I often find myself jealous at how easy it seems to come to them.

I’ve learned a lot from being around such people. I was raised by some. The kind that if they had a dollar, you had a dollar. They supported you, gave you the benefit of the doubt and made you feel you were part of something even if they didn’t know exactly how you fit in.

People like Mrs. Womble don’t wait until Sunday morning to share this way of living.

They preach this gospel all the time.

There’s a popular misconception that ministers make a lot of money. People hear about megachurch pastors with private jet planes and million-dollar homes. They watch televangelists clasp their hands together for prayer and catch sight of the Rolex watch peeking out from under a suit sleeve that costs more than a used Subaru. I’m aware those high holy rollers are out there, but that ain’t the norm. Most ministers I know are overworked and underpaid. They carry debt from seminary and the worries of the people they’ve been called to shepherd.

Church work won’t break your back like a day hauling concrete mix, but it’ll cause you to stay up at night. You lose sleep over the heaviness of the world. You lay in bed between stress and anxiety, a toxic ménage à trois that will suck the life out of you. You don’t do it expecting to get rich or produce a diverse and lucrative financial portfolio. Still, there’s hope you have enough to do a bit of living and enough to cover the cost when they place you six feet under loose cemetery sod.

I pray that when that day comes, I’ll be well off enough to afford extra lettering on my tombstone so that my epitaph will read as follows,

Here lies the Reverend Justin A. Cox
Husband, Father, Cornbread Connoisseur, and Holy Agitator
A man who, for a time, left a Mrs. S. Womble speechless

It’s not quite the feat as storming San Juan Hill or hitting the shores of Normandy, but it’s an accomplishment I’m sure only a select few share.

I never would imagine I could teach Mrs. Womble anything about faith, but maybe I did, and she taught me something in the process too.

She showed me even the most steadfast of saints are open to change.

And I showed her a heavenly halo can be mistaken for a squirrel nest.

It really does take all kinds.

A Moonshine Faith

“Why does the car smell like feet?” I say, entering the house.

“Are the children in the car?” Lauren says back. She answers my question the way Jesus answered the Pharisees with another question.

She’s in the kitchen squirting ketchup on plates. Our children love ketchup. It’s part of the food pyramid they’ve created for themselves, along with butter noodles and dinosaur-shaped processed chicken.

“What? No. No, I don’t think so. Are they supposed to be?” I can’t help but stare at the industrial-sized condiment bottle she’s holding. They come in four packs, and I wonder if I’ll ever have to buy ketchup again before I die.

“So, a foot smell with no feet?” she says. “Did you check for shoes?”

Tiny shoes are the bane of my existence, along with never-ending piles of laundry and petrified chunks of half-eaten string cheese scattered around the living room sofa. Sometimes, I step on the cheese and, after identifying it, vomit a little in my mouth, adding another layer to the disgustingness of our house.

“How many pairs of shoes do they have?” I ask. “Are we taking multiple ones with us?”

“Shoes or children?” she asks.

“Shoes,” I say.

“They’ll need their sandals. Don’t pack the fur-lined ones,” she says. “Those make their feet sweat.”

“Someone already did,” I say.

I walk back to the garage and make a mental note to pick up an industrial pack of Febreze air fresheners.

We’re preparing for a family trip and all the joys and trauma that come along with such an undertaking. So, with a trash bag in hand, I commence to clean out the car while inhaling toxic foot fumes in hopes of utilizing every inch of mid-sized SUV space.

This includes collecting and discarding an assortment of dated items. Broken crayons. A Gabby Cat thermos I thought we lost a year ago. Several used and greasy chicken nugget containers.

I discover a treasure trove of gag-inducing trash shoved under front seats, between cushions, and crammed into knuckle-busting compartments that no automobile engineer should have ever signed off on.

I pop the trunk and dive into the cargo area. The spare tire, jumper cables, and luggage straps are under the false floor. There are a couple of umbrellas there, too. I pull everything out to reorganize and find further evidence that my children’s presence has no end. Somehow, they’ve squeezed a random notebook and Paw Patrol figure back here. I marvel at the magic of what tiny hands can do and where they can fit.

Then I spot what looks like a scrap of paper near a back corner; successfully pulling multiple muscles in my shoulder, I retrieve it. It’s an old business card from a contractor Lauren and I used when we lived in North Carolina.

I had accepted a call to become a senior pastor in the Northeast, and we were in the early stages of preparing to sell our home. Like many home renovations, a few modest upgrades turned into a large-scale project of several thousands of dollars.

Mass-marketed prosperity and nationalistic forms of Christianity are anything but genuine. Anything but real and authentic. Anything but a radical Gospel for all. This revelation hit me like a shot of poteen.

This is how we came to know Kevin, the contractor whose name is on the business card.

Kevin was in our home daily for the better part of three weeks. He’d swing by and update us on when we’d have our kitchen and main bathroom back. My conversations with Kevin were always colorful. We discussed all sorts of topics. Weather, traffic, and the excessive mold growing behind our walls. Kevin possessed the gift of gab and always had a story to share.

Holding that card in my hand made me think of one particular conversation with him that hit me on a theological level. It stuck with me long after the remodeling was done.

We were talking about getting older and how our bodies were finding new ways to betray us. I told him about how when I found out I was going to become a parent, I wanted to shed the extra weight I’d amassed over the previous decade. I listed a few things I did to drop 70 pounds, jokingly saying a big help was switching from beer to whiskey. He mentioned he was more of a tequila drinker but would drink bourbon if it was on hand. I asked if he’d ever stopped in an up-and-coming distillery in our city. Kevin looked at me and gave a slight smile.

“Nah, man. No need. I have a feller who makes the real deal stuff up in the mountains. Straight moonshine. Why would I drink anything else when I can get my hands on that?”

I nodded. “Touché, brother,” I said.

As a minister, I’m plagued to make everything spiritual. Even the partaking of moonshine. Standing beside Kevin, I wondered if the Holy Spirit was in the swirling contents of a different kind of spirit-filled mason jar.

I came to the conclusion that he was on to something.

Kevin reminded me that day that I’m prone to consume things that are manufactured and manipulated. Packaged and plastered with fancy labels. Put together by a Don Draper-led slick marketing team. Placed on an eye-catching shelf, tempting me to settle out of comfortable convenience.

And please understand I’m not talking about Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

I’m talking about mass-marketed prosperity and nationalistic forms of Christianity that are anything but genuine. Anything but real and authentic. Anything but a radical Gospel for all.

This revelation hit me like a shot of poteen. Provocative with a kiss of throat-burning fire, fanning out to the extremities of my body and soul. Standing in my gutted kitchen that day, a warm sensation coursing through me, I knew the real thing is always better.

I finished defunkifying the car and decided to hang onto the card. I tucked it inside my wallet, unsure if I’d ever have a reason to call my old contractor again, given that we were separated now by hundreds of miles. But I’m glad to have his number handy.

Just in case I need to talk about moonshine or faith.

Just in case I need reminding why I should always try and seek out the real stuff.

Ordination in the Wild (Goose): Invoking the Spirit of Will Campbell

I’m standing in a field watching two bare-assed children play in a mud hole. One of them is mine.

The other belongs to friends I haven’t seen in years. We didn’t plan for this impromptu swim session. We packed sunscreen but not swimsuits. 

We left a lot of other stuff back in our car and hotel room. Shame, judgment and expectations, to name but a few.

In between the cackles of laughter from naked children and their older clothed siblings, I take in the Woodstock-like scene. We are surrounded by Jet Streams and other giant RVs. There are tents of every size, supporting an array of colors that would put a Crayola box to shame.

I can smell a New York block’s worth of different foods sizzling on grills and personal hibachis. Chicken, hamburger, frankfurters and bone-in pork chops do their damndest to lure me into neighboring encampments. Coolers, mini-fridges, and iced buckets are filled to the brim with cold beverages.

Need a bottled water? Just ask. 

Experiencing a parchedness only an airy pilsner can quench? That’s here, too. 

A new friend just a few camps down, Tim, tells me, “If you need a drink and you’re down this way, just move the makeshift gate and grab whatever you want out of the icebox.” I do. Twice.

This communal ethos is everywhere and it’s helping me understand what the Goose is all about.

For reasons I can’t quite explain, I never attended the Wild Goose Festival while living in North Carolina. Granted, I only heard of it after I entered seminary. 

When classmates and clergy colleagues mentioned it, I always had an excuse not to go. Classwork, church work and becoming a parent kept me occupied and away from the festival in the nearby mountains of Hot Springs.

But then, a chain of events unfolded. The stars aligned, as they sometimes do. 

Organizers from the Goose called and I answered. And so, in early July, my family and I headed south from New England toward Union Grove—back home to North Carolina to refamiliarize ourselves with the heavy humidity of southern summers.

Thanks to a never-ending stream of shuttling golf carts, my family and I drop into the Goose the day before things take off. Already, I can sense this progressive gathering puts out a particular feel. The air is thick with a spirit of dissension, an inner urging to make elbow room for yourself like you’re standing next to the stage at a punk rock show.

There’s an invitation to challenge and disrupt. Folks walking around aren’t playing by a predetermined set of rules. The whole scene is full of relief, found in welcomed discomfort, and everyone there is in on it.

People flock there because of its divine divergency. I believe it’s the sort of wilderness Jesus fled to in hopes of connecting with God.

For three days, I soak up moments like a sponge.

Each day, a seed rooted in the Goose’s unconventional soil grows within me. I get a crazy idea. 

I share this idea with other renegade and radical followers of the lowly Galilean who I know and am still getting to know. I watch as their faces grow in excitement.

All are enthusiastically moved to join me, add kindling to a growing fire moved by the Spirit and the actions of iconoclastic baptist preacher Will D. Campbell.

Campbell, whose 100th birthday is the following week, is an irreverent saint to baptists and Southerners, but not Southern Baptists. He is known in misfit-laden circles for his critiques of the institutional church and his definition of the Christian faith: “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.”

Over the years, I’ve collected Campbell stories like some collect baseball cards, retelling them to shake the pillars of what ministry is supposed to be.

Since coming to the Goose, one of them has been working tirelessly from my heart, coming up through my throat until finally resting on my tongue. And like the disciples of Acts Chapter 2, I’m ready to spit fire. I’m ready to tell the story about Campbell, a fellow named Andrew Lipscomb, and the Lazer Creek Congregation.

On Saturday evening, the last full day of the Goose, I witnessed a dozen friends who are my spiritual kinfolk make their way down to a friend’s RV. Elton John’s lyrics fill my head as they approach: “I thank the Lord for the people I have found.”

I slightly amend his verses, thanking the Lord for the people who have found me, too. We make a semi-circle and after an opening prayer from another minister, I begin to tell the story:

“Many of you know I’m a little ‘b’ sort of baptist because I was exposed to the writings of Will Davis Campbell. He was called a rebel, an apostate and a heretic by some. He was also called a hero, the moral conscience of the South and a true disciple of Jesus. He marched to a different drum and lived his unique call.

This call meant challenging powers and principalities, establishments and institutions.

He once did this, helping his friend Andrew Lipscomb. Lipscomb was a United Methodist minister who was threatened by leaders of his denomination with being defrocked and losing his ordination credentials for not accepting a new assignment. Campbell and friends came to his aid.

They formed the council and committee-free Lazer Creek Congregation.

As a gathered community of believers, they ordained Lipscomb so he could continue to perform marriages and other ministerial duties. This would be one of several times the Lazer Creek Congregation would convene.

They would do so again for a woman who worked with prisoners on death row. She needed ordination credentials to continue her work, but because of life circumstances, she could not attend seminary or receive standing in the traditional way. Lazer Creek affirmed her call to minister to the least of these.”

And with this, my story shifts to the present:

“In the vein of Campbell and the Lazer Creek Congregation, we stand here, a group of believers, presented with an opportunity to affirm the call of another who is walking her own pioneering path. But first, we must agree that we are called to do such. We must confess we are neighbors. Committed to each other’s lives, not bound by physical proximity but by a love that transcends any and all boundaries. For those who wish to be brought into this fellowship, say ‘amen.’”

Nothing but amens echo back at me from sincere faces. I continue:

“Now that that’s settled, I present the candidate in question for ordination.”

She stands off to the side, and I speak of her life and the call she feels has been placed upon it. I reference Psalm 46 and recite the words attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: to preach the Gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.

I talk of her desire to be an ally to those oppressed and suffering. I share her desire to be a presence to those in need of comfort and to stand up to those who need to be made uncomfortable.

I walk over to her to issue vows that tie her to her call to live out the gospel with her life— vows about her love of God, call to service, faithfulness and preparedness to sacrifice. She answers with a willingness that feels all too familiar.

I placed a borrowed stole around her neck. It is green and made of silk, with images of an empty cross and a promising rainbow. 

Stepping back, I invite others to come forward and speak over her. All come forward, whispering charges to this soon-to-be minister. 

I catch snippets of them, words not intended for me. Affirmation passed through the Spirit, spoken between those who believe in the scandalous notion of a priesthood of all believers.

Finally, I am given the honor of having the last word. We kneel together. 

Hands rest on her shoulders, blanketing her with a radical faith tradition I wish I saw more of. I stare at her– my wife, my spouse, my partner– and fight the urge to weep.

Our foreheads touch, our eyes close, and I tell her what I think of all this.

I tell her how my walk as a congregational pastor has sometimes left me disheartened and that, as of late, I’m having trouble believing in anything anymore. But what just happened here gives me hope. 

She gives me hope and I know what she’ll do will be greater than what I’ll ever do. Through her and the people here, I’m confident God is still moving in this world.

We stand.
I pronounce her the Reverend Lauren Pack.
People clap.
The church claps.
And all God’s people say amen, again.

Lauren shares from her heart and talks about finally finding “her people” here at the Goose. The borrowed stole becomes her first.

We left the campground later that evening, promising to return next year. The Goose is now a must for us, a pilgrimage we have to take every year. Our family must go to hope, dream, and recharge there.

And who knows, maybe next year, our patched-worked congregation will need to reunite again, perhaps laying hands on another.

Or at least, laugh, cry, cuss, and love on each other.

We’ll do this because that’s what neighbors do.

We’ll do this because that’s what the church, a people, do.

When I knew my time as youth minister was over

I can tell you the moment I knew my time as youth minister was over.

I can tell you because my body and senses still remember the most minute details.

I can still feel the sun’s blister-inducing heat penetrating my fair skin as I leave the mess hall with my students.

I can still taste the tasteless, powdery, claggy eggs that pass as staple summer camp cuisine. Along with haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and a heart that devises wicked schemes, enervated prepared eggs are an abomination to the Lord.

I still hear the laughter and the murmur of the most reverent and irresponsible subject matter coming from the mouths of young adults clinging to the slipping-away solstitial season of their lives.

My nose runneth over with a concoction of pollen, AXE Body Spray, and socks that should have been washed on Monday. It’s Wednesday.

And my eyes see one of the students’ parents. He’s walking toward us, but I know he shouldn’t be there. He left yesterday when I arrived—the two of us passing the baton, tagging in and out like Hawk and Animal from the Legion of Doom. The arrangement was made because I had a two-month-old baby at home. I wanted her to grow up knowing her father, so I thought it best not to leave her sleep-lacking mother alone for a week.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I went back home, did what I needed to do, and decided to come back. I really wanted to be with you all,” he said.

“Isn’t that like a, what, a two-and-a-half-hour trip?” I say back.

“More like three,” he tells me.

The kids surround him, slapping him on the back. The far too aggressive high fives commence.

Off the lake, I feel the winds of change blowing. Even in the muggy South, the winds of change are chilly.

I have 2 more days at the camp with the kids, but I know a shift has taken place. My time as their El Capitan, their Manager of Mayhem, their Peter Pan was over.

I know this because as I trudge up a steep incline leading back to the cabin, I confess to the great cloud of witnesses I can only feel around me that I would never do what that parent just did.

Several months later, as my seminary experience concludes, I’m sitting with the Senior Pastor of the faith community I’m serving. We discuss my post-graduation plans and the possibility of making my position full-time. Another staff member, the Minister of Christian Education, is retiring. With this opening and my current responsibilities as Minister to Youth and Families, there are talks to bring me on full-time.

Numbers were crunched. Budgets adjusted. Outlines and stipulations made.

In the end, I said no.

It wasn’t because of the pay.

