LIDE Unpublished Book Pt. 2
Disclaimer: Over a decade ago, I spent a year writing a book about the church I was co-pastoring with my ex-wife (Life in Deep Ellum). I had a ton of fun writing it, but also found that over time things kept evolving - both my views and our circumstances. I always mourned that my work never saw the light of day. Until now! I’ve decided to share snippets of it. Two disclaimers: 1) I am speaking only for myself and not for the organization that I’m no longer affiliated with, and 2) I don’t actually believe some of the things I wrote back then anymore. So please read it with those two factors in mind. Hope you enjoy!
Below is some of the first chapter. I trimmed it down for this blog.
STARTING POINT
Dirty: We Call Them Friends
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town”
~ Leo Tolstoy
--------------------------------------
What upcoming Christian leader doesn’t fantasize about being famous? Consider the advent of the celebrity-pastor. We all know it’s not healthy, but we can’t help it. We read their book. We’re blessed by their book. We adapt a sermon or staff training day from their book. Yet, we’re also secretly jealous of their book. “Why couldn’t I have written that,” we think. An image of our name in bold Helvetica font with New York Times Best Seller written underneath flashes through our imagination. We try to dismiss it. We’re unsuccessful.
We watch celebrity-pastor deliver another home run message at the latest fancy conference. Their stories are incredible. Their church is incredible. Their white teeth are incredible. We intuitively know that Christian leaders all across the auditorium are being inspired. Yet, we also feel sad. Why? Because we want to be famous, too. And when compared to celebrity-pastor, we’re obviously a dismal failure.
But what if fame took on new meaning for us? Our desires for notoriety need overhauling. However, perhaps those desires don’t need to be obliterated, but redirected. This is a silly analogy, but I like it. You know how most American celebrities have short shelf lives? However, once they are quickly jaunted out of the spotlight, some of them figure out how to keep the ball rolling by “going international.”
“What ever happened to fill-in-the-blank-band?”
“Oh, they’re done. But I hear they’re big in Japan.”
I lived in the Philippines for six months in 2006, for some reason everywhere I went I’d hear American country music or 80’s pop. REO Speedwagon and Journey were karaoke favorites. When one of our taxi drivers learned I was American, he asked if I knew George Strait. Ummm...nope. It was insane. Somehow, these strictly American musicians found new life in a context beyond their origins. They were famous, just not in their native circles anymore.
I say all that to say this: what if Christians stopped caring about whether we were famous among Christians? What if we stepped outside our native circles and started developing PR strategies to build a positive reputation outside the church? Bottom line: we need to re-engineer our desires for fame and redirect them. Let’s stop caring about impressing other churches. Stop putting stock in your appeal to the Christian market. Learn to be content with other kinds of notoriety. What if, like Jesus, we were mostly popular among the irreligious and marginalized?
Jesus was a friend of sinners. We want to be big in Japan.
(… … …)
Several years ago, we had the staff together on a retreat discussing the next calendar year and establishing our mission and values. To get the team talking, I asked the question, “What do you want us to be remembered for? What do you want people to say about us 50 years from now?” People gave standard answers about our love and our compassion. But one of our staff members gave a rather unanticipated reply: “I know this sounds weird, I want people to say we were dirty.” It was Tanner, of course. Collectively, we scratched our heads and I invited him to expound. “You know, that our biggest critics would be other Christians...that the religious world would think we were too close to the wrong kinds of people.”
I thought I knew where Tanner was going so I added: “You mean like in a old-school battle, how people standing in the back rows are watching the skirmish on the front line and if they look close where the fighting is the fiercest, it’s hard to tell who’s fighting for who?” It struck a chord with us. We all nodded our heads as it sunk in. Yes! We want to be dirty! That is to say, we want to live so close to non-believers that Christians in the bubble sometimes wonder whose side we’re on.
Think about Jesus’ reputation among the religious. He was considered the friend of sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes. His teachings certainly were at odds with the government leaders of his day, but they weren’t who he chose to confront. His biggest disagreements and criticism came from fellow religious leaders. They didn’t like his rogue affiliation with outsiders. Therefore, try to give little concern to what other Christians think about our friends. So we regularly ask the question: are we in relationship with the people Jesus would want to hang out with if he came to visit our neighborhood?
