Sawdust

The smell of sawdust greets my 9-year-old nostrils as I jump into the back seat of my Dad’s silver Ford Ranger truck, and dust flies into the air creating intricately beautiful patterns in the sunlight as I land on the blue pleather seat. I move over to the seat situated behind the driver and wait for my little brother to make his awkward tip-toe entrance into the seat across from me. His bright blonde head shines white in the sun and snot is running down his face as he sits down. We both buckle up tight and wait anxiously. We’re going fishing.

My dad comes from around the back of the truck after loading the tackle-box and the fishing poles. My fishing pole is blue and it has Mickey-Mouse on it.

“Ready to catch some fish boys?” My Dad asks with a grin that makes his blonde mustache crooked. I’ve only seen my Dad without his mustache two times. He looks weird without it. He turned the keys in the ignition and the cassette player came to life. This was one of my favorite things about riding in the truck with my Dad.


Drum-beats reached my ears followed quickly afterward by magnificent guitar riffs in a beautiful harmony and rhythm that my young heart had already engraved upon itself. I didn’t really know what the songs meant, but the voice of that singer blew me away. I looked over at my little brother who was 4 years younger than me and realized that he too already knew these songs by heart. The singer came on and my Father’s gaze caught mine as our blue eyes locked on one another’s and we both sang in perfect timing, yet off-key “Just a city boy! Born and raised in South Detroit…took the Midnight Train goin’ anyyyywheeeere!!!!”

I’m older now and moved out of my parent’s house, my little brother is 18 and he lives in Phoenix for mechanic school, both my parents have gained weird little habits that show that they’re falling into the roles that age demands, and things have changed. I’m no longer a little boy with a blue Mickey-Mouse pole, my little brother is taller than me and thinks he owns the world, and my Dad’s mustache is now gray rather than blonde, but this summer we’re going fishing. I guarantee that as soon as I jump into the back-seat of my Dad’s truck, the saw-dust will fly, the sun will dance, and we’ll crank up Journey and all three of us will be taken back to a time in the past where nothing but the music and our love of each other will remain.

Wanted: Dead or Alive

I’ve decided that I want to be…hardcore. At the beginning of the month I moved up to Lone Tree Ranch and my new roommate is someone that I consider to be hardcore. In fact when kids come to camp I tell everyone that Shane, my roommate, is half Chuck Norris…whom we all know to be hardcore. Chuck Norris is so fast that he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.
Anyways; I once witnessed Shane walk out of a dust-devil wearing chaps, spurs, a cowboy hat, and a duster. The man can fly airplanes. He is pretty hardcore.

In my pursuits of being hardcore I have done the following things:
1.) I bought $90 hiking shoes. (being hardcore is expensive)
2.) We found mountain lion tracks near our house.
3.) I ran the Screamer (a 40 foot tall swing) at night. In January. In the snow.
4.) I’ve cleaned 100 toilets in 2 weeks. (Gross? Yes. Hardcore? Definitely)
5.) I’ve run from the Worship Building to my house. Without a flashlight. (Its dark out here….and if you count hardcore option #2, that makes doing anything in the dark hardcore.)

So…maybe I’m not that hardcore yet…actually not at all…but I’m going to take it to the next level. We don’t have a group here this weekend…and so we get the weekend off…and in that weekend off Shane and I have decided to travel to Tombstone…A.K.A. “The town too tough to die.”
I can see it now: I’m going to roll up there in my truck…the Ranger…that’s hardcore right?…and spit. Because that’s what you do when you’re hardcore. I will then go to the closest saloon and order milk…on the rocks. Whole milk. None of that sissy stuff. I’ll then start a bar fight. After that I’ll walk out of the saloon…leaving overturned tables and the like in the background…the dust settling behind me will silhouette my manly frame in the doorway. Then the sheriff will enter. He’ll simply look at me…tip his hat and then hurry on his way. The sheriff is a smart man…he wishes to keep his life.
After that I’ll mosey to the steal horse across the street…a loaded 6-string on my back. And I will ride into the sunset…wanted…dead or alive.

That won’t happen. But I can dream can’t I?