It wasn’t because of the required move from one city to another just down the interstate.

It wasn’t the fear of being stretched thin or becoming burned out.

It was because I knew the passion wasn’t there, my call was different, and I needed to get out of the way to let the right person do what I no longer could.

When I realized that my call was not to youth ministry, I needed to get out of the way to let the right person do what I no longer could.

Instead, I accepted my first call as Senior Pastor (a more accurate title would be Solo Pastor) in a picturesque community nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

The perks? I no longer had to go on week-long mission or summer camp trips. No longer did I feel the pressure to compete with (and fail miserably, I might add) charismatic youth pastors and their larger, event-driven, emotionally manipulating, mega-youth groups in the same town. No more dodgeball tournaments, messy games, or disgusting food challenges that tested the gag reflex of all those in attendance. No more planning around travel sports team schedules to accommodate each youth and their family. Ministry as a circus of attraction, an overdeveloped form of consumerism, was over for me.

Little did I know that the administrative workings of “Big Steeple Church” has its own fun house filled with clowns that scare you more than make you laugh. But that, dear friends, is a horror story for another day.

Not for nothing, my stint in youth ministry was impactful. I learned to let go of others’ expectations and lean into my unconventional approaches. I learned presence and a listening ear goes a long way. I discovered the power of making a meal and eating together can transform a group of kids. I experienced firsthand what glam-rock pioneers T. Rex were singing about: You can do many things, “but you won’t fool the children of the revolution.” Nothing but stripped-down authenticity is compatible with teenagers.

If I’ve missed anything associated with youth ministry, it’s the unbridled delirium for connection. Nothing less than genuineness will do.

I’m thankful to have reacquainted myself with such hopeful feelings. In the last few weeks, two random interactions—small, yes, but the very definition of the butterfly effect—left me reeling.

The first was lunch with a recent high school graduate. Over baked potato pizza and chicken wings fried extra hard, we talked about musical preferences, ranging from Alice in Chains to The Front Bottoms, and how having a life plan at 19 probably isn’t the healthiest thing. We shared stories about our lives, spoke at length about what constitutes a good friend, and went down the rabbit hole of me explaining to him why the Nintendo Power Glove was the most incredible marketing gimmick of all time (I have said artifact resting in my church office, the magic of Christmas morning not forgotten).

In between bites, we talked about movies, where he delightfully left me in a state of catatonic shock, my mind freezing like I’d just downed a gut-buster-sized ICEE as he asked, “So, what’s your favorite film?”

How much time do you have, kid?

Before departing each other’s stimulating company, I told him that if he’d like to meet again and chat about life, I was up for it. However, some disclaimers were in order: I have some Clinical Pastoral Education, but I am not to be confused with anything close to a therapist. And while I’ve read my fair share of Baptist patron saint of all things counseling, Wayne Oates, I’d keep that to a minimum so as not to put him and me to sleep.

He muttered something about that being fine with him, and we went our separate ways—him with a list of movies to watch, me with the reminder that teenagers aren’t really that hard to talk to.

While my time as youth minister is over, maybe I’m not done ministering to youth after all. Because they are certainly not done ministering to me.

A few weeks later, I’m sitting beside two other ministers during a combined worship service. Our congregations are under one vaulted ceiling to support the efforts of a former choir director passing through the area with his impressive youth choir. He’s brought 30-odd students and chaperones from my native South to New England.

The youth were phenomenal, breathing life into hymns long sung by those in the pews with little gusto. With the service winding down and a benediction looming, I grabbed a pen and scratched out a Southern-inspired liturgy I hope Flannery O’Connor would be proud of.

Looking up to their exalted faces in the choir loft, I say words to let them know I see them—they are my people.

And to our guest choir,

May your time with each other during this trip be as sweet as the tea from Bojangles.

May your presence with one another offer the assurance of comfort like the hum of cicadas on a hot and humid Georgia summer night.

And may the light you’ve shared with us today continue to be as warm as the glow of a Waffle House sign breaking up a pitch-black sky off some future highway.

Until we meet again, may you be held in the palm of God’s hand.

Laughs and amens followed. Getting this from the descendants of Puritans is no easy feat.

After the service in the receiving parlor, I was rushed, then crowded around by students who couldn’t believe I lived without central air, Cajun filet biscuits, and Cook-Out double burger trays.

A dark-haired young man with corkscrew locks looks me dead in the eyes and asks with a seriousness usually reserved for operating surgeons, “What’s your go-to order at Waffle House?”

“Pecan waffle, coated in butter. Drowned in syrup. Order of hashbrowns-tatters, scattered and covered,” I say back with confidence.

“Next time we come up this way, I’ll bring you some.”

And by God, I believed he really meant it. The excitement on his face told no lies.

Since that holy Sunday, I have sat with hope, knowing choir directors, student pastors, and youth group volunteers are walking beside the next generation.

I’ve sat with hope, thinking about how some churches and faith communities are offering space for young people to come in, ask questions, find themselves, and be vulnerable with each other.

And dear reader, I’ve sat with hope that one day, perhaps next summer, I’ll see a young person standing at my office door with a Styrofoam box of cold waffles and hashbrowns, making good on his promise.

I do so because I have enough faith in God and in youth to believe such miracles are possible.

Maybe I’m not done ministering to youth after all. Because they are certainly not done ministering to me.

Reflections upon agrarian/poet/activist Wendell Berry’s 90th birthday

My mother-in-law loves me.

I know I’m in her good graces, and she considers me part of her family. I can testify to such assurance because she lavishes me with her chosen form of affection.

Her delivery method? Arguing. She’ll lock horns with me over damn near anything. 

While I’m riding shotgun in her SUV, she declares: “We’ve lucked out on the weather today. Nice cool breeze coming off Lake Michigan. Not a cloud in the sky.”

“Yes,” I say. I glance out and up toward the heavens. “The firmament appears to be holding up. Beautiful day.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘beautiful.’ It’s a fine day, but we don’t know what it will be like later, do we?” She says this with certitude, slightly upturning her voice at “do we.” Those words slip around me like a constricting serpent.

I choke out: “No, I don’t suppose we do. Things could go south pretty quickly.”

“Of course, things might get better,” she counters. “It could turn into a beautiful day. There’s no need to believe it will get worse, right?”

She feeds me lines like I’m a baby in a highchair. I, in turn, start to squirm, fuss and fight the urge to soil myself. She glances over at me with pity on her face. Her expression a mixture of fascination and disappointment at my lack of basic oral communication skills. My reluctance to debate my mother-in-law joins a list of growing shortcomings I’m sure she’s keeping tabs on, including my limited knowledge of tax preparation, inept woodworking skills and refusal to call Ronald Reagan a good president in her presence.

I stare back at her like an infant whose face is smeared with pureed sweet potato. This would be a cute image, except I’m a 40-year-old, 200-pound man with facial hair.

I stare back at her like an infant whose face is smeared with pureed sweet potato. This would be a cute image, except I’m a 40-year-old, 200-pound man with facial hair.

“No,” I say. Thinking fast, I decide to invoke the Psalmist. “After all, ‘This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.’” She’s a person of faith. Surely, this will land well.

Her silence breaks a moment later. “Oh, Justin. You’re such a silly goose.”

She calls my children this too. One is in elementary school and has an unhealthy affection for ketchup. The other still wears a diaper and loathes apples. I, like them, am a silly goose.

We are a flock of silly geese.

This fact is something she and I can agree on.

Outside of the traumatizing banter with my mother-in-law, I despise divisiveness for the sake of divisiveness. I am not a soul who seeks out conflict. I hate debates and recoil at the mention of apologetics. Yet I’ve come to appreciate and embrace a virtue I believe has fallen to the wayside in our postmodern society — contrarianism.

I can think of no one who embodies the spirit of contrariness better than Wendell Berry, Kentucky’s agrarian, poet and social activist.

Berry, who turned 90 earlier this week, is an incongruous icon. His writings constantly call me to be at odds with a way of life not in harmony with the rest of the created world. 

For years, he’s voiced and lived his lamentations. His refusal to utilize a computer and preference to perform farm labor with a plow and mule instead of a backhoe has caused him to be labeled a philistine by some and a prophet by others.

Berry, I sense, understands fully where he stands. Relishing the head-scratching he creates. In “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer” he writes:

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my

inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission

to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.

I’m embracing this same inheritance, particularly when it comes to all expectations concerning my vocation as a minister. Like Berry, my destiny is not to remain still and await someone else to determine who I’m supposed to be. I am a moving target, hell-bent on keeping folks on their toes and thinking.

Seeking admittance to Berry’s International Priesthood of Contraries, you must get used to uncomfortable conversations.

Seeking admittance to Berry’s International Priesthood of Contraries, you must get used to uncomfortable conversations. For the last several years, I’ve had my fair share.

When they tell me, “Preachers need to wear jackets on Sunday morning at this church,” I tell them this job doesn’t pay enough for me to afford one. 

When they tell me: “Wear whatever you want! This is a casual come-as-you-are body of seekers,” I show up in a cassock with a stole.

When they tell me about the church they go to on Sunday mornings, I tell them I usually find God out from under the steeple.

When they say, “Church isn’t a building,” I agree with them, but say I’m apt to get sentimental in the presence of stained glass.

When they tell me the best way to honor God is through education and studies, I tell them I think God might be after my heart.

When they told me: “Be careful of seminary. It’ll steal your faith,” I told them I went and was exposed to a bigger God there. 

When they told me, “You’re a professional, now act like it,” I confessed to them my understanding of the divine has never advanced past amateur status.

When some said, “You’re called, and that settles it,” I told them my faith demands that I learn, seek and explore. 

When they say, “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” I tell them, “That explains why you’re in the shape you’re in.” 

When they say, “Let’s shake things up,” I tell them to remember where they came from.

When they proclaim, “Our community is entirely inclusive; all means all,” I tell them maybe it shouldn’t be.

And when they tell me it takes XYZ to be a member here, I tell them, “Maybe you need fewer bylaws and a bigger communion table.” 

Walking away from those heart-to-hearts with my ears burning, I have felt what Berry speaks of …

Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony

thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what

I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest

way to come to the truth. It is one way.

When someone attempts to place me inside a box restricting my thoughts, feelings and experiences, I want to push back and take a different stance, hopefully, to change their perspective.

I’m thankful to Berry for showing me that if I’m made in God’s image, just maybe God feels the same way, too.

Seeing God’s Kin-dom in the Dog Days of Summer

Ever met a puppy you wanted to kick?

I know one. His name is Sirius.

People tell me all the time how wonderful Sirius is.

The same people say this while whipping back sun-bleached blonde hair and applying tanning oil to their already bronze bodies. They say this while glistening bags of sweat drip off them.

They say this with sand residue between their toes and coolers full of Coronas within arm’s reach. They say this while skipping over dunes, collecting shells, and constructing small castles for crustaceans.

They say this while watching a thermometer climb to Hades-like temperatures. They drive vehicles with propaganda reading, “salt life,” beach vibes,” or “I’m on island time” plastered on their back windows.

Standing beside them, dizzy from the sweltering heat, slathered in enough Coppertone SPF100 to hide my freckles, in the middle of prostrating in the hopes that the Holy Spirit will send a cool breeze, they turn to me and say,

Isn’t Sirius just the best? “Aren’t summers, just like, the best?”

I stare at them. I stare at Sirius. 

This hound of hellish heat is the brightest star in the Canis Major constellation. According to ancient Roman astrologists, he is the harbinger of the dog days of summer, a time when Fahrenheit numbers surpass desirable credit scores.

“Oh yeah,” I say back while pushing Sirus’s hot muzzle away from my groin. “This is bliss.” The word bliss sounds more like “mliss” because my face is melting.

The truth is, this isn’t blissful. This is hell. And as of this week, my backyard could be mistaken for a circle in Dante’s Inferno.

My Yankee neighbor, the frozen descendants of Pilgrims, see no problem with Sirius. Many think I’m a sun worshipper because of where I’m from.

“Wicked hot today!” But I bet you like this kind of weather, right? Being from the South and all.”

“Oh yes,” I say. “Being scorched into nothingness is pure nirvana. I miss it like I miss sitting through a Sean Feucht concert.”

“Who?” they ask.

“Never mind,” I say. “Please pass me another popsicle or cold lob-stah roll.”

Perhaps by now, you’re thinking I’m reverse hibernating. Happily shivering away beside one of a half dozen AC window units within the parsonage. You might think this but you would be wrong.

Three very demanding responsibilities pull my red hair and ginger skin into the fiery furnace, and no, it’s not Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego. It’s child one, child two, and a small garden.

This is not our first garden. My spouse and I are proficient at growing food our children rarely look at, let alone touch. One will graze on sugar peas while the other enjoys digging up radishes before they are ready.

Sacrifices are made; innocent root vegetables needlessly perish so tomatoes and okra can grace our table. Hand tools are removed and placed in sandboxes, lost forever, like the library of Alexandria. It’s a complicated and self-defeating system that works for us, and it involves daily attention.

This is especially true when it doesn’t come up a cloud, causing us to strip down to the least amount of clothing allowed, head outside, and receive our recommended amount of vitamin D while tending the garden.

My spouse weeds. I water. 

Meanwhile, my children pretend to be Pentecostal. They run around, flailing their arms, shouting incoherently. Their sounds are not the language of angels but of people nearing dehydration.

Thus, the water sprinkler.

We have several at our disposal. A couple came with the house. However, only the finest lawn-soaking devices for our children will do, so we procured a multicolored wacky wiggler for ourselves.

While my offspring speak in tongues, I hook up the cheap plastic distraction. The water courses through the small tubes, sputtering sporadically. Within moments, the spray is covering everything within a fifteen-foot radius.

My youngest wants to play musical chairs.

I grab four Adirondacks sitting near the back deck and make a small circle within the wet zone. We’ve played this game a few times before. I

 sing whatever lyrics come into my head. Today, it’s a combination of “The Wheels On the Bus,” “Ring Around the Rosie,” and INXS’s “Don’t Change.”

When I stop, we both scramble to secure a vacant seat, which there are plenty of. She laughs, waiting for me to do it again.

I laugh, too because I’m in the throes of a heat stroke and think her face resembles the Sun baby from Teletubbies.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s take one away.” I remove a chair.

I turn, this time belting lyrics from the Doors “Alabama Song.”

“Well, show me the way
To the next whisky bar
Oh, don’t ask why
Oh, don’t ask why”

My oldest knows this tune and decides to take a break from collecting bug bites to join us. We’re now a deliriously drenched trio.

“Everything alright over there?” our neighbor yells from across the street. He’s a real farmer. I know this because he has a four-wheeler, a tractor, and a John Deere Gator.

“Yes, they’re fine,” I say with a nod. My oldest and I continue to sing about whiskey and death like we’re at the Grand Ole Opry.

Improvising, my oldest shouts at a pitch that would turn a dog’s head, “I’m the lizard king!”

“Lizard king?” he yells back. “Like Jim Morrison?”

“No. Pretty sure that’s from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians,” I say back.

He laughs nervously and slowly disappears behind the barn.

Having successfully terrorized the locals, I return to the task at hand. It’s then I notice the youngest has brought the removed chair back into the circle.

“No, baby, I say. “We’re supposed to take one out.”

She looks at me the way my spouse looks at me most of the time– like I’m stupid. Clearly, I don’t understand the game. We do the same thing a few more times— me explaining to her we need fewer chairs, she bringing the chair back.

Her grace to my ignorance finally wins. I leave the chair be.

Minutes later, both children’s OCD kicks in and they move on to something else. I collapse into one of the chairs and enter a state of contemplation. 

Cold water pelts me in the face every few seconds. I wonder if this is how Thomas Merton meditated in his Kentucky abbey.

I’m more likely to get lost in prayer than find myself in it and so is the case today. I wonder where God is in this moment while my pigment changes to a shade resembling an heirloom beet.

While watching my children, I receive an answer. They duck and hide under the already heavy branches of a crab apple tree. 

Two furies of relentless energy. They include me in many of their games, breaking and changing the rules as quickly as they make them up.

I rise and walk over to my spouse. She’s trying to fix the “love is love” banner hanging from the fence that protects our greens from multiple chipmunks and at least one rabbit.

I bend down to lend a hand. I touch the edge of the rainbow cloth, look at the image of two hands making a heart, and reread the words: love is love.