(… … …)
Jesus has always been drawn to the marginalized. When we read the Gospels, there are many overlapping stories - especially in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But when we see unique stories in one of those Gospels, we are given a glimpse into the perspective of the author. For example, Matthew includes more references to the Old Testament than the other Gospel writers. This was likely because he was writing to a Jewish audience, and as someone who grew up in the Jewish faith, the Old Testament was vital for communicating the authenticity of Jesus’ messiahship. But what might be the personal interest of a Gentile author like Luke? Someone who did not grow up inside the club, but someone who found Jesus later in life and had to learn about all this Jewish stuff as an outsider. When we look at the unique stories and parables in Luke’s Gospel, we find:
The story of Zaccheus the tax collector
The parable of the Good Samaritan
The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican
The stories of Elizabeth’s birth, Mary’s song, the prophetess Anna, and the group of women who followed Jesus that likely funded his ministry
All of these passages are only found in Luke’s Gospel. See any pattern? Despised tax collectors, filthy Samaritans, and women who were seen as property in the 1st century. Luke emphasized the marginalized. He made sure to include stories of Jesus’ ministry to the downtrodden. Another group that Luke emphasized were the lepers. The unclean people.
In those days, people feared lepers like the media reacts to Ebola and the West Nile virus. But guess who touched lepers? Guess who reached into their prisons of rejection? Jesus did. Luke tells another amazing story in his Gospel. One time, a man covered with leprosy threw himself before Jesus and begged him to heal him. “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Imagine the setting. It’s probably fair to say the people standing around were appalled. How dare this man come near the Rabbi! Why bother asking for a miracle? God has obviously already judged him with this disease! And while everyone else was cringing back in disgust Jesus leaned in and he said, “I am willing.” He reached out and touched the man. He got dirty.
(… … …)
Gwyn is a homeless man that wanders the streets of Deep Ellum. As long as we’ve been here, Gwyn has been around. Personally, we’ve found that interacting with the transient homeless population is a complicated endeavor. Rachel and I both sit on neighborhood boards that promote economic development and one of the biggest obstacles our urban community has faced is aggressive panhandling. So our staff has had to figure out how to have boundaries with the homeless population while also giving dignity and showing compassion.
When it came to Gwyn, we decided to let him sleep on our stoop in the alley next to the dumpster. Every morning he comes into our coffee shop and sits for a little while. He respects our rules about panhandling and typically doesn’t smell so terrible that he drives away customers. He looks in his mid-50’s and is small in stature, but his scraggly beard and cataract eyes give him a hardened look. Still, he has become a fixture of our Cultural Center. The baristas all love him, our faith community worships alongside him, and even the cops who we hire during large building rentals know him by name.
For the longest time, we used to call him Quinn. This is because Gwyn’s garbled speech threw us off. Even when sober, accurately interpreting his mumbling and exaggerated gestures proves difficult. One day, Gwyn pulled out his birth certificate to show me. I’m guessing he had it ready to show police officers who regularly ask loiterers for identification. It was then that I realized his name was not, in fact, Quinn. It was Gwyn. I also learned he was born in Delaware. And according to my best interpretations, he was a Vietnam veteran and is 100% Native American. It sounds like he’s says “Blackfoot.” But seriously, who knows?
One day I was walking down our alleyway and saw Gwyn asleep on some cardboard next to our building. For whatever reason I was feeling sentimental, and it struck me that we may not have Gwyn with us much longer. It made me sad that we had developed this relationship with Gwyn but did not have anything to really show for it. So I began planning some way to commemorate him.
It started out as plans to shoot some simple video or photos of him on the street, but over time it evolved into something way bigger than imagined. What you need to know is that if Gwyn is sitting down, the odds are that he is probably drawing. His ever changing backpack will always contain markers and pens. He sits and draws on paper, or cardboard, or wood he finds. These sketches all look similar. The content is a simple design that he repeats over and over again in various colors and textures. Then, as people walk by, he gives them out as a sign of goodwill. Over the past 6 years, I accumulated hundreds of these drawings.
Then it hit me. We have an art gallery. Why not do an entire exhibit featuring the sketches of Gwyn? So I got to work. I contacted a photographer buddy of mine whose talents have gotten him into many reputable publications. I scheduled a time at his studio and drove Gwyn over there where my buddy took some of the most amazing photos of Gwyn. We blew them up and had them printed. Then I convinced several of our staff to help with framing about 50 drawings from my personal stock in small black frames. When we finally installed the exhibit, Gwyn happened to walk in.