Secret Talent

I've never had a blog before. Mainly because I'm not sure if anyone will care to hear what I have to say...to be honest I can't say that I've really followed anyone else on a blog...but I figure why not? But what to say? I have always thought that I'm not that interesting...who knows. Anyways, I figured the best first blog may be my testimony. So...here it is:

I used to think I had a boring life. I grew up hearing about Jesus and knowing that if I wanted to go to heaven I needed him in my heart. Thinking back to when I was about 7 years old I imagined that inside my chest there was a red valentine’s heart with a door and that Jesus stood literally knocking on it. I often wondered how a man could live inside my chest. I almost thought he was like a genie in a lamp; vapor and smoke or something.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school several years later that I took more time to think about the decision to accept Christ and what it meant. I had accepted him when I was a young boy in “big” church at the age of 7 to be sure, but at that time the full realization of what that decision meant hadn’t settled in. I learned from my youth pastor that Jesus had died on a cross to save me. He told me that when Christ died that day that he took sin with him to the grave, and then he rose back to life, he left sin where it belonged, and if only I would turn away from my sin that I too could live again after death. I knew what sin was. It was that thing that made me feel slimy inside even when I got away with whatever it was I’d done wrong. It was what my conscience told me was wrong. My conscience, I have since realized, was Christ the entire time. Gently prodding me away from sin and towards his holiness.
This is why I used to think my life, my testimony, was boring; I was always a good boy. I didn’t mess up. I didn’t cheat on tests, I couldn’t imagine skipping class, alcohol was bad, and even if I could’ve ‘wooed’ a girl back then I knew sex was something reserved for marriage. In fact, through high school, my reputation was the kind that I didn’t get invited to parties. Not because I didn’t have friends, but only because they knew my stance on the issue.
I didn’t do anything bad, so my life wasn’t interesting in that respect. As for my testimony…well I’d always been a good boy, and I’d accepted Christ when I was 7. I didn’t fall into drugs or alcohol only to have a radically life changing experience through Christ. I didn’t lose my entire family in a fire or get in a car accident and get miraculously spared. I didn’t live in China and the chances of having to die for Jesus were minimal. I thought my life was boring so I decided to do something about it.
I knew that God had designed life to be exciting. I knew it was something to be enjoyed and wrung out to the very last succulent drop. I decided that I wanted to do something in service for Christ. My middle school youth group used to go to a Christian camp for winter retreats and I had heard that it was open in the summertime. I had discovered not too long before this that I was good with kids. My second year of college I decided to apply. I got hired after sending in my application to Lone Tree Bible Ranch.
God radically transformed me that summer. He worked in me in such a way that I will never be the same, and I thank him every chance I get (which is quite often). I’ve never been good at anything in particular. I’ve been mediocre at best at most things, and when I went to Lone Tree that summer God unlocked my hidden talents, and it turns out that chief among those talents is being ridiculous with mid-high students. I was able to uphold the camp’s tagline “High adventure, higher purpose,” with flying colors. I’ve since returned for two more summers to work.
Besides God unlocking my ‘secret’ talents at Lone Tree, he has shown me many other things; Chiefly what a servant’s heart is, how incredible it is that Christ came to serve us, and that I am going to be a youth pastor, and most likely a senior pastor someday.
Every morning at Lone Tree we clean every bathroom on the premises. Steve Dirks, the camp director, elder of a church in Roswell, NM, and amazing man of God, says every summer, “We are here to serve these kids. We want them to be comfortable. A dirty bathroom is never going to be a distraction to these kids when we want them to focus at worship each night. So clean that toilet!” It may seem strange, but the message is that we will do whatever it takes to present the Gospel message to those kids. And looking at what Christ did to minister to us, coming down from all the glory at his fingertips as the Author of Life, to a poor town in the middle-east to die on a cross, I’d say that the least I can do is clean some toilets for kids. The lesson I learned was clear: I will do anything within the power God gave me to serve and to teach and to preach the Gospel. Even if that means getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing a toilet while discussing ninjas and Bible characters with a 7th grade boy hyped up on Skittles.
This past summer I finally realized I am supposed to be a youth pastor. I knew after my first summer of Lone Tree that I would work with kids, and the following year I got a job at a middle-school as an Educational Assistant. I really thought that God was calling me to teach. However, this summer, every youth pastor that brought his youth group through the gates and into Lone Tree would ask me if I was going to be a youth pastor. At first my answers were something like, “I’ve thought about it. I don’t know.” But after week 11 of camp and after pastor 11 asked me when I was starting my ministry, my answer was, “I’m applying to seminary as soon as I get out of here.”
So I've done it. I'm in seminary...I'm also working full-time at Lone Tree. I really feel like God is rocking my face off. Two of my favorite things in one place at one time. I'm excited to see where my secret talents take me...God is Good.