Blinking sweat out of my eye, I mumble a parable. “Maybe we should add chairs, not take them away. Maybe we’ve been playing the game all wrong.”

“What was that?” my spouse says. Are you stroking out on me?” I assure her I’m fine.

“Good. My clothes are sticking to me, and I’m ready to head inside.” 

She stands up. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah, I’ll grab the girls.”

I holler loud enough to get their attention. They drift in my direction before making a beeline back to the water sprinkler and the chairs. I follow.

Before my spouse can reach the door, the youngest yells, “Come, Mommy!”

The oldest joins, “Come play with us, Mommy, you can sit here.”

My spouse turns and leisurely makes her way over to the chair I kept trying to remove— the chair my youngest kept returning —and because of her, we all have a place to sit.

No one is left out; all can play. All can participate.

Finally, the game comes to an end. The sprinkler is turned off and the chairs are put away.

Walking towards the house, I hear the author of John’s Gospel say, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

A place filled with plenty of seating, a place that never runs out of chairs, a place that never takes away but always adds to.

A place that celebrates PRIDE and rejoices in Juneteenth.

I am hopeful for such a place in these dog days of summer.

A kin-dom full of rooms and chairs.

I just hope there’s AC there too.

Is membership everything or nothing at all?

I blame acid-wash mom jeans, oversized blazers, and flashy neon fanny packs. I blame catchy new synth-heavy music. I blame movies like It Follows and Turbo Kid. And I unequivocally blame Netflix’s Stranger Things.

All are at fault for the return of the 1980s to modern US culture.

Not that I’d mind, mind you. My memories of said time are filled with Saturday morning cartoons dialed in by hands searching for analog technology, sugary type 2 diabetes-inducing cereals, and Friday nights at the roller rink where a few friends and I tried our best to emulate the “flying V” from Disney’s The Mighty Ducks franchise. We spent the 1980s running around neighborhoods with Super Soakers tucked under our arms, drinking those first July heat-infused sips of water from a garden hose, and in 1989, desperately begging our parents for Reebok Pumps and a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas.

This was one child’s view of the decade of decadence.

Simultaneously, this time was defined by the goring Bull of Wall Street, horns representing materialism and consumerism. The fictional Gordon Gekko was the financial king.

For years, my parents bemoaned the specter of trickle-down economics. Clearly, not all was shining and bright. Not when average mortgage rates during the decade rested in the double digits, and spiked at 18.63%. My childhood home was built in 1994 for good reason. The 1980s, much like today, was a time when you either had it or you didn’t.

So, is it any surprise that this decade of accumulation produced such superfluous status symbols as the “Members Only” jacket, which, like bodysuits, has returned in all its distinguishing glory?

A “Members Only” jacket is an ingenious piece of outerwear. A windbreaker indicating “who’s in and who’s out” with clear distinction. What one is actually part of is up for debate, but rest assured, you don’t want to miss out and be left out of whatever it is.

Membership distinction is seen and sought throughout our society. There are “members’ dues” for social clubs. Membership requirements for establishments ranging from pretentious country clubs to bulk-buying barns like Costco and Sam’s Club. Even seedy dive bars. I still remember my membership to the Rhino Club in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. You paid a nominal fee and received a personal key to the place (I loved the concept, and I still kind of do). Even Greek Life on America’s college campuses requires yearly member dues.

And, of course, churches have memberships too.

This very topic arose during a conversation I had recently. In the company of several regular Sunday morning attendees, I asked them what it takes to be a church member these days. I would have received a more harmonious agreement in asking children what God looks like.

While this question floated on the placid surface of my company, I took the opportunity to pose a more intriguing question: have you ever witnessed someone being denied membership? I painted a scenario.

After attending a church for several weeks, an individual walks the aisle during an invitation/altar call. They whisper something in the pastor’s ear. When the music ends, the pastor announces the individual’s wish to join the church. The congregation is then asked to affirm this by saying, “Amen.” Then comes the awkward moment when the pastor asks if anyone would oppose the request. Silence. Always. Everyone claps, and the new member is guided towards the church’s doors, where they are welcomed with the “right hand of fellowship” by the entire congregation.

It’s a familiar scene, isn’t it? Especially in Baptist circles.

But what if that didn’t happen? What if someone opposed someone else’s membership? Believe it or not, this happened not long ago. But first, let’s step back a bit.

Ideally, coercion-free membership should be a way to align one’s beliefs, ideas, and causes with a collective body. At its best, becoming a congregant of a local church, one should feel confident in saying, “Yes, I’m on board with the vision and ministries of this church.”

Since the Reformation, Protestants have strived to produce something on par with Catholicism, Holy Mass, and Communion. There, through the administration of the sacraments, people know they belong to the body of Christ and to the church because they physically take in the body and blood of Christ through the mystery of transubstantiation. The Reformers’ replacement needed to be as rich and personal as Communion, so conversion became significant as it determined how an individual was allowed into a faith community.

Conversion focuses on individual experience and testimony. A person goes before a congregation, asking to join in their fellowship. They are asked to recount their conversion experience. If leadership sees their account as authentic, they’d enter “watch-care” status. Think of it like leasing a Honda Civic; both parties want to ensure this is what they want and put a few miles on the tires. After a certain amount of time, the person is given full admittance to become a congregation member.

Before we move forward, let us make this distinction: being part of the “body of Christ” and being a member of a religious institution are different.

Those who confess to following the lowly Galilean are entitled to count themselves as part of the larger body of believers. However, church membership can require a whole different can of worms, but first, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean.

The institutional church should not act as an all-seeing eye judging every action taken to punish and shame. The institutional church should not look for the self-righteous works of its people. Instead, coercion-free membership should be a way to align one’s beliefs, ideas, and causes with a collective body. At its best, becoming a congregant of a local church, one should feel confident in saying, “Yes, I’m on board with the vision and ministries of this church.”

If not, perhaps after visiting a church for several weeks and getting a better feel for the community, an individual should move on to a church where they feel their identity is more in sync. However, this often proves difficult because if I’m honest, churches are notorious for being unsure who they are and what they stand for on any given matter. How can a church require membership when it doesn’t know who it is?

This raises more questions than answers. Throughout my faith journey, I’ve surrounded myself with a diverse body of believers and non-believers. These spaces have been rooted in inclusion, and please hear me, said space is desperately needed.

And yet, is there room for discussion around exclusivity in church membership?

The historical institutional church has never had a problem naming heretics, establishing creeds, and orthodoxy to make the case for encompassing foundational beliefs. Whether admitted or not, the church has been handing out its “Members Only” jackets for over two millennia. Why, in some circles, is there passiveness to do so now? Is leadership afraid of alienating groups in their congregation, resulting in vacant pews? Can a local church at least confess where it stands on such issues as its interpretation of Scripture and whether or not it affirms women and LGBTQ persons in ministry? And while leadership and staff might understand the magnitude of these confessions, does the rest of the congregation?

For me, it all boils down to this: What does it mean to be part of your church? Scrap the talk of membership requirements, and stop being concerned about passing out “Members Only” jackets. Maybe the words of Wendell Berry will get churches closer to where they need to be. He writes, “The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.”

The prophet from Kentucky reminds us that everyone we meet is already part of God’s kin-dom. The sooner we realize this, the more we can do something about it.

From the Corn Fields to Drag Queen Story Time

I have a deep-rooted fear of cornfields.

I hold the master of the macabre, Stephen King, responsible for causing the hairs on my neck to bristle like endless rows of ear-filled stalks every early fall.

My older cousin has a hand in my navarrofobia diagnosis, too. Even now, when I pass a plot of land littered with Zea Mays grains, I think of her. She was my companion and enabler.

Video Movie Land was a mom-and-pop rental joint in a strip mall near the outskirts of our hometown. It offered a two-dollar special on Tuesdays. Every week, we would stare at a wall of movie boxes.

Bombarded with images of the abnormal and malevolent, we would finally pick our nightmare fuel and creep to the counter. This ritual led to a few summer marathons of “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” and too many B-rated demon-possession movie franchises to count.

Between rounds of Super Mario Bros. and Zelda, we would fill a bowl with popcorn, potato chips and Wise onion rings and gorge ourselves on lurid cinematic escapades.

Where were our parents, you ask? It was the 1980s—we proudly earned our crowns as royal latchkey kids.

Of all the horror flicks I saw during those years and since, none caused more longing for a night light than “Children of the Corn.”

Rabid dogs? Crazy killer clowns lurking around sewers? Revenge-filled prom queens? I delightfully dealt with each with that good sort of fear and trembling.

Something about the film adaptation of King’s short story made me want to close my closet door at night. It is a terror I didn’t know how to name as a child, but I do now.

Was it the desolate fictional town of Gatlin? Nah.
The dream sequence jumpscare involving Linda Hamilton in the car? Nah.
How about the unseen antagonist, an evil entity hungry for human sacrifice to produce next year’s harvest? Nope.

It was the children.

Bible-thumping, scripture-slashing, mass-murdering missionaries of adults, turn-of-the-century dressed Christian fundamentalist adolescents.

Aside from breaking out in a cold sweat around gingers named Malachai, I’ve been uneasy around fundamentalist folks ever since especially when I discovered that corn fields aren’t the only place where they roam.

They can be found protesting Justin Bieber’s concerts, picketing the funerals of soldiers, school shooting victims and those who have died from AIDS, and celebrating such national tragedies as the Boston Marathon Bombing and Pulse Night Club shooting.

I don’t know what’s more scary: King’s fictional monster aptly named “He Who Walks Behind the Rows” or the nonfiction “Those Who Walk Among Us.”

In the case of the latter, they’re not invisible.

Last month, my family and I attended an event in a neighboring community. It had been postponed, rescheduled, and moved to a different venue because of threats from those who opposed such a gathering.

We were required to make reservations for the event months in advance. On the day we arrived, several police cars greeted us at the entrance of the local community college. Given the escalating tension and threats, organizers thought it best to notify law enforcement.

Police escorted us to the registration table, where we gave our names, received our official badges, and were directed to where we should go.

We found ourselves in a space filled with colorful stickers, glue, pipe cleaners, yarn, crayons, markers, and just about anything else that might be considered craft materials.

My children pulled chairs and started coloring and gluing this or that while my spouse, Lauren, and I watched around 25 other families doing the same. Kids laughed while parents politely chatted and shared stories. All seemed merry and bright. Not long after, we were notified that the main portion of the event was about to begin in the adjacent library room.

The library director welcomed us and expressed gratitude to everyone who came. She told us what to expect before introducing the Rev. Dr. Greg Gray. He gave those of us in attendance a particular word, “rainbow,” and instructed us to clap as loudly as we could when we heard it. Kids and adults alike jumped all over this.

Finally, the speaker, or should I say “reader,” was announced. She sashayed in and sat down in front of the kids. She introduced herself. Captivated little faces followed her every move, taking in her tall hair, taller shoes, and bright dinosaur-spotted aqua dress.

She told them about the books she planned to share. One included the difference in people’s hair, the other described how a unicorn found community in an ocean full of narwhals, and the last was a reimaging of the famous children’s song, “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Afterward, the reader thanked the kids for being such good listeners; their attention span had reached total capacity, and she hoped they’d invite her back again. Reasurruing “yeses” came from all directions.

As Lauren and I gathered our things, event organizers notified us that a protest group had formed outside the library’s doors beside the parking lot. Making our way to the exit, an officer stopped us and suggested that either Lauren or I get the car, drive around back, and load the family up.

His words to us were, “It’s been a good day. Your kids don’t need to see or hear what’s happening out there.” Lauren stayed with the girls while I walked to grab the car.

I could see what the organizers and police were talking about. A handful of people, standing in front of a large sign, were shouting at those like me and counter-protesters, how we were sinning and were guaranteeing our children a ticket to hell. The sign’s message, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” followed by clobbering scripture verses supporting their ideology.

Out of the cornfields, Christian fundamentalists were doing what they’ve always done– presenting interpretation as certainty and damning anyone different than them.

I got in my car, a shiver of anger, remorse and confusion rolling over my body. I drove around to pick up my family.

In the following days, Lauren and I talked about the fantastic time we had and how unfortunate it was that others couldn’t see the love, compassion and acceptance within those holy library walls.

So much hate, judgment, and lack of understanding, all because the person reading the stories was a man dressed as a woman.

I have many privileges in my life, including the ability to ignore that which does not personally affect me. But I don’t feel I have the luxury to exclude those different from me as a pastor and, more importantly, as a follower of a liberating God.

The slight discomfort I felt that day walking to my car pales in comparison to what the Drag Story Hour reader and others in the LGBTQ+ community experience every day. And just because I am not part of that community doesn’t mean I get to treat them as others or regulate them to outsider status.

My call as minister of the Gospel is to say, “You are worthy and beautifully made. Your very presence makes the world better, and you’re helping me see the face of God in new life-giving ways.”

Maybe I feel this way because we are entering the season after Pentecost, and the notion of holy advocacy is burning within my bones like holy words did in the prophet Jeremiah. My innards will roast if I don’t let them out.

Or perhaps I am desperately trying to demonstrate to a world too tired to care that not everyone who calls Jesus Lord is actively trying to condemn it.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m trying in the smallest of ways to show my two little girls that the God who loves them really does love everybody.

Them.
Me.
You.
Drag Queens.
Even the scary fundamentalists.

Bootleg preacher Will D. Campbell said, “If you going to love one, you got to love them all.” I’ll try to remember that at the next Drag Story Hour we attend. Or the next time I pass a cornfield filled with bogeymen, real or otherwise.

Oh, dear, what could the trouble be?

Plopping down in our library, I pour myself a glass of something the unlicensed Baptist preacher Elijah Craig had a hand in making. I sift through a plastic milk crate. A small collection of vinyl is housed in it.

I bend to a few pretentious vices. Puffing on loose-leaf pipe tobacco is one. The other is listening to country music crack and pop on my boxy Vitrola. These are nightly rituals I invoke when I’m not folding clothes or experimenting in the kitchen.

My hands find a worn cover supporting the image of Merle Haggard. I’ll spin his 1978 “best of” collection until I decide to move on to something else. I flip to side two, let the needle find the groove, and lean back in a chair as “Today I Started Loving You Again” comes through the speakers like a breeze through a screen door.

Country music, at its best, is relatable. It’s humorous at times and heartbreakingly sincere when it needs to be. Because of this, a good country song has to be honest. One of the songwriters who helped prop up the Nashville sound, Harlan Howard, had it right long before the Chase Rice hit. “Three chords and the truth” are all you really need to speak to people.

I lightly jostle the contents in my hand, relishing the sound of ice against glass. I think preachers and anyone claiming to follow Jesus should follow similar advice.

With Haggard’s Bakersfield baritone working on me, I glance back over a few texts I’ve refrained from responding to. I delete a couple, nothing more than spam. A fake USPS push requesting I update my delivery method is swiped to the right. I read over a notification from a church member letting me know she and her family arrived safe and sound at their summer destination. I fire back a “Glad ya’ll made it” before moving on to the next.

“Wow. Christians sure got worked up on social media today. You been following it?”

It’s a message from a fellow pastor. It reads, “Wow. Christians sure got worked up on social media today. You been following it?”

I haven’t. I’ve been doing church work. Administrative duties leave bits of me all over the place like a deck of cards after the game 52 Pick-Up. Still scattered, I open a few apps to see what all the fuss is about. As I do, I silently wonder what’s kicked the holy hornet’s today. Lord knows there’s much in this world that should ignite righteous anger.

I’m hoping it’s something to do with the murder of Sonya Massey and the continued violence broken across Black and brown bodies in these here United States.

I’m hoping it has something to do with police brutality and how, as of today, 763 people have been killed by those in law enforcement.

I hope to read about a peace-passing coalition of Christians living out the old hymn verse, “Ain’t gonna study war no more.” Finally united and calling out the atrocities seen in the Middle East, in African countries like Mali and Senegal, in Asia’s Myanmar, and the occupation of Ukraine and several other European countries by Russian Armed Forces. With all the border concerns the United States has, perhaps it’s the continued conflict for our neighbors in Mexico that has people ready to dismantle worldwide wars.

Or maybe it’s another mass shooting. The political violence early this month in Butler, Pa., has hit a nerve, and Christians are marching arm in arm to lay down firearms so they can be beaten into plowshares.