I had been trying to prepare him for the exhibit because I didn’t want it to shock him. I had been telling him that we were going to display his artwork for sale and that we would do the typical gallery/artist split that we give to every artist. I didn’t want the show to be about pity. I wanted Gwyn to be seen as an artist, not a homeless man. Mostly, I just wanted the exhibit to tell his story.
The night of the closing reception, people from our faith community and the neighborhood gathered. We drank wine and one by one people bought Gwyn’s framed artwork and took it home to hang on their walls. It was a magical night. The following Monday, I gave Gwyn his first breakdown of cash. As we owed him nearly $500, I couldn’t just give that all to him at once. First of all, he didn’t have a bank account in which to keep it in. Secondly, he would surely get mugged carrying that around. So I gave him a couple $20’s and said every Monday I’ll give him smaller portions to make it last longer. His face broke into a fantastic smile as he grabbed my hand in a grasp of brotherhood. I’m pretty sure he said something like, “You and me, you and me.” But again, who really knows. I smiled feeling quite good about my St. Francis-like solidarity with the poor.
Later that same week, I was in my office when one of our baristas came back to say they were having issues with Gwyn. Sometimes, I am needed to get Gwyn to stop being loud or ask him to give the coffee shop a break from his particularly strong smell that day. This time it was because Gwyn was drinking straight vodka right by the register. He knew we didn’t allow that. So I went to talk to him.
Immediately, I knew something was wrong. He was drunker than I have ever seen him. He didn’t even recognize me. That’s probably why he grabbed my outstretched hand and violently squeezed my fingers. Geez, he had serious old man strength. I thought they were all going to snap in his grasp. I felt like shouting, “Mercy!” The situation instantly changed. A couple bystanders started to intervene, but I waved them away knowing they might only make him feel threatened. So I got down on his level and tried to talk to him. But every time I got close he started kicking at me and swinging fists. One time, his hand connected with my jaw.
So after 15 minutes of trying to convince him to leave, I resigned myself to the truth. I had to call the police. It was a hard thing to do, especially since this was right after the gallery exhibit. But I knew it was the right thing to do. They would take him to the drunk tank at their station and let him go the next day. He’s probably done it a hundred times. Unfortunately, a drunk homeless man isn’t high on the priority list of Dallas PD so it took them a solid 45 minutes to get there. I should have told them he was waving a machete. That might have got them there faster. Then what happened next might not have happened.
As we waited for the police to arrive, Gwyn decided to lay down on one of our benches, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to take the longest pee I have ever witnessed. Right in the middle of our coffee shop. That’s right. The man I just honored with a solo gallery exhibit had just assaulted me and was now trying to break the record for the largest puddle of urine created by a single human.
The next Monday, he was sitting in his usual spot in the coffee shop like nothing ever happened. But the problem was that something did happen. Things had to change after that. Even though Gwyn did not remember hitting me, he did act embarrassed when I explained that he had. We were forced to refortify our boundaries with him. Conversations were had. New rules explained. I still gave him his money, but it would be in even smaller portions and some of it would be given as gift cards to 7 Eleven. A few people felt I was being too harsh. Doesn’t compassion trump one incident? Should I not literally turn the other cheek...and perhaps kneel down to wash his urine stained feet? Others felt like we needed to be harsher. I shouldn’t give him money that he could easily turn into booze. Are we trying to enable his addiction? Honestly, it did cross my mind if we should ever let Gwyn back into our coffee shop. We did. We still do.
The point is that our relationship with Gwyn is messy. Walking away from it and solely engaging with easy-to-deal-with-types-of-folks feels safer. Safer. More efficient. Exactly what gains come to the Church by continually interacting with people who will likely never change? Hmm...good question. From some perspectives, perhaps none. No gains. But from a Kingdom perspective - the realization that Jesus announced a new economy of grace and forgiveness and compassion and justice - I think the gains might just be immeasurable. Incalculable, albeit messy, gains. When we accept people as they are we reflect Jesus. And when we reflect Jesus, little pieces of redemption leak into our world.