Stryder the Poet

“Jesus doesn’t slam you either for your doubts, your fears, your uncertainties. He wants to encourage you in your current assignment.” – Reggie McNeal in The Present Future

 

I prayed to God, asking Him to use me in some way with some one, right now.

 

A little desperate? Maybe. I wanted so much to matter to someone Saturday night. Someone that I didn’t necessarily know, but loved still. I wanted to find a searcher, someone looking for an explanation for things. Someone longing, but confused. Someone open, but honest. Someone hurt, not just angry. Someone looking for that “something” that I am constantly looking for. Someone like me.

 

I was on my way up to my office to put the finishing touches on the 30^th sermon of my current assignment…preaching to the Southwest Church of Christ in Amarillo, TX…when my deep desire to be Jesus to one climbed up over my desire to preach well to 850.

 

So I went into Starbucks with my Brennan Manning book and my desperate request of God to use me, bought some Tazo Chai Tea and sat next to a dude with a book (in one of those comfy chairs) who was asleep. He woke up shortly, asked me what time it was, initiating a 4-hour long conversation that took us from the book he was reading that explained how a reptilian race was controlling the earth’s events and manipulating us (he was a searcher, looking for an explanation to things), into deeper, grander, more transcendent questions that brought some clarity to his thoughts (he was longing, but confused), into my specific challenges of his worldview as compared to mine (he was open, but honest), into his past upbringing as a missionary kid in Thailand who was shipped off to boarding school by his dad who abused him while quoting scripture (he was hurting, not just angry), and finally into the deep wellspring of the righteousness, joy, and peace of being a genuine follower of Jesus Christ.

 

He was a poet, and jotted one down for me to take home to my wife (“I like to make sure women know they are beautiful”, he said), and quoted another long one from memory that explained his current position in life. It included a phrase about the “poison from the pulpit” that he is so afraid of and been hurt by, primarily through is dad. As our time ended, and the coffee I had bought for him had run out, and I did need to go spend some time on that sermon, I prepared for the blow as I told him I was a preacher…

 

“For like the whole church?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” I responded.

 

“How many people?” he asked, not so that he can measure how “successful” I might be, but to get his mind around this sweatshirt-clad, “holey”-jeaned, tennis-shoe wearing dude with spiky, bleached hair and what I might mean by the word “preacher”.

 

“850 or so” I told him.

 

“How old are you?” was his next question, and he only felt a little at ease when I told him 36. It was strangely sweet and satisfying to see his mind being blown up a little bit. It was like the judgments of this 33 year old man concerning the people of God were being challenged, that maybe he can reconsider a world view that he had to dismiss in the past because of it’s representatives.

 

I invited him to services the next morning, and even though he looked longingly into the distance, confronting everything that means to him, and said, “I haven’t been to church in a loooooong time,” he said he would come. He didn’t, but I woke up Sunday thinking about him being there. David (he likes the nick-name, Stryder), the searching but confused, open but honest, hurt but not angry man I had prayed to meet might be joining my faith community to worship the Father and become more like the Son.

 

The next morning, I was in some nice pants, a white oxford, and a sweater walking through the back of the sanctuary when I passed a brother who’s only words to me since I have arrived to preach to his community of faith have reflected anger, judgment, and legalism. I summoned whatever kindness and forgiveness that I could muster, smiled and shook his hand with a warm greeting, to which he responded by clasping my hand firmly, pulling me close with authority, and saying “young man, where’s your suit.” I looked into his eyes and sure enough, he was serious. I responded with a somewhat sarcastic remark about not owning one, pulled from his grip, and went on.

 

I know those people exist, but this time, I wanted to cry. I prayed that Stryder wouldn’t show up and meet him. I had told Stryder about the 800 or so people I worship with that would accept him, love him, and include him with little effort, but that there might be about 50 or so that are just like what he thinks they are…focused on rules, not him; focused on image, not hearts; focused on superficial expressions of devotions, not actual devotion.

 

But I also told Stryder that if he didn’t love those folks, too, then he becomes just like them. He understood deeply…said it would take time for him to do it, but that he totally gets that he needs to.

 

He might beat me to it.