Could it be that faith leaders like Robert Jeffress, Pastor Joel Osteen and Rick Warren have come together to say the 41% of LGBTQ youth who are contemplating suicide is an affront against the gospel of the lowly carpenter from Galilee? And now, they will work tirelessly to bring communities like Saddleback and First Baptist Dallas into queer safe spaces.

“I silently wonder what’s kicked the holy hornet’s today.”

Or could it be the continuous exploitation of Appalachia that got them fired up. Did the new GOP vice presidential candidate take a special trip to the coal fields of West Virginia or Kentucky and recite his elegy to a captivated crowd? Promising them representation and unionization is returning.

Did enough Social Gospel upholders organize in front of Sallie Mae, Aid Advantage and the U.S. Department of Education buildings shouting for the forgiveness of student loan debt? Calling it for what it is; an unethical government-sanctioned payday loan scam?

Did hopeful Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris run a campaign ad calling for prison reform? Did she call on her faith tradition to be the reason for breaking down jail walls and setting the captives free?

Could it have been something related to injustices in securing fair housing? Was it the beyond-repairable capitalism-driven medical care system that sparked the fire?

Did enough Mainline denominational leaders come together for the love of God to give folks in Flynt, Mich., clean drinking water? Did evangelicals pull their resources to sort out the same issue in Jackson, Miss.?

Did I somehow miss the AP News reporting on the diminishing rights of women in this country? Was the last straw a bill purposing male spouses approve their credit card requests?

Was it the words of another, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, championing the call for Christian nationalism? Did the spiritual descendants of Roger Williams, Isaac Backus and John Leland cry out along with every stone across the land?

“No, it’s got to be this one,” I say to myself as I read where would-be king and former president Donald Trump promises a group of conservative Christians they “won’t have to vote anymore” if he gets back in office. This has to be the straw breaking the camel’s back of democracy. But I’m wrong.

“It is Christians of this country, and dare I say the world, that needs to issue an apology.”

Christendom is imploding over the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Calling it a mockery and demanding apologies.

There’s not enough water in the Pool of Bethesda or bourbon in the Bluegrass state to get me to swallow that all of Christendom is simply unaware of ancient pagan gods and traditions. No, I think the offense rests more in the possibility that Jesus ever would choose to sup with such a diverse group of drag and rag-taggy saints.

I send my colleague a reply, a smiley face with a tear emoji, and put my phone down.

Finishing my last sip of spirits, I set the glass down, already waiting for a time when the church will call war, violence, injustice, discrimination, capital punishment, exploitation and exclusion of any and all made in the image of God a “mockery” to the gospel.

And because it hasn’t, I say it is Christendom masking itself as God’s kin-dom that is the true mockery. It is Christians of this country, and dare I say the world, that needs to issue an apology.

My hope is that one brave day, they and I will.

And on that day, I’ll have a whole new appreciation for Merle’s “Today I Started Loving You Again.”

Maybe those hurt by the steeples will too.

Best Buddies

A modest executive desk, an inherited piece of furniture, sits in my study. I do not know how it came to be there, and I will never know all the stories written on its surface. The desk came with the house, much like a stock photo of a smiling family comes with a newly purchased frame.

The house is a parsonage—a structure owned by a church to provide residency for its pastor. It is several thousand square feet made from lumber and other materials, full of life during some seasons and with none in between. Ministers and their families occupy spaces like this one as hermit crabs do seashells. They come, carry, and later discard equity that was never theirs. Many things get left behind in such places when clergy retire or accept new calls: furniture, friendships, remnants of their faith. In my ordained life, I’ve found evidence of all as I’ve followed in the sometimes ill-fitting shoes of my predecessors.

Along with the hutch my spouse packs with her growing assortment of porcelain and the massive dark-colored rug used to mask the daily spills and stains courtesy of our children, we kept the desk for its practicality. It fits snuggly in between the inordinate amount of shelving I require for the equally inordinate number of books I keep accumulating and sometimes decide to read.

I fill its compartments with all manner of paperwork. Office supplies, insurance, and medical records go in here. Last year’s taxes were anointed with holy water and sealed away.

And in the one drawer, down and to my right, rests a thick stack of sympathy cards addressed to me and mine over the death of my father. Thoughts and prayers sent by kith and kin, tucked away, given the coldest of shoulders. Avoided because, through a blistering blend of grief, anger, confusion, and adoration, I look at those letters of condolence and don’t know where to begin in answering them.

Because once I start, I know I’ll have to tell my father’s story as best I can—a story from the perspective of his child, his son, his half-shadow. I know it’ll mean remembering the highs and lows—the memories that scarred me, left bite marks, and caused casualties I keep locked away, sometimes to preserve and sometimes forget. I’ll need a crowbar to pry off the cellar door of those sacred moments and should-have-been second chances. I’ll need to do, as best as I can, what my mother always says: “Quote the chapter, not the verse.” I’ll need to make peace with the fact that the questions I want to ask and the stories I want to tell my father will never get shorter but will always grow.

But most likely, I know I’ll need to confess what I already know, that when I open that drawer and read those words, all of it will be real. I’ll have to make amends and move forward. I won’t be able to hide in the miles of distance separating my life in a New England parsonage from his death in my childhood home back in North Carolina. I won’t be able to hide the guilt of not being with him these past five years.

I won’t be able to hide in the miles of distance separating my life in a New England parsonage from his death in my childhood home back in North Carolina. I won’t be able to hide the guilt of not being with him these past five years.

My only solace is believing that if I tell it once, I won’t have to tell it again.

---

Before I’m old enough to start school, my father works a second-shift job at Kayser-Roth, a hosiery mill. I stay up late, fighting through sleepiness, hoping to see him. On the nights I manage to postpone my dreams, he and I will lie on the living room floor together. Me in front of him, our left arms crooked in the same position to support our heads, our right hands free to dig into the late-night snack of Doritos or Wise onion rings. We watch reruns of the original Star Trek until I drift off.

This scenario lasts only a short time. Soon, my father will accept a third-shift position. He’ll work graveyard hours for the rest of his career. This causes our ritual to change. Now, under the moon and stars, I’ll hug him goodbye instead of hello. Part of this new liturgy includes a call-and-response. Before exiting into the night, he stands in the doorway. There in his crisp Dickie uniform, his name, Marty, emblazoned across his breast pocket, he gives me a series of parting instructions and questions.

“When I leave, make sure the door is locked,” he says.

“I will,” I say back.

“And check the stove again to make sure it’s off.”

“Okay. I will.”

“I love you, son. I’ll see y’all in the morning. Be good.”

“I love you too, daddy.”

He opens the door, looking back at me on this night the way he will every night. His countenance is one of troubled gratefulness. Troubled because he must leave us and grateful he has somewhere to go.

“Hey, what are you and Daddy?” he asks.

My response is like breathing.

The apostle Paul asks in a letter to the church of Corinth, “O death, where is thy sting?” I know the answer. It is here with me, on the other end of the call, in the hopeless voice of my sibling.

“Best buddies,” I say.

---

My father’s profile disappears. I check the door behind him and listen for his Dodge Daytona to start up. Our ceremony of affirmation is complete until tomorrow, when we’ll do it all over again.

My sister’s number causes my phone to buzz. She’s calling me. This is not our typical form of communication. We are Generation X and Millennial. Text, direct messages, and emojis are acceptable. We call no one if we can help it.

My first words to her as I pick up are, “What’s wrong?”

Her voice is high, and she’s breathing heavily. Sentences tumble out of her mouth like she’s pouring them from a bowl she’s been unsuccessfully trying not to spill until she can get to me.

All I hear is, “I think Dad just died.”

It’s 10:30 a.m. on Good Friday. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a liturgy I was preparing to read later this afternoon. My sister talks frantically. She’s in shock, but her words drip with concentrated effort. She says the paramedics are there, working on my father.

“But, Justin, I don’t think it matters,” she says. “I know he’s gone.”

I listen, but my mind is in the sanctuary where a large cross lies on its side, a black cloth draped across the beams. This is done in my faith tradition to represent the suffering of a God who took on flesh for the sake of the world, who was put to death by the power and principalities of an empire. The cloth will hang there the rest of today and through Holy Saturday. Only at dawn on Easter morning will the bleakness of death disappear.

The apostle Paul asks in a letter to the church of Corinth, “O death, where is thy sting?” I know the answer. It is here with me, on the other end of the call, in the hopeless voice of my sibling. Frozen in my office, I cannot see the coming of the white cloth, the replacement garment representing the promise of life and resurrection.

No. All I can see is black. Only darkness.

---

The first heart attack came a month earlier. That time, it was my mother who called. Their rambunctious labradoodle slipped out the front door and bolted down the street in pursuit of wide-open spaces. My father gave chase, but he was no match for the streaking ball of fur on four legs. A few houses down, he discovered he couldn’t catch his breath. My mother found him lying on his back on a neighbor’s front lawn a few minutes later, conscious but weak. An ambulance took him to the hospital. An overnight stay with testing ensued, a blockage discovered, a heart stent prescribed, surgery went well. Almost all the obstruction was removed.

Dad comes home a few days later, and with this news, I talk with my spouse, and we plan a visit to North Carolina at the beginning of March. Our first family trip there since moving away in the spring of 2019. The trip will include many firsts, including our daughters’ first pilgrimage to a Waffle House and their first time at the Asheboro Zoo. It will be the first time my parents have seen their eldest grandchild since she was a year old and their first time meeting their newest grandchild in person.

Our trip goes by in a blur, and we make plans to return in July.

All went well until new ailments showed up to replace the old ones. And with each, my father bounced back less and less.

My parents send us home with Southern staples I can’t find in Yankeeland. In an insulated cooler bag, I find a hunk of liver pudding, a half pint of pimento cheese, and a sinful amount of Musten & Crutchfield Chicken Salad. My wife and I snack on the creamy pimento cheese in our hotel room that night, but the chicken salad makes it home. I place it in the fridge.

---

That heart attack was only the latest in my father’s long list of medical issues.

As a child, my grandmother found him on the side of the road beside his bicycle. All signs pointed to a car hitting him, but the motorist was never found.

A year later, he developed Bright’s disease—an inflammation of the kidneys—and spent months confined to a hospital bed. My grandmother never left his side. He made a full recovery, and this incident sealed a closeness between them.

When I was in high school, a dull sensation crept into his right leg, and the doctors didn’t know what to make of it. A spinal-cord stimulator was surgically implanted, granting some relief. Several more years went by and it took a few more surgeries before a problematic nerve was discovered and repaired.

In 2005, I sat in a waiting room and watch a surgeon hand my mother my father’s wedding ring. A routine stent recommendation, on further review, turned into full-blown open-heart surgery. The swelling my father was experiencing, particularly in his hands, was causing his wedding band to turn his ring finger purple. The surgical team snipped the ring off the way you would a section of unwanted chicken wire around a coop.

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” the surgeon said in a tone only slightly warmer than the operating table my father was lying on. “Everything is going to be fine. We do this every day.”

“I understand that,” she said. “But I don’t.”

My mother took the ring and clasped the symbol of marriage to a partner she’s known since she was thirteen. She cradled their commitment in her hands for hours.

Then, for several years, my father’s health improved. He traveled the straight and narrow of wellness. His diet was disciplined, and he walked every evening with my mother at a local cemetery where his Grandmother Martin was buried. He weighed himself each morning, writing the numbers in a small journal he kept on a nightstand. The weight fell off, leaving him a silhouette of his former self. All went well until new ailments showed up to replace the old ones. And with each, my father bounced back less and less. By the time was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, he had little bounce left.

---

On Holy Saturday, I move around the house like a prizefighter in the late rounds; only instinct pushes my feet from room to room. My flight to North Carolina flies out the following day, Easter morning. We decide against a turnaround trip for everyone. I will go alone.

I pack bags with clothes to last me a week. Near noon, I head to the kitchen to make lunch for the girls. I’m not hungry; my appetite is as empty as a barbecue joint’s parking lot on Sunday. I don’t want to eat, but I know I should.

I open the fridge and look past the large ham my family will enjoy without me tomorrow; I see the container of chicken salad. Time moves slowly as I pick it up and my sister’s words fill my head. She told me my father went to pick it up the day before we arrived. He knew I loved it, how my spouse loved it, and he wanted us to have some when we arrived. It’s packaged date isn’t even two weeks ago.

He was just here, and now he’s not.

Grief comes up violently, like bad seafood. I slide down the side of the cabinets. I dry heave; I cry; I wail uncontrollably.

Some drugs were so potent he hallucinated. “I lived during the seventies, son,” he told me, “and I never had anything as strong as what some of those doctors will give you.”

Later, with eyes still bloodshot and puffy, I spread the pâté substance over a couple of pieces of light bread. The few bites I take do little. The taste haunts more than it fills, and I throw what’s left away.

---

Being sick is a full-time job, and it wears a person down. A ceaseless number of illnesses, conditions, and setbacks left my father in a fluctuating state of trying to manage unbearable pain. By the time I was in my early twenties, he was forced to retire. No longer punching a time clock, he filled his weeks with doctor appointments, surgeons, specialists, scans, and X-rays. And my God, the medicines. Prescriptions, dosage adjustments, a cocktail of therapeutics spilled out of kitchen cabinets turned apothecary. Insurance covered some and not others, and because of this, he’d take some and not others. Some drugs were so potent he hallucinated.

“I lived during the seventies, son,” he told me, “and I never had anything as strong as what some of those doctors will give you.”

He slipped into what my grandparents call “the sugar.” Diabetes was his new houseguest and would come and go like an estranged uncle who shows up on Christmas Eve once a decade.

The word depression came up. He saw a doctor for that too. I struggled to understand where his despondence came from until my mother told me what her mother, my grandmother, who suffered with depression, told her on one occasion.

“I can look outside and know the sun is shining but can’t see it.”

My father would drift along in seasons of sorrow, not seeing the sun. Our whole family would.

---

The week of the funeral, all I do is cuss or cry.

I clean the room he died in. The room where he took his last breath, the room where my mother yelled for my sister, who came and administered CPR until the first responders arrived.

While I’m there, neither my mother nor my sister wants to enter the room. I spend an afternoon placing my father’s clothes into container bins bought at Costco and rearranging the furniture at my mother’s request. She doesn’t want to see it the way it was. Cleaning off his dresser, I find a cigar box. Inside is the bowtie he wore at my wedding and a note I wrote him after a trying time in our relationship. Part of it reads:

If we are to be like our fathers, I feel lucky you were mine. You instilled in me, above all else, faithfulness to your wife and family and perseverance, no matter how hard things were or became. And for all this, I call you divine. I call you godly. What I hope I understand, but did not before, is that we act and are moved by the power of a transformative Spirit who dwells inside each of us. People say they never see evidence of such things, but I saw it daily in the actions and face of my father.

I cried when I first read the letter to him all those years ago. I cried harder when I found he kept it. When I read the letter in its entirety at the graveside service, I think no more tears will come.

I am wrong.

---

There are images of my father and mother in the throes of early courtship...another showing him leaning back in the front seat of a car. His hair eases down his shoulders and resembles Peter’s on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive.

Back downstairs, I collect cleaning supplies and a couple more trash bags. Nervous energy, a hum-like reverb, courses through my body. I keep moving so as not to focus on it. My sister and mother talk about everything but what needs to get done. I make a comment about the amount of trash and dust up there. I say something about his CPAP machine, and the next thing I know, I’m screaming.

“All of this is so fucking stupid! None of it would have happened if I never left! I wouldn’t have let it get this bad!”

I don’t know if I’m talking about the state of the room or my father’s final state. I want to say something else, but my voice cracks. I motion for both of them, and they oblige. Hugging and holding me up, letting me know my unspoken sorry is enough.

Later, we sit at the kitchen table. We sift through photos, our hands gliding over a time capsule of memories. We choose several for the funeral home, where we’ll receive visitors the next day.

I look at the pictures. I know many of the stories behind them. Still, some go further back—events from before my memory bank started accepting deposits. There are images of my father and mother in the throes of early courtship, my teenage father sitting beside my mother’s mother, Dood, with curlers in her hair, and another showing him leaning back in the front seat of a car. His hair eases down his shoulders and resembles Peter’s on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive.

This is the man I never knew, so I ask my mother what he was like. She tells me all the things a life partner knows about their significant other and keeps from me all the details a lover should.

In the grab bag of memorabilia, I find a picture of me and him. He’s twenty-one. I’m not even a year old, nothing more than a collection of chunky rolls stacked on one another with a dash of red fuzz on top.

“Was he excited when he found out he was going to be a father?” I ask my mother.

A brief pause; she braces and puts emphasis on her next words.

“Oh yes,” she says. “He was very proud.”

We select music. Johnny Mathis. The Crystals. We choose the only other woman I knew my father loved besides my mother, Diana Ross. The sound of the Supremes’ “I Hear a Symphony” plays at his wake.

My mother writes the first draft of the obituary by hand. She composes a list of family and those who became family. While naming nieces and nephews, she stops and asks me, “What do I need to put in front of your name? Do I put pastor? Minister? Reverend?”

“Mama, I don’t care about any of that,” I say. “You can just put Justin.”

She nods.

“You know your father enjoyed telling everybody you were ordained,” she says.

When the obit is published the next day, an honorific “Rev.” appears before my name.

---

At the graveside, I sit beside all those my father loved: my sister and aunts and the one he worshipped, my mother. Though some pastors preside over the death of family members, my mother says she wouldn’t be able to stand to see me speak over my father, especially if I lost control. This honor will go to the founding dean of the seminary I attended. It’s a favor I’ll never be able to repay. He prays, reads holy scripture, and offers the words of Christian hope—words assuring me my father is now in better hands. He says other words, too—words I can’t remember. And then the service is over. The lives that are left, the ones who will deal with the loss, move out and move on.

---

I fly back to Connecticut and am engulfed by the love of my spouse and children. In this abnormal time, they are my normal. I fall back into our routines, rituals, and work schedules. I can dissociate the loss to a degree, but the absence is like a phantom limb. I keep looking for it. I keep looking for my father.

Then, one night, I am with my oldest before bed. She and I tell stories. She is the weaver of tales, and her imagination is the engine that sets the course. I take the pieces she gives, the characters and settings, and attempt to build a world we can enter together, but this night is different.

She asks me about my father, her Poppi.

“What was he like?” she asks. “Who was he?”

I tell her, to me, he was the smell of Hardee’s biscuits and gravy coming through the backdoor on Saturday morning after working the night shift. He was the bearer of broad shoulders, the ones I rode through the cold water of a John Deere-colored sprinkler during those summers we lived in the trailer in front of my grandparents’ farmhouse, too young to know we didn’t have much and too happy to care what others might think of us.

He was the applier of shaving cream to my five-year-old face, and the supplier of my makeshift razor, a kitchen spoon. Like a mockingbird mimics song, I copied his motions, looking up at a mirror too high to show my reflection.

He was the instructor walking me around the house before departing for his third-shift job. We checked the knobs on the top of the stove, reciting in unison, “Off, off, off, off, off.”

He was the possessor of hands full of nicks and cuts from working on textile machinery and, later, chemical plating baths, his self-sacrifice evident whenever he held my or my sister’s hand.

He was the nightly announcer at last-minute royal rumble matches of He-Man action figures, somehow becoming equal parts Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby “the Brain” Heenan as he detailed the disqualifying tosses that would send Beast-Man and Skeletor off the bunk bed and onto the floor.

He was the instructor walking me around the house before departing for his third-shift job. We checked the knobs on the top of the stove, reciting in unison, “Off, off, off, off, off.” Our ritual ended at a locked door, where I assured him my mother’s and sister’s safety was in good hands until the sun rose the following morning upon his return.

He was a man who forever made wrong turns on every trip to the North Carolina coast, getting lost without fail in the tangles of highways crisscrossing Raleigh. Once, I sobbed because he and my mother were so upset at how far they’d wandered off the path. He pulled the car over.

“Son,” he told me, “you can never really be lost because every road will eventually take you where you need to be.”

He was my partner, my co-conspirator in raging a two-man war against every wave Poseidon sent our way on the shores of Myrtle Beach. Our dual drop-kicks, elbows, and dramatic uppercuts showcased humanity’s refusal to go gently into that good night. We raged as the sea broke everything around but us.

He was the instigator who swore to my sister on mornings when he would drop her off at school that he would not turn up the radio and embarrass her. Only when both her feet would hit the pavement would he blast Rod Stewart and shout out the open door how much he loved her.

He was the one who worked extra shifts near holidays and birthdays. My sister’s jean jacket from the Limited Too is a testament to such facts. So was the Super Nintendo waiting for me when I arrived home from school on my eleventh birthday.

He was an acolyte and worshipper of Coach Dean Smith and the religion of North Carolina Tar Heel basketball, the sage who told me how the boys in light blue would “break my heart” like a high school sweetheart. I still refer to Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium as nothing but a glorified tobacco barn.

He was the voice who, after a high school football game when I said a teammate named Bo was good, responded, “Yeah, I saw him. But you know, number 66 is pretty good, too.”

I wore 66.

We walked the rest of the way to the car in silence.

He was the person who told me blue-collar folks were my people. He said this outside of a carwash on an early morning in 1994. I can still smell the soap in the workers’ buckets.

He was the best man in a group of good men who stood beside me at my wedding.

He was the humor in the room, the consummate comedian, the laugh waiting to happen, the deliverer of the punchline you wished you had come up with yourself.

I look at my daughter.

“He was a good dad,” I say, and wonder if any accolade could carry more weight.

She looks back at me.

“You’re a good daddy, too,” she says.

When she’s asleep, tears hit my pillow, and for the first time in a while, I know their cause is happiness.

In 2013, at his wedding, the author with his father, Marty, outside Duke University Chapel in Durham, North Carolina (photo courtesy of the Cox family)

Epilogue

A minister never knows how long they will stay in a place until they are swept away, like the prophet Elijah, called to go elsewhere. When our next time comes, I’m sure my family and I will leave some artifacts behind: the extra set of mixing bowls, a cumbersome chair and ottoman, maybe even the two useless cats.

I have no plans to leave those sympathy-laced letters behind. I still haven’t read them all, but I’m slowly working on it. Like the mannerisms, expressions, and the face of my father, I’ll carry them with me.

This thought comes to me while dropping my oldest off at school. I don’t turn the radio up, so there is no embarrassing blasting of music for her—not yet. No, I hand her the oversized Ghostbusters bookbag she insists on toting and tell her I love her as she hops out the car door.

“Love you, kid.”

“Love you too, Daddy,” she replies.

“Hey, what are we?” I say.

She answers with the words I said a thousand times to my daddy, and I drive away grateful because I know precisely what those words mean, thankful my father displayed them to me every day of his life. Words said so often they became a proclamation of unconditional love, a prayer that was always and will always be answered.

“Best buddies.”

A Faithonomics Follow Up - A Few More Words On Storytelling and My Publishing Experiences

So, I'm doing something I haven't done in quite some time today—writing straight to the Black Sheep Baptist Blog. Think of it as a straight-to-video release.

The reason I'm doing this is because of the recent Faithonomics podcast I appeared on, hosted by Rayce Lamb. We delved into my black sheep moniker, faith journey, and how my long-form writing is getting published in several different places.

As always, after our conversation, I thought of a dozen other things I wanted to say, so I'm doing that now. Some of it expands on what I touched on in the segment; others are just hot takes from my experience.

So, keep reading if you're thinking about dipping your toes into writing, getting published, and receiving compensation.

Let your writings have a dual purpose—I mentioned this during the interview. One of the most valuable lessons I received about my writing came from my time in seminary. A professor shared with me that he tried to make anything he writes have a dual purpose, meaning if he was writing an academic piece, he could use portions of it in a sermon or vice versa. I can't tell you the times I've used self-reflections as sermon illustrations and biblical scholarship in broad essays. My point is this: make your time and efforts worth it. Make your writing strong so it can be built on and repurposed elsewhere.  

Write like no one knows who you are—I received this gem from an editor I was getting to know. I was writing a personal piece and wasn't giving enough detail about how I came to live in New England. I remember telling him, "I've written about my family's move before." He quipped, "Not for me, you haven't. Not for this audience." There's a famous line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, "Always be closing." As a writer/storyteller, I've adapted this to "always be introducing yourself." Tell people who you are, tell them what you mean, and, in most cases, leave little room for assumptions.

How to get something published: I submitted something at the urging of a colleague. They were kind enough to suggest that my experiences should be shared, and because they knew an editor of an online publication, they offered to do an email introduction for me.

That's it.

I wrote something, sent it in, and voila, I had my first published piece.

Connections and relationships are essential in every vocation. Writing is no different. If you know someone who can help you get a foot in the door, ask. This same sort of scenario led to my first paid piece. A peer messaged me and said, "You know ____________ publication is looking for monthly contributors. You should do it!" I checked out the publisher to make sure my voice worked there. After another introductory email, I was getting paid.

How to have the awkward compensation talk—Actually, this one was a lot easier than I imagined. I didn't need to have this conversation for my first paid gig, but I struggled to figure out the best way to broach the subject with other potential publishers. During a phone call with an editor-turned-friend, I said, "What's the best way to do this?" He answered back, "Be straightforward. Say you really enjoy writing for them, but at some point, you'd like to get paid. Is that a possibility?" A version of that pitch landed me two other contracts.

Kill Your Darlings—Here is the quintessential writing rule number one. Yes, you're submitting work that bares your soul, but a good editor will ask you to take it to another level. I've had pieces I'm pleased with go through an editing process, and nine times out of ten, because of an editor's suggestions, they come out better. For example, an editor told me, "You're circling something in this paragraph; give me another sentence or two and try and land it." This advice is priceless, and if you can check your artistic ego, it will do nothing but help you. In summary, be open to words of critique as much as affirmations.

Know your numbers—Analytics. I'm not a numbers person. At all. However, one of the benefits of having the Blacksheepbaptist website is the ability to track the number of people reading my writings. This information helps me determine how well my writing is received. When my pieces started getting published, I began requesting data from the editors every so often. They let me know which pieces got the most clicks and shares. I've used that information to approach potential future publishers. Not only do I share my previous work that I think might fit their audience, but I also include statistics. Doing this, I let an editor know what range my "writing voice" has and how I potentially bring a following of readers with me to their publication.

Lastly, prepare for rejection—Look, it's gonna happen. In my case, I'm happy to say the 'yeses' have far outweighed the 'nos.' But I've received my fair share. Some have been generic,

Thanks for you for your submission. Unfortunately, at this time...

Others were personal but in a good way.

Thanks for sharing your work. We've actually been discussing the possibility of a column addressing precisely what your piece deals with, but we aren't there yet. But please check back with us soon!

I know it's hard, especially because many publishers want completed submissions. If you're anything like me, you pour yourself into your writing. Putting that energy out there for rejection by a publisher is tough. I've navigated this by crafting pieces that might work at 2-3 different publications and sending them to each one (remember, make your writing dual purpose!). Getting a no sucks, but getting a no with feedback is valuable.

Alright, that's it. What I'm sharing is by no means an exhaustive list. Here's hoping you found a nugget or two to add to your writing toolbox.

Here's to discovering, honing, and owning your voice.

Justin

A conversion story

This article was originally written for and published by The Christian Citizen.

I have a confession to make to you, dear reader. One that may cause my “Southern Appalachian membership card” to be revoked, ripped into pieces, and tossed into the Cape Fear River.

Ready?

For the longest time, I wasn’t a fan of tomato sandwiches.

Somewhere, Chef Sean Brock just shed a tear and let out an expletive.

Growing up on the land of my maternal grandparents, I’d watch with a “bless your heart” expression plastered to my face as my kinfolk devoured thick slices of the edible berry from the Solanum lycopersicum plant. They’d stand triumphantly in their kitchens, sweat still clinging to their shirts from the recent trip to the family garden, rip open a plastic bag of Meritta White Bread, and start in. With “light bread” at the ready, they’d gather the remaining supplies and construct their soggy creations.

First, two sinful slatherings of Duke’s Mayonnaise on both slices.

Second, those dripping wet hunks of tomato.

Third, a couple pinches of salt.

Lastly, enough fresh cracked pepper to make you reach for dental floss afterward.

I’d watch in horror and astonishment eating my SpaghettiOs while they inhaled the first of many tomato sandwiches. Sometimes, it was all they ate for lunch or supper.

“Just try it,” my grandmother would plead.

“It’s mush,” I’d say. “Look at the bread.”

“It’s not mush. We had liver mush on Monday,” she’d say.

I developed acid reflux at an early age just listening to her say “mush.”

It was the same every year. If lightning bugs signaled the proper start of summer, tomato sandwiches carried my family through the remaining humidity-filled months. By September, the beast within them had met its sacrificial quota and lumbered off satisfied until the next harvest year.

During the 1980s and 1990s, I continued to work my way through Kid Cuisines, Count Chocula cereal, and personal pan pies from the fine dining halls of Pizza Hut.

My family continued their garden-to-table evangelizing, some of which stuck. Snapped green beans and fresh corn appeared beside my salmon biscuit. Southern culinary indoctrination came in other forms: real cornbread, sweet tea, pinto beans, and the holiest of holy pastries – Krispy Kreme doughnuts. My kindred jumped for joy, their prayers answered, when they discovered I held the gene for appreciating properly cooked and seasoned stone-ground grits — butter, salt, pepper, and never, under any circumstances, sugar.

Still, every July, their expressions of supplication turned into frustration as I rejected their bounty of Big Beef and Early Girls.

Bewildered and ashamed, some would mutter, “What’s wrong with that boy?”

Like a responsive litany, someone else would chime in, “Poor feller doesn’t know what’s good.”

By the time I was out of high school, my resistance was legendary.

A person’s world gets bigger when they leave the nests they always knew. My life has been no different. Like St. RuPaul, I sashayed away from my family’s tobacco farm and into a larger city where I lived with several friends who, bless their hearts, actually chose to eat cornbread with sugar in it. Such heresy makes me hope God is a universalist.

I dated women who were cultured, and by cultured, I mean they liked sushi instead of Steak-umms. In trying to impress them, my palate became more diverse. Sure, there were still items I’d pass by on a buffet table, but I had reached a stage where I was willing to try anything.

Even the tomato sandwich.

Often, the smallest things, like a mustard seed, can cause one to see the bigger picture. For me, that small thing was a tomato. That is why I implore you to consider the tomato for Earth Day this year.

I don’t remember the year; maybe I’ve blocked out the trauma in order to move forward, but I do recall that, without a shadow of a doubt, the tomato was store-bought. A random red sphere of mass-produced blandness from a farm thousands of miles away.

“It’s tasteless and watery,” I said. “It’s like Jello without any of the benefits. This is what y’all have been fussing about? I’ll stick with a plain mayonnaise sandwich.”

And I did for a few more years.

It wasn’t until I ate a cherry tomato off the vine while walking around Wake Forest University’s campus garden that my eyes opened like Saul’s on the way to Damascus.

Succulently sweet, the burst of exploding juice sunk its teeth into me as quick as a copperhead’s strike. My head was left dizzy from its flavorful venom.

This was one of many conversion experiences that caused me to care about what I eat. I became infatuated with knowing where my food came from, how far it had to travel, and whether it was ethically sourced before it came to rest on my plate or in my bowl.

I’m not talking about getting acquainted with my fowl à la Portlandia’s Colin the Chicken, but I did want to know if the people growing and raising my food were treating the land and animals they tended with a certain level of respect and a sense of stewardship.

I didn’t know at the time to call this caring for the environment, and I didn’t realize the theological implications of creation care. I had yet to make the connection between my food and climate change, greenhouse gases, industrial farming, and land justice. I knew little, if at all, of Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Dan Barber, Ellen Davis, and Heber Brown III.

But I do now, and it has changed the trajectory of my life.

Often, the smallest things, like a mustard seed, can cause one to see the bigger picture. For me, that small thing was a tomato.

That is why I implore you to consider the tomato for Earth Day this year. Summer planting is right around the corner, and you’d do well to have a row or two of Sunny Golds and Brandywines. And if tomatoes aren’t your thing, find another vegetable that makes your thumb green.

And if you, like me, need a little more time to come around to the goodness of tomatoes, know this: Me and mine are praying for you to know “what’s good.”

When Neighbors Are Enemies and Enemies Are Neighbors: An Atypical Reflection on A24’s “Civil War”

This article was originally written for and published by Good Faith Media.

If this were a normal film review, I would begin by dazzling you with a synopsis. I would give you a brief and condensed version of the plot of the motion picture in question, “Civil War. 

I would describe, in Orwellian fashion, how the movie follows a team of journalists making their way down the east coast of a very divided and at-war United States of America. I would describe the main characters, their plights, agendas and the stereotypes they play into and ultimately destroy. 

I would follow this by detailing their journey together, listing what they experienced: inner turmoil, tension with each other and the looming presence of John the Revelator’s second horseman—war, conflict, and bloodshed.

Then, if this were a typical film review, I would walk you through the major scenes, drawing you a map of their significance. I would finish with an anticlimactic ending to not deter you from viewing the movie yourself.

If this were a standard film review, I’d pivot and draw your attention to the team of artists who made it happen.

I would tell you about the filmmaker Alex Garland, author of one of Generation X’s most esteemed novels, “The Beach” (1996) and screenwriter of such works as “28 Days Later” (2002) and “Sunshine” (2007), and director of Ex Machina (2014).

Afterward, I would mention the stellar cast. I would tell you how Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny and Stephen McKinley Henderson all brought continuous fine acting moments. I would write about how they all came too close too often to their art mimicking real life, their shared situation and an honest and possible future.

Maybe then I would mention a few other names, such as Nick Offerman and Jesse Plemons, who, with limited screen time, chillingly stole their respective scenes.

That is what I’d do if this were a normal film review.

But this isn’t a normal film review. Instead, it’s a story about my trip to the cinema to see “Civil War.”

What follows is a story about what I saw, heard, and felt, both on and off the screen.

In a day when talking about feelings produces an apathetic, “[expletive] your feelings,” listening to someone’s elation, disconcertment, sensitivities and peeves might be the change we need.

For a mid-afternoon matinee, I am surprised to see as many people in the parking lot and lobby. I will find out later that the film racked up an impressive opening weekend, clearing $25 million, putting it in line to possibly surpass A24’s most successful production, 2022’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” 

Time will tell.

I’m alone on this day, which is unusual. Standing in line to purchase the ticket, my family’s absence is palpable. 

No popcorn.
No candy.
No overly priced large soda.
No animated musical offering a catchy Broadway-worthy score.
My attention isn’t on an excited child but on other moviegoers.

I look around and silently wonder what has brought each of them here. 

Two early teenage boys and a man I take to be their grandfather chat back and forth about giant monsters. They’re undoubtedly enjoying the lighter fare flick of a tag team for the ages: Godzilla and King Kong. Somehow, a world being destroyed by kaiju seems less disturbing than what I’m about to walk into.

I spot a young man in the lobby with his back to me. He appears excited. He’s wiry. His clothes hang off his frame like a coat on a rack. 

I don’t know if he knows the group he’s talking to, but he’s entered their circle. He’s wearing a red snap-back hat. 

If I’m ever so honest, my first thought is that I expect him to turn and confirm my MAGA suspicions. Before coming, I prepared myself for those who wanted to see such a movie.

I suspect some are like me—those who believe we are glimpsing into one of Tolkien’s palantirs, a crystal ball projecting a time yet to come, hoping and working to prevent what feels inevitable.

Others are stockpiling, preparing for doomsday with told-you-so glee, and have November 5th circled on their calendars. I sort through these thoughts as I locate my seat in the quarter-full theater, ashamed of how easy it is to categorize people.

After previews and advertisements, I huddle in a comfortable lounge chair, obscured by darkness. There are people near me, some an aisle away, others separated by a few seats. 

For some reason, I feel like I’m on a New York City subway. There’s a strong impulse to try and look at those souls near me, see their expressions, catch their eye so that we can pass an unspoken “Can you believe this?” with nothing but our raised eyebrows after a particularly gruesome scene, but I can’t. 

What if I catch a smile? What if the “woah” I heard behind me was done out of unhinged anticipation? 

Or what if they ignore me altogether? Too enthralled to be bothered, chomping on realistic violence, right along with their Sour Patch Kids and Junior Mints. 

My empathy can’t stomach the chance of encountering apathy right now.

My eyes stay forward; they remain on the screen and I watch.

I struggle to figure out who the good and bad guys are. By the end of the movie, I’m still not sure. The loyalists of Washington or the usurpers of California and Texas, known as the “Western Front,” are indistinguishable. 

Both sides appear as trained soldiers. Some are decked out in standard army fatigues, while others secure buildings and checkpoints in Hawaiian-print shirts. I don’t know who the enemies of democracy are because they could be anyone.

There are rogue groups. Outlaws answering to no one. Self-governing with enough firepower to secure lifetime memberships in the National Rifle Association.

Dunst and Spaeny’s characters mention family members living in states where the war is as far away as Gaza. They choose not to acknowledge what is happening. A fragile privilege is present even in a dystopian future.

And as with all war, there is the least of these. Those whose lot is to wander unwarned between a bullet and its target. Lives laced with casualties even if they never officially join a side.

Finally, numb journalists, their reality skewed through the lens of a Nikon FE2. They exist in daily levels of unpredictable havoc, seeking to capture the chaos, forcing people to see the tragedy they have created unfold. All the while, Pax Americana gets buried under another pile of rubble.

Between the interactions of each group are explosions—bombs bursting in the air, but not the romantic ones from the National Anthem. Modern means of warfare erase any sense of past patriotic nostalgia. 

A repetitious “dut, dut, dut” from automatic weapons. Blaring single shots, scenes of callous executions, jarring me in my seat, courtesy of the theater’s state-of-the-art surround sound.

I jump more than once.

The movie ends around the two-hour mark. I am not giving away the ending—no spoilers—but if you need a description or takeaway, “Civil War” is a brilliantly unsettling prophetic piece of cinema.

I drive the twenty minutes home in silence, continuing to process and break down what I witnessed.

Art should move us, be it film, music, or the written word. It should make us think and feel.

I’ll tell you, as a pastor, what I don’t feel I need to do after watching “Civil War.” I don’t feel the need to buy a gun, construct a bunker or join a militia.

However, as a pastor, I confess there is an appeal to retreat into the hills with my family. I want to relocate to the middle of nowhere, on a farm, away from everyone. Collards will become my new company; deer, chickens and chipmunks will be my neighbors. 

But as quickly as this tempting thought makes me smile, an overcast-like heaviness settles upon me.

Violence and lonely futures follow such abandon-filled ideas. The desire for isolation is the fallout of war and detachment is its alluring toxic waste.

I want to believe I’m better than succumbing to such fears.
I want to believe we all are.
I don’t yet see my neighbors as the enemy.
I pray I never do.

I thought I didn’t have any more time in my Holy Week schedule, and then I learned about the Trump-endorsed Bible

This article was originally written for and published by Baptist News Global

Every pastor I know is busy. I haven’t come across one who tells me they have time to kill. The pastors in my circles aren’t on golf courses. They’re not at the gym or the spa. They haven’t signed up for a sculpting class or are learning art at a community center. Their vacations are short, and their sabbaticals are as few and far between as Cubs World Series wins. The more responsible ones have therapists, some have coaches, but most suck at practicing any sort of self-care. They, we, are a guild of candle makers with wicks burning relentlessly at both ends.

I make boundaries for the sake of my family. Some weeks, I’m better at this than others. Between meetings, visitations and things in need of planning and preparation, I appear to be functioning as an adult with something resembling a schedule. I can tread water with the best of them.

However, there are other seasons of the church calendar when I’m flailing, sinking and water fills my eyes and nose. And is that a fin coming out of the water? Holy Week is one such time, and like the mantra of March Madness, the point is to survive and advance.

For all the moaning I’m incredibly good at and the stress I allow to creep in, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday hold special meaning to me. I want to be at my best and be present.

My plan for the next few days is to get through them, flip as many tables as possible, crash into the weekend, and have enough in my reserve to crawl through a sunrise service, hoping to God there’s a bit of left-over resurrection tucked away in Jesus’ tomb for me.

“He is risen, indeed,” they’ll say.

“Barely,” I’ll whisper back.

To accomplish my goal, I told myself, I simply won’t add anything else to my plate. It’s full, packed high and deep, so there’s no need to try to add one more activity or deviled egg.

And then, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump started hawking $60 Bibles, and I decided to make room for at least one more table flip.

If you haven’t seen Trump and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA Bible” video released yesterday, let me offer a quick summary.

Greenwood, famous for his 1984 hit, “I’m Proud to Be an American,” slid it, along with the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Pledge of Allegiance, into a King James Version of the Bible.

Not one to miss a pandering opportunity, Trump endorses Greenwood’s Bible to kick off Holy Week. In the video, Trump claims you need this Bible for your heart and soul and to know the liberties you have as citizens of this country, liberties he’s protecting for you, liberties the media and radical left are actively working to strip away. He blames the lack of religion and Christianity for the country’s struggles. Trump’s solution: “All Americans need a Bible in their homes, and I have many. It’s my favorite book.”

“It’s simple, it’s catchy. It leaves a taste in my mouth like I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster.”

He then encourages his followers to defend and protect anything that is pro-God, stoking the fires of fear not seen since the Salem Witch Trials. Trump ends his tirade with a challenge to join him and the legion of citizens who support him to “Make America Pray Again.” It’s simple, it’s catchy. It leaves a taste in my mouth like I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster.

This cinematic venture of propaganda has all the allure of late-night infomercials. Watching it several times, I keep waiting for the “Don’t wait! Order now, and I’ll throw in the Patriots Apocrypha containing the principles of Ronald Reagan’s Trickle-Down Economics and a transcript of Nixon’s Watergate Tapes. Call in the next hour, and you’ll also receive a copy of ‘Donald Trump’s Book of Martyrs,’ listing all of the January 6 insurrectionists, and I can’t believe we’re doing this, a commemorative plate featuring the likeness of Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

I’ve seen more faith in Billy May’s pitch for Oxiclean.

I have as many problems with the video as Trump does indictments. However, I will concede and admit that I, too, am witnessing the rights of citizens actively and purposely being stripped away as nationalism and fascism drapes itself in red, white and blue. For the last several years, I’ve continued to watch as people of color struggle to have fundamental rights in this country. I’ve watched as minority groups, such as those in the LGBTQ community, have legislation leveraged against them. And as recently as 2022, with the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, I’ve witnessed the rights of women in this country become less and less.

Somehow, I don’t believe “the Don” and I are thinking of the same thing.

Maybe it’s because I’ve emerged on the other side of Lent, fresh off preaching a series on the people known as Baptists and the four fragile freedoms they hold to. Perhaps that’s why I’m bristling with a spirit of dissension. How could I not? Watching a would-be king try to impose his version of holy Scripture, I thought of my spiritual ancestors like Thomas Helwys.

It was Helwys who, in 1612, wrote A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity. Along with this work, he contacted King James of the KJV Bible fame, another Caesar who desired to blend the business of state with religion, and let him know, “The king is a mortal man and not God, and therefore, has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects.”

Helwys would go so far as to say, “Men’s religion,” or we might say “a person’s religion,” “to God is betwixt God and themselves.” As you might imagine, King Jim did not receive this message well, and Helwys was imprisoned by the king’s law and died later while under a sentence in one of the king’s cells.

“Baptists have a history of standing against authoritative people, not beside them.”

I’m prone to share Brother Helwys’ story whenever I’m in the presence of KJV-only sorta Baptists or any other Bible-obsessed fanatic, reminding them not to be so quick to clutch their idol so tightly. You see, Baptists have a history of standing against authoritative people, not beside them.

So, I think I’ll pass on the special edition of the Trump-endorsed Bible. I’ll make it to Easter Sunday with my New Revised Standard Version tucked under my arm. Maybe I’ll throw in a smattering of Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch to shake up my New England congregation.

And, I’ll be sure to include the good news of the lowly Galilean — a radical and inclusive message that every soul has worth and rights simply because they exist.

The state, or a king, can’t give what a Creator already has given.

Let every Caesar, king or former president with ears to hear, hear.

Women of the Way: witnessing the call of all at dinner church

This article was originally written for and published by The Christian Citizen

Recently, we celebrated our oldest child’s birthday. She is of the age of magic and wonder. She believes in the validity of unicorns as much as she does the possum we’ve named Jolene, who lives under our back porch. Disney princesses hold her attention, along with Indiana Jones and friendship bracelet kits procured from Five Below. She is the embodiment of a free spirit, and while I know the law of Moses tells me not to covet, her nature to let all matters of circumstances slide away is a disposition I openly envy.

With another trip for her around the sun, I, like most parents, recall her beginning. I can still feel the moment when my spouse, Lauren, told me, “I’m pregnant.”

Lots of things go through your mind when you hear those words. Expressions like, “Thank you, God,” followed by “Oh my God, I hope we can afford this baby.”

My head and heart went through the gamut those first few weeks. We remained silent in church. So much can happen in those first few months. We said nothing, waiting to tell our families when we knew the pregnancy was viable.

And so it came to pass on the 19th week; Lauren and I went into the doctor’s office, and there we witnessed a human-like shape move around on a computer screen. This shape had a heartbeat attached to it, beating as strong as a hare who’d been chased.

The sonographer asked us, “Do y’all wanna know the baby’s sex?”

“Yes,” we said in unison.

“You’re having a little girl,” she said.

Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

And that is how one’s world changes.

Months later, I remember discussing with someone the possibility of dedicating our daughter. Lauren and I come from traditions where dedications are common instead of infant baptism, and we entertained the idea of holding an ecumenical blessing with other leaders from different denominations and expressions of faith. During the discussion, the person mentioned their tradition and how only men could perform a baptism/blessing. Immediately, I saw the issue. I had to ask myself, was I willing to allow someone from a faith community to bless my daughter, knowing that if she grew up in that faith community, she, because of her sex, couldn’t one day do the same for someone else?

No freaking way.

I have to make a fair number of hard decisions as a parent.

Saying no to this is one of the easiest.

Now, I could say I came to this conclusion because I have a biblical interpretation that defends my perspective. I could pull out Scripture, a handful of verses, displaying why I believe the Bible displays egalitarianism over complementarianism. I could try to dazzle you, dear reader, with some historical analysis while pointing to the shifting contexts of ancient cultures. I might even try and remind you of the long and ever-present masculine hand of patriarchal-centered societies and those groups who actively worked to oppress or erase women’s roles within the early church – but I don’t need to do that.

Not when I have so many examples, so many names, of women who have shown me by their presence God can call anyone into the role of pastor.

I know this because I sat beside too many divine image-bearing women in seminary to think differently.

I read the stories of people like Ann Hasseltine Judson, Alice and Annie Armstrong, and Martha Stearns Marshall. I highlighted too many sentences in books by Pamela R. Lightsey, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Emilie M. Townes. Like saints and angels of the highest order, these are the names I call on when I want to invoke the mothers of my faith.

And as of last month, I’ve added two more to a constantly growing list: Pastor Sarah and Pastor Anna. Two women, a pair of priests, who coordinate a dinner church in Northampton, Massachusetts.

I have so many examples, so many names, of women who have shown me by their presence God can call anyone into the role of pastor. Recently, I’ve added two more to a constantly growing list: Pastor Sarah and Pastor Anna, a pair of priests who coordinate a dinner church in Northampton, Massachusetts.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a dinner church is a gathering where shared meals are seen as worship. I’m keen on such communities. The breaking down of the formal doings of the church for informal place settings around an eclectic table of dishes and people suits me just fine.

My family and I arrive early for the service. I mixed up the time, so the space was empty and quiet except for a few sounds we trace back to the kitchen. Pastor Sarah is there, her hand raised not in praise but in hopes of stopping the blood coming from the knife nick on her finger. I didn’t know church cutlery could be so sharp. We exchange pleasantries and stories of how we ended up there.

“Could I give you a hand with those onions?” I ask.

She graciously accepts my offer, seeing as she is out of commission. Over the next hour, she chats it up with Lauren, taking her on a small church tour and down to an area where the girls can find art supplies, run around, and play.

Our oldest moves like a butterfly with a caffeine addiction, never in one space long; she abandons the craft room and darts back upstairs to find me in the kitchen. Pastor Sarah joins us a few minutes later and puts her to work. My daughter takes the bread, made and donated by a local baker, and distributes it to the half-dozen set tables filling the room.

“Now, can you help me fill these water pitchers?” she asks.

Our daughter, whose legs stubbornly refuse to work in our home, leaps at the chance. She’s an infamous spiller of any and all liquids, so I’m expecting an impromptu baptism by affusion. I try to offer to help her, but she pushes my hands away.

“I got it, Daddy,” she says without giving me a second look.

I dumbfoundedly stare, unsure if this is my child who struggles to put on her shoes before school in the morning.

“You’ve got a servant’s heart,” Pastor Sarah says to her.

I know she’s right. And while I know my children love to make a liar out of me, I’m confident that what I’m witnessing is genuine. My parent-hardened skepticism cracks. It will shatter before we leave.

Not long after, the service starts. Music is played from an instrument I want to call a squeezebox. A candle is lit, and the flame is shared. Offered to any who holds wax and wick, these candles will be placed as the centerpiece at each table. Prayers are said by Pastor Anna, and black bean soup with fresh lime juice is served. Pastor Anna’s homily holds the attention of those gathered. There’s discussion at the tables, more divine dialogue than pious proclamation. While the talking never subsides, the evening draws to a close with Communion followed by a blessing.

The two pastors make their way around the loose circle of souls. Pastor Anna makes the sign of the cross on my head, then Lauren’s, and finally on our youngest. Our oldest is still sitting at the table. Pastor Sarah approaches her, asks her if she can bless her, and does. And then, in a fragment of time where the veil of this world and what lies beyond is brought into focus, she asks my daughter, my child of chaos, if she will take the oil and bless her. Truly, we are priests to each other.

As a preacher, I have moments in what some might call ministry that burn a little brighter than others. The illuminance coming from my daughter’s actions will light my faith for years to come.

I have a woman pastor to thank for that.

We will soon depart. Walking back to the vehicle, we see several groups of college students searching for an evening bite at one of the several take-out spots running up and down Main Street. I wish they would have joined us.

As she’s getting buckled in, my oldest tells me, “I wanna go back to that church.”

Count on it, kid. Count on it.

Why I Can’t Honk for Jesus

This article originally appeared and was written for Good Faith Media.

The more we keep from changing, the more we stifle ourselves to stay the same. I feel this deep in my bones most weeks as I attempt to “run” a church.

Now, I know I don’t actually “run” it. I’m downright grateful for that.

I am glad all final decision-making jolts past me like sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson. Still, there are expectations.

These expectations include worship planning, special event coordinating, gathering questions for this month’s Pub Theology, updating the bulletin with my weekly thoughts, sharing reading recommendations to the congregation, staff questions, answering random phone calls from unknown numbers, saying yes to a funeral, and the constant apologizing for emails I never replied to. I plow through board and committee meetings at the frequency of Maverick waves hitting the shore around Half Moon Bay, California.

I do all this while sweating out sermons each week, hoping my late-night keystrokes and last-minute revisions pierce the hearts of saints and sinners alike. Three things are inevitable for ministers: death, taxes(yes, we pay them) and Sunday mornings.

This might sound like “church work,” but it’s not. It’s administrative work.

There is nothing wrong with this, mind you. But I wouldn’t call it “ministry.” 

Holy orders shouldn’t be so planned, so mechanical, and so dry. I am sure some would disagree, especially those whose skill set is attuned to functioning as CEOs of nonprofits.

So, where does ministry take place for me? In someone’s home as they offer me a glass of tea at their breakfast nook. In the emergency room, while I ignore with the skill of a savant, the always ill-fitting hospital gown they keep pulling at with little success. I thrive in such environments. 

There, I share of myself, sometimes too much, and then witness a miracle that rivals that of a young boy multiplying fish and a few loaves of bread—people allowing themselves to get to know someone else. In such vulnerable moments, in the passing back and forth of idyll banter, folks can and do become neighbors.

Of all the things I get to do as a pastor, this feels the most like “ministry.”

I’m heading to such a rendezvous on a stretch of Massachusetts highway. I check Google Maps, locate my exit number and make my way toward the rehab clinic, where a parishioner and his spouse are expecting me.

Driving past local businesses, I can’t help but blame the Gilmore Girls for my presumptions about the daily lives of New England villagers. The fictional picturesque Stars Hollow, where Lorelai and Rory Gilmore ate their way through too many take-out restaurants to count, is still my basis for gauging any town north of New York state.

Rustic general stores and bustling town halls are abundant in my neck of the woods. Still, nothing captures the quintessential Yankeeland townlet like the collection of manicured shrubbery, statues, and quaint gazebos found in village greens.

My destination today is no exception. Cruising down the main drag, I make my way to the heart of town, passing several large honey bee sculptures (remnants of last year’s Bee Fest) before the buildings drop off and a landscape of well-maintained swards comes into view.

However, to my surprise, on the village green, atop the blades of grass covered in dew, are two dozen sets of hands holding signs. My knuckles turn white as I brace for the worse.

During this tension-filled political climate, one might expect to encounter a group of Moms For Liberty demonstrating, or worse, something resembling Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally. The primarily blue-voting area of the country is not above such scenes. 

My jaw dropped once after seeing a mammoth Confederate flag billowing with air and ignorance strapped to, in all places, the back of a truck in Vermont. It would seem not everyone in the Green Mountains embraces the “Bern” of Sanders.

Inching closer, I await the inevitable sighting of heavily pomaded hair with crisp side parts paired with eyes as blue as Hitler-Jugend. But I’m wrong.

I see no “Take America Back” or “Build the Wall” signs. I can’t make out any Oath Keepers or Proud Boys propaganda.

The poster boards I see are handwritten. I can make out what I think are flowers, maybe a rainbow, surrounding imperfect lettering, which gets tighter as it bumps up near the edge of the sign. Clipping along at twenty-five miles per hour, I can read at least a couple of the messages I wasn’t prepared for,

“Smile God Loves You.”
“Honk If You Love Jesus.”

A stoplight just past the green brings me to a halt. While waiting to make my turn, I let out a sigh, thankful the group braving the cold wasn’t who I first thought they were. 

Then, I immediately feel a tiny ping of pressure and hear a small voice in my head. “You know, as a pastor, maybe you should honk.” I don’t know if this was the Holy Ghost or Jiminy Cricket, but I pause and consider the prompt.

My hands stay on the steering wheel at ten and two until the light turns green. I roll away honkless.

The reason? I don’t know which Jesus I’m being asked to honk for.

I know what you’re thinking: Does it matter? For me, it does.

Am I honking for a Jesus who has come to bring good news to the poor?
Who has come to release those in prison?
Who has come to recover sight for those who cannot see?
Who has come to liberate the oppressed?

Is this the Jesus who called the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart “blessed?”
Is it the Jesus who says, “When you take care of the least of these, you take care of me?”
Or the Jesus who tells us the kin-dom of God has come near, existing within us?
Is this the Jesus who has come for the poor and poor in spirit?
Is this the radical Jesus, God-man from Galilee?
Is this the Jesus who was tempted and turned Satan away emptied-handed?

Or is it another Jesus?

One whose 11th Commandment is the 2nd Amendment?
One who champions pro-birth legislation but does little to support the lives of the born and even less the lives of women?
One who believes the foreigner is less than human?
One who came only for the liberals?
One who came only for the conservatives?
One who would give all power to Caesar?
One that shouts, “Amen!” for the razor wire around a country’s border?
One who believes in American exceptionalism? Patriot Jesus? John Wayne Jesus? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Jesus?
One whose apathy allows genocide to take place in Rwanda, Darfur and now Gaza.

I think it matters. For one of these Jesuses, I’ll praise and follow.

The other, I’ll damn until my dying breath.

I keep driving, disappointed and relieved at why it has to be this way.

Salvation South : The Bootleg Preacher

I almost missed the road, my brake lights surely scaring those behind me as I abruptly cut the wheel.

I’m on this street for only a second before having to make another sharp turn into an empty parking lot filled with potholes, which fling me like the aggressive rapids of the Chattooga River. I shake, rattle, and roll to a stop.  Stepping out of my ride, I regret not bringing a bucket of tar to make the next victim’s entrance a little less adventurous. A prayer for traveling mercies will have to suffice. I say one laced with colorful language as I walk into my destination.

It’s lunchtime, and I’ve brought my appetite with me.

Golden India is the kind of spot you don’t discover on your own—somebody has to tell you. Maybe a local food enthusiast consumed with finding the obscure, or a Wake Forest University college student whose meal card has been maxed out. The invitation might come from a handful of places.

For me, it was extended by a fellow named Don.

Don was a friend of a friend, a person I was told I absolutely had to meet when I moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He wasn’t so much placed on my radar as he was pulled from the shelf like a jar of what George Jones used to sing about. I would soon learn that Don’s presence, like the Possum’s “White Lightnin’,” was punchy and meant to be shared.

The restaurant is nearly empty except for the handful of patrons roaming the aisles of the attached in-house grocery. Grabbing a booth, I watch hands toss lentils, flatbread, and at least one bag of Lay’s India’s Magic Masala potato chips into a small handcart. I’ve never been accused of possessing a sommelier’s nose, but the smells wafting through the room are so distinct, so enchanting, that picking up hints of coriander and ginger takes little effort. I don’t bother with the menu. I’ll eat whatever the server brings. Curry, vindaloo, samosas—it doesn’t matter. Put it in front of me, and I’ll take it down and ask for more.

“You don’t know who Will Campbell is? Do yourself a favor: don’t tell anybody you’re a damn Baptist until you read him.”

Unlike Pavlov’s dogs, I’m already salivating when I hear a ding. A man I take to be Don saunters through the front door. His salt-and-pepper hair is secured in a tight ponytail running down his back. His beard freely wanders. He’s wearing a pair of timeworn overalls that could walk themselves if they had to.

Don slides into the seat across from me, and we go through the motions of Southern salutation. It doesn’t take long to see why our mutual friend wanted us to meet. We go back and forth, discovering our stories intersect regularly, starting with the influences of our Appalachian upbringings and ending with our reluctant roles as misfit ministers to the people known as Baptists.

Over bowls of Indian chutney, we swap “call stories,” an expression ministers use to describe their divine acceptance of their particular purpose. Don tells me how he left a cushy denominational position to till soil, grow food, and give it away. Pausing after a bite of naan, he shares what ultimately led him to the decision: his faith, a few convictions, and the words and work of such people as Kentucky’s farmer/poet Wendell Berry and a man named Will D. Campbell.

He glances up, searching my face for a sign of recognition. Seeing none, he sits his fork down and raises an eyebrow.

“You don’t know who Will Campbell is?” he asks.

“No, never ran across him,” I offer back.

If seriousness was hot dogs, Don’s gaze at me would choke Joey Chesnut, the guy who wins all the eating contests.

“Do yourself a favor: don’t tell anybody you’re a damn Baptist until you read him,” he says.

My hand gets busy writing down the name; I do not yet know my life has just changed. Meeting the right people, at the right time, in the right places is like a game of roulette. Sometimes, we get close, but we rarely beat the house and collect any long-lasting winnings. Be it Don or the Holy Muse working on his behalf, I will soon discover I have hit the jackpot.

Several days later, a copy of Campbell’s memoir Brother to a Dragonfly arrives in my mailbox. The book chronicles Will and his older sibling, Joe, and their closeness by blood and bond. Separating their lives is impossible; to speak of one is to witness the other. I consume it like a starving man does a loaf of bread. Moved to tears by every page, I’m drawn to Campbell’s ability to write about a people who are my own—rural, working-class, Southern whites. Those who often wear poverty, obstinance, and hardships like badges of honor over their eyes, leaving them incapable of seeing the same challenges in the lives of others with different complexions.

For the next few years, I mined for every book, article, and scrap of paper to which Campbell’s name was attached. I'd read about his rearing in Amite County, Mississippi. How in his youth, he brushed up against death, coming down with a severe case of pneumonia. His family would pray and barter with all manners of heavenly hosts to spare his life. Campbell believes this sets him apart in service to God’s will. How, as a medic during World War II, he got his hands on a copy of Freedom Road, a work of historical fiction about race relations in the South during Reconstruction, by Howard Fast. That as a young and aspiring Baptist preacher, he snubbed the expected halls of Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for the ivy walls of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Then came the short stint as a congregational minister in Louisiana, where his sermons on desegregation and racial reconciliation won him pats on the head but drew few eager souls to join him in those troubled waters. Departing his first and only church, he landed at Ole Miss as University Chaplain. Likewise, his time at the school would be short-lived: his invitation to Alvin Kershaw, a white Episcopal priest and NAACP member, to speak during Religious Emphasis Week raised concerns from the school’s higher-ups. Campbell garnered more attention off the Oxford campus when he and a local African American minister were seen playing table tennis together at the YMCA. This resulted in him waking one morning to find a pile of ping pong balls painted black and white on his front lawn. The writing on the wall came when Campbell discovered human feces covered in powdered sugar floating in a punch bowl during a school-sponsored mixer.

A position he thought would last the rest of his life dissolved in the blink of an eye.

My mother is surprised to see my grandfather holding a Bible. While his sisters, my mother’s aunts, are regular churchgoers and scripture readers, Bun Stigall is not. His Sunday mornings see few pews, and when others convene for Wednesday night studies of the Old and New Testaments, he’s soaking in the testimony of the stars and heat lightning. In one of many fold-out chairs, he gathers with his community—his church—whose congregants are fellow tobacco farmers and dog traders.

“I got Jack something,” he says, holding the book out to her.

He calls me Jack, even though my name is Justin. He never called anyone by their given name. He calls my sister “Sister.” My mother is Little Nance or Nancy Lou. Her name is Penny. When she has me, she becomes Mamie. My father is always Cox, never Marty.

“He’s only four, daddy. Why in the world would you get him a Bible?” she asks back.

“Because Jack is gonna be a preacher one day,” he informs her. This ends the conversation, but the words spoken on my life will ripple forever.

The next time I went to church, I wanted to carry it with me. I knew enough to know my name was supposed to go on one of the front pages. I couldn’t find a pen or a pencil, so I wrote my name in orange crayon. My mother lovingly scolded me.

“He’s only four, daddy. Why in the world would you get him a Bible?” she asks.

“Because Jack is gonna be a preacher one day,” he informs her.

Years later, I’m talking with my cousin Bill at his tire shop. He tells me, “You know, Maw-maw always wanted a preacher in the family. I’m sure glad it was you. I was worried for a while that they would try and put that on me.”

The Bible is my first. Faux leather. Issued by the authority of King James. A bulletin marking the first Sunday I preached a sermon is pressed into the spine. A few obituaries of family members are too. A cutout of my great Aunt Minnie’s hand holds the place of 1st Corinthians 13. She made it while living in the rest home after her dementia got to be too much. A picture of her face rests in the palm like a stigmata, proving her beatification. I use the scripture, words attributed to the Apostle Paul—“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud…”— at her funeral.

And although worn, my orange-printed name is still there. Still legible.

People ask all the time how preachers wind up doing what they do.

Some come back from the grip of death, receive healing, and are prayed into the role by those who love them. Given to God to serve.

Others are prophesied over by a tobacco farmer.

Either way, the work gotta get done.

Free of steeples and academic quads, Campbell becomes an advisor for the National Council of Churches during the 1960s, aiding their Department of Racial and Cultural Relations. He’s on the ground, behind the scenes, in places like Little Rock and Birmingham during the thick of the Civil Rights Movement. Planning and putting tension on the dividing walls that segregate schools, restrooms, and lunch counters. He’s the only white man present at the inaugural Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the beginning of the 1960s, he becomes the director of the Committee of Southern Churchmen, a group working with African American communities in the South to bring about social, economic, and political change.

Campbell’s activism continues and grows, branching off in an unforeseen direction following the death of his young friend, Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels. In the summer of 1965, Daniels was in Alabama helping with voter registration. Along with others, he was arrested but was released shortly afterward. Leaving the jail, Daniels and company enter a small grocery store to grab something to drink. A local deputy named Thomas Coleman approaches the group. They exchange words, then Coleman savagely opens fire with his shotgun. Daniels would die at the scene.

Hearing the news while sitting with his brother Joe and friend P.D. East, a Mississippi  newspaper editor, Campbell is asked by East if he wants to amend his definition of the Christian message: “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.” East asks him if Daniels is a bastard?

“I said I was sure that everyone is a sinner in one way or another but that he was one of the sweetest and most gentle guys I had ever known.”

East doesn’t let up.

“But was he a bastard? Now that’s your word. Not mine. You told me everybody is a bastard. That’s a pretty tough word. I know. ’Cause I am a bastard. A born bastard. A real bastard. My Mamma wasn’t married to my Daddy. Now by God, you tell me, right now, yes or no and not maybe, was Jonathan a bastard?” After a moment, Campbell whispers a yes.

He would sit at the hospital bedside of James Meredith, the first African American student at Ole Miss, after he was shot during the “March Against Fear” demonstration. He then went and visited the man who pulled the trigger, Aubrey Norvell, in his prison cell.

Satisfied, East then asks about Thomas Coleman. Campbell’s yes comes a lot quicker.

“Okay. Let me get this straight now. I don’t want to misquote you. Jonathan was a bastard. Thomas Coleman is a bastard. Right? Which one of these two bastards do you think God loves more? Does he love that dead little bastard Jonathan the most? Or does he love that living bastard Thomas the most?”

Rising from his chair and walking past East, Campbell stares out a window. Through tears, he begins to laugh.

“I was laughing at myself at twenty years of ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication. An attempted negation of Jesus, of human engineering, or riding the coattails of Caesar, of playing on his ballpark, by his rules and with his ball, of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshiping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making idol of the Supreme Court, a theology of law and order and of denying not only the Faith I professed to hold but my history and my people—the Thomas Colemans. Loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled.”

Will Campbell, a man who marched with King, John Lewis, and Bayard Rustin, now begins working as an unofficial on-call chaplain for members of the Ku Klux Klan. He shares a communion of whiskey with Bob Jones the night before the Grand Dragon of the North Carolina Knights heads to federal prison for contempt of Congress. He damn near starts a riot in Atlanta when he tells an auditorium full of students that he’s pro-Klansman because he’s pro-human being. Never supporting their actions or upholding their beliefs, he wasn’t pro-Klan—he just believed if you loved one, you had to love them all.

He lived this expression, his simple mantra. He would sit at the hospital bedside of James Meredith, the first African American student at Ole Miss, after he was shot during the “March Against Fear” demonstration. He then went and visited the man who pulled the trigger, Aubrey Norvell, in his prison cell. He would do the same for James Earl Ray, the man who murdered his friend, Martin Luther King, Jr. Campbell’s message was stripped of any pretense and required no vetting, contracts, or titles. The gap between sin and salvation was too small, or at least too hard to tell apart. The kin-dom of his God, a lowly Galilean, was infuriatingly inclusive, and because of this, the more he shared it, the more he himself was excluded. So goes the life of a bootleg preacher.

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy with Will Campbell in 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, only hours after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The evening I get a call from the pastoral search team, I’m alone in my tiny apartment. Over several weeks, what began as an exchange of emails with the committee chair has turned into phone calls. Then, the phone calls become in-person, sit-down meetings.

“We’re going to recommend you to the congregation,” she says.

I get through the rest of the conversation, stammering my way through thank yous, and say goodbye.

I sink to the floor and weep. Part of me is relieved to be chosen, to be on a path that will take me away from the bland existence of shift work in factories. I want to get up; I want to call my fiancée and tell her the news. I want to call my parents and tell them Paw-paw was right, but I can’t. A weight as heavy as a cast-iron skillet keeps me from moving.

I study theology and church history. I read scripture in its original languages. I get educated. I learn lessons beyond what is taught in Sunday school. The exposure creates a chasm between me and the people I’m supposed to love. Old deacons say, “Don’t go to seminary, son. It will rob you of the faith. It will snuff out your fire.”

My fire, my faith, does get smaller, but it’s only because I’m aware that other burning bushes exist all around me.

Before leaving that church, the people there ordain me in the Baptist way. I kneel before the congregation, and they come forward to lay hands on me one by one. I feel some of them attempting to squeeze what they have of the Holy Ghost into me. When the service ends, they hand me a Bible and a paper with a dozen signatures, affirming my call to Gospel ministry. It’s the only credential I have hanging in my current church office. I look at it often and wonder if the names on it would sign it today.

Time passes. I’m with Don again, this time in a Waffle House. I tell him I think congregational ministry will be hard on me. He tells me he’s glad I’m figuring that out now.

From the 1970s on, Campbell continued to write, and his status as a shit-stirring folk hero grew. Stories about him would be told by all sorts of people. Southern writers like Walker Percy and John Egerton. Country music royalty such as Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Jessi Colter. Fellow ministers William Sloane Coffin and Billy Graham. And at least one president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. Accounts from these sources are well documented.

And then there are the others. Heard in contrarian circles from other venerated agitators. Tales of how Campbell was seen walking around the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1990s. This was during the Conservative Resurgence/Takeover, where moderate to progressive leadership within the convention was systematically removed from office. Campbell had long distanced himself from SBC life, claiming he was not a Southern Baptist but a Baptist who happened to be Southern. When approached and asked what in the world he was doing there, so out of his element, surrounded by fundamentalists, Campbell responded, “I’ve come to watch a denomination die.”

Or the anecdote about Brother Will stepping onto a stage to receive an award from a group he took to be “lukewarm” Baptists.

“I’m told I’m standing in the presence of a bunch of moderates,” Campbell says. The few chuckles are cut short when he clears his throat and spits off the side of the stage. It would seem Brother Will is a Biblical literalist, at least when it comes to Revelation 3:16.

He was a prophet for a South that desperately needed him then and could use more of him today.

Such actions would earn him praise, which he would spurn. Accolades would be extended to him, which he openly abhorred. Bring up anything resembling personal achievement, and he’d sidestep with the grace of a Spanish matador.

Will Davis Campbell released his spirit in the summer of 2013. He is remembered as a force of a nonconforming nature trapped in modest flesh. As an iconoclastic shaker of the status quo. A challenger of institutions. A critic of TV evangelists, labeling them “electronic soul molesters.” He was a prophet for a South that desperately needed him then and could use more of him today. A bloodhound who heard a whistle others couldn’t or refused to—a call to “be ye reconciled” to Maker and neighbor.

Why more people don’t know about Brother Will, I do not know.

I often wonder where the kinship I feel toward Brother Will comes from. I ask my spouse Lauren this question. She smirks and asks me, “What did you write on the application for that big scholarship a few years ago when you were in seminary? What was your answer to the question about what that money would allow you to do if they gave it to you?”

I told them it wouldn’t allow me to do anything other than what I’d planned to do. In so many words, I explained my vocational call would not be determined by any monetary means.

“And the time you looked at having your ordination recognized? How’d that go?” she asks.

When we first migrated to New England from North Carolina, I sat in front of a group of Baptist ministers from a tradition different than the one conferring my grassroots holy orders. They asked me why I thought I needed my ordination acknowledged by them. I told them I didn’t need it but thought it would be nice. When they asked me what I thought about why Jesus had to die to save humanity from God’s justifiable wrath, I paused before offhandedly saying, “I don’t. I don’t think about it one second because I don’t hold to a belief God would do such a horrible thing.” They weren’t surprised when I told them I didn’t see the Bible as being free of error. All parties left the meeting with smiles as empty as my grandmother’s cookie jar.

When they asked me what I thought about why Jesus had to die to save humanity from God’s justifiable wrath, I paused before saying, “I don’t. I don’t think about it one second because I don’t hold to a belief God would do such a horrible thing.”

Lauren nods. Before leaving the room, she says, “You secretly enjoy doing stuff like that.”

Why Will? I’m starting to believe we search for similar voices and seek pens that inspire us to use our own. Brother Will’s hands push my pencil and help me awkwardly pound on a keyboard. His life reminds me of why I don’t want a perfectly curated faith and why I’ll never be what many think a minister is supposed to be. He lets me know I’m not alone.

“Do all Baptists think like you?” The question comes from the choir director at my church. He’s young, passionate about music, and highly talented. I tell him what I think about a literal hell existing and why I don’t think any of us are going to end up there, because God’s scandalous love will not allow it.

“Do all Baptists think like you?”

“No, not all Baptists think like me,” I say.

Just some of them.

Preaching Politics During an Election Year

Everywhere, there are signs. Signs in yards. Signs on faces.

Slogans plastered on hats. Flags are rippling in the wind.

A menagerie of memes is flooding social media feeds.

There is no escaping the buffet of bumper stickers bombarding my front windshield view whenever I go out. For some, I have to squint to read at stoplights. Others are so oversized I can see them from far away. Some read,

“We the People…have had enough!”
“I’ve Got Your Six” appears on top of a battle-tattered US flag.
“J6 Was An Inside Job” under the image of the Capitol Building.
“Don’t Believe The Liberal Media.”
“Don’t Tread On Trump,” printed in the infamous Gadsden coiled rattlesnake style.

An assortment of these and similar stickers can be found on vehicles with gas mileage ranging in the single digits, with oversized tires costing as much as rent.

Opposite the chest-pounding patriot mobiles, you have hybrids and EVs covered in enough decals to make a college freshman’s Hydra Flask water bottle blush. Along with the classic “Visualize Whirled Peas” I have seen,

“Stay Angry, Stay Woke.”
“Science Is Real.”
“Jesus Was A Liberal”
“Is That True Or Did You Hear It On Fox News?”

And finally, a rattlesnake shaped like a uterus pinned on a rainbow background with the words, “Don’t Tread On Me.”

Many may believe the drivers of these vehicles live in different times and worlds, their paths crossing only in philosophical theory or abstract math equations.

Let me burst your naive ruminating bubble. Because, as a pastor, I know either vehicle could be found next to each other in almost any church parking lot.

Navigating the polarization of these Divided States of America at any time is a challenge to ministers and faith leaders. However, during an election year, the air in a sanctuary gets as thin as a Colorado mountain range. Those sitting in pews are in a heightened, if not altered, state of political awareness.

This is why, if given the choice, I would rather go a few rounds with 57-year-old Mike Tyson than tiptoe through the next 11 months. I am sure my kidneys probably wouldn’t function properly after the former, but the latter promises to push my stress and anxiety levels to the breaking point. At least with Iron Mike, I know it’ll be over quickly.

Why the cause for alarm, this tightening in my chest?

On an individual level, I have this sick sense of familiarity, like I have done this before. I am in a horrific pipe dream, one that’s been going on for the last four years, has a bend and is a vicious circle. The ride isn’t ending; it is just starting over. 

This is on top of the depressing realization of being asked again to choose between emotionally detached political parties, one offering a candidate collecting indictments and allegations like they are McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, and the other, a cookie-cutter politician whose best quality is what he isn’t.

Ah, democracy. Or what’s left of it.

As a minister, I get a new bag of issues to sort through, beginning with the false presumption that, somehow, my pastoral credentials strip me of my freedom of conscience.

There is the unspoken expectation for a parson to stand before a congregation as an agreeable fixture, a reverend of reassurance, a trouble-free captain, not a boat rocker. An untouched and, better yet, unopinionated presence to the happenings of a world on fire.

Think of me as a holy hall monitor—positioned to fail while trying to ensure everyone plays nice together for an hour on Sunday.

I am sure this projection can be found and felt in many faith communities. Still, my experience has shown it burns white hot in White churches where comfort is prized, and a policy resembling the United States military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is preferred when it comes to anything considered politically divisive.

Blame it on sanctimony, guilt or just plain exhaustion. The institutional church has become synonymous with a place where difficult conversations go to die, where complacent peace is preferred to offset declining numbers.

There are exceptions to this rule. I know of churches and congregants who actively look, if not downright anticipate their ministers to address the numerous injustices caused by donkeys and elephants. War, death penalties and mass incarceration of minority groups continue to occur no matter who sits behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

How will clergy navigate the space between the pulpit and the ballot box?

Say too much, and people leave.

Say too little, and the other half will follow.

It’s a Kobayashi Maru to try to keep the steeple upright.

Clergy will have to decide how they will choose to lose an unwinnable situation.

While I don’t look forward to it, I will do what I’ve always done when accused of preaching politics—I politely remind my accusers as long as legislation negatively impacts the lives of people, most often the least of these, I will continue to rail against the empire and Caesar of my day—especially during an election year.

Even if it means making those around me squirm.

Me included.

Faith and passion for food in holy synergy: a review of “The Just Kitchen”

Episcopal priest and agitator of all things holy, Barbara Brown Taylor, once wrote, “Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”[i] I can testify to her ponderings.

I’ve cracked a shin, suffered a hockey-worthy hip check, and pinched several fingers on one such altar resting in the parsonage kitchen – a massive rolling tool cabinet.

My spouse and I picked up the hefty addition for the extra countertop and storage space in our first home in North Carolina. Lugging it around ever since, our industrial stand mixer, food processor, and other kitchen gadgets have either filled its drawers or sat upon its sleek wooden top.

When we landed in Connecticut, we petitioned a few extra sets of hands to help us squeeze it through the hallways and doors. Its wheels came to a halt right below a salvaged pot rack where a collection of Le Creuset and cast iron hangs with an admiration usually reserved for works found in the Louvre. Wrapping around the cookware, a dozen nails hold the vintage copper Jello molds, filling in the little wall space we have left.

Some might say it’s a lot to take in.

And I haven’t even mentioned the books yet.

A growing number of them have found a home on the top of the cabinet. Works range from well-known chefs turned authors to spiral-bound church cookbooks with dog-eared pages. All are lined up in no particular order.

I like to tell people it’s a living altar, meaning it changes, growing in its meaning and complexity. New pots, pans, and books become part of it regularly.

The Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection, and Celebration is the latest offering that’s made its way onto our family’s sanctum sanctorum. Its authors, Derrick Weston and Anna Woofenden, have created something original. The Just Kitchen isn’t really a cookbook, nor is it a call-to-action collection of essays urging the reader to join the Slow Food Movement or tackle broken food systems head-on (although all these are good ideas to come away with). Instead, Weston and Woofenden ask the reader to plant themselves in a kitchen, suggesting one’s time there is transformative. “What we discovered and what we share here,” Weston and Woofenden write, “is that our kitchens hold a lot more than food.”

The Just Kitchen isn’t really a cookbook, nor is it a call-to-action collection of essays urging the reader to join the Slow Food Movement or tackle broken food systems head-on (although all these are good ideas to come away with). Instead, the authors ask the reader to plant themselves in a kitchen, suggesting one’s time there is transformative.

While Weston and Woofenden act as co-chefs de cuisine, they invite various voices to join them. Co-conspirators and would-be sous chefs appear in each concept-driven chapter. Many of them have had a prior relationship with the authors through their Food and Faith podcast.

Folks like Nikki Cooley of the Diné (Navajo) Nation. Cooley shares her upbringing on a reservation and how her grandmothers taught her to cook over an open fire, making fry bread, in what she calls the cha cha, a small shack house. Author and podcaster Bruce Reyes-Chow describes his kitchen as sanctuary – a space that allows him to unwind and create.

The Rev. Emily Scott inspires in describing her dinner church, St. Lydia’s Kitchen in Brooklyn, New York, an experimental community that is “working together to dispel isolation, reconnect neighbors, and subvert the status quo.” Yours truly even makes a gracious appearance, preaching the gospel of biscuits and suggesting the kitchen is where people can taste memories.

Insights and personal stories from Weston and Woofenden are peppered throughout, guiding readers through their still-evolving views of kitchens. A reoccurring question appears often, asking contributors what gives them hope. Some of the responses are worthy of being tucked away in a recipe book for a cold and rainy day. And while I said The Just Kitchen isn’t really a cookbook, it has a helping of recipes ranging from red beans and rice to berengena guisada (stewed eggplant).

Finally, there is a liturgy at the end of every section. Weston and Woofenden are open about blending their faith and passion for food but don’t see this as a limitation to The Just Kitchen. “At times in this book, we use specifically Christian language, but we do so to illustrate truths we believe are universal.” The liturgies are one such example. Working more like inclusive invocations, I could see many of them being substituted as a blessing over a dinner table or escaping the lips of someone eating a cold piece of chicken in front of an open fridge, alone after a challenging workday.

It has been a few weeks since I worked my way through The Just Kitchen. I’m done reading it, but I’m not finished with it, and that’s why I placed it on the rolling cabinet. Be it my faith or Weston’s cherry bourbon recipe, I want that which nurtures and gives me life close at hand. Indulging in this liquid philosopher’s stone late one night, I leaned against my kitchen counter and soaked in the altar I’ve built and am still building. Squinting, I can just make out some of the names etched on book spines. Brock, Twitty, Lundy, and now, Weston and Woofenden. Along with Scott, Reyes-Chow, and Cooley, they are fellow workers and kindred spirits – every last one an altar builder in their own way.

I take a sip and mumble a prayer, the core of which counts myself lucky to be among them.