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MINISTRY
riverside
These are words I have chosen to believe.
While harshly critical of religion in general, and the Black Church in specific, these are truths I have chosen to embrace. Not blindly, or by rote or virtue of family tradition, but by examination, trial and perseverance. At times in spite of my intellect and against my nature, I find meaning, comfort, purpose and fulfillment in the scriptures, which I believe to be God's Holy Word, and by which I am empowered to reach beyond my earthbound state and commune with something on a higher plane of awareness and existence.
 I choose to call that God, and I choose to believe in His Son, Jesus Christ. Faith, in the final analysis, is a choice. A choice to become something greater than what you already are, and to recognize the greatness within yourself. The absence of some expression of spirituality implies a bleak existence, our entire lives summed up as a collection of breaths and heartbeats. I believe it's important for us to decide who God is and pursue some manner of connection. Without it, we're only half of what we could be.
boys and girls
The Black Church's Tragic Failure To
Safeguard Our Future
Sex is, frequently, the very
last thing discussed in church. Teaching is
left to secular venues, which is an
abdication of the church's responsibility. A
secular education yields a secular view of
these matters. Youth ministry is, likely,
the most important and often the most
neglected ministry in the church. Like music
ministry, it needs to be performed by
someone who is anointed to do it. Too often,
in our church tradition, vital and important
tasks are simply staffed out to whomever
looks right
for the job. Youth curriculum often assumes
the cooperation of parents who are often
contentious and difficult people to work
with. Pastors who ignore youth ministry are
criminally responsible for the continuing
erosion of the African American family.
God and music
Giving Jesus
The Business
There's traditionally been a
kind of musical separation between church
and state. Christians weren’t supposed to be
concerned with politics or injustice. Many
Gospel musicians refer to their careers as
“ministries,” but the reality is they're in
a business, and a cutthroat one at that.
Once you start putting a price tag on
anything, it becomes a less pure expression.
When and if Gospel music becomes more than
just a way to make a buck off of church
folk, I’m sure I’ll get more excited about
it.
lawnmower men
The Crisis of Leadership in the Black Church
Pastoring is a specialized
calling ordained by God. Nowadays, we throw
that word, “pastor,” around much too easily
and simply. But the proof, and the
condemnation, of these men lies in the
effectiveness of their respective ministries
and the effectiveness or lack thereof of the
black church collective. A healthy and
productive spiritual life needs more than
just belief. We need truth. Belief without
truth is just foolishness.
bad company
 For
the entirety of its existence, the black church has relied on a
largely oral tradition that, to this day, eschews paperwork:
memos, business plans, contracts. We do it all on a handshake
because that's how we've always done it. But, then, six months
later, we're arguing because everybody's memory of the specific
game plan is different. I've been to countless high-level meetings
in black churches where nobody took down even a single word of the
meeting, and where no follow-up memorandum, summarizing the
meeting and what we agreed to do, was ever drawn up. The fact is,
a great many leaders in our community lean on the old handshake
rule because they can't type. Literally; that's the main reason
many old school church leaders and department heads perpetuate the
old school handshake method is they, literally, can't type.
Writing, therefore, becomes a torture for them because they've
grown up in a world where typing was something women did, or was
viewed as an optional skill. These days, everybody types. Many of
our leaders today are ashamed or embarrassed that they can't type
and so dismiss the notion of paperwork in a folksy, "Aww, it don't
take all that." This is what we do: rather than admit our
insecurities or our shortcomings, we go on the attack. We demonize
and villainize whatever it is that we can't do, whatever makes us
feel insecure, making a virtue of our cowardice. And this mindset
continues to stunt church growth to this day. Because we don't
read, paper— memos, proposals, and yes, phone messages— flutter
around the ministry offices or are left abandoned in departmental
mailboxes. Most churches I know have these 1960's-style hanging
files for each department. These file boxes are typically
overflowing, mostly with junk mail and solicitations and
magazines. But, somewhere amid the stuff you don't need is
something you do. These churches are, typically, dead letter
offices where no paper is moving and where leadership is difficult
to reach unless you get in your car and drive down to the church
and lie in wait for them. God cannot possibly be pleased or
magnified by these people, as they tend to impede God's work and
tend to set a bad example for God and for your ministry.
READ
ESSAY
the circle broken
 I
have seen, in my black experience, great and frequent ruptures of
familial and community bonds over typically minor and meaningless
disagreements. People who have been friends for years and even
decades who now no longer speak to one another. It's as though,
with each successive generation, we've lost patience with one
another. The two basic problems seem to me to be: (a) we're very
thin skinned. (b) we're very insecure. These are two things a
Christian should never be. A real Christian, who has truly
embraced Christ, should be secure enough in him or herself to not
be intimidated or frightened by people who are different from
themselves. Insecurity mitigates the fruit of the Spirit
(Ephesians 5), depriving us of our patience, as our fear of losing
ourselves to some other thought or agenda drives us to
aggressively (and, often, irrationally) pursue or defend some goal
or purpose to the exclusion of our brothers or sisters. Our Way or
The Highway. I find it curious that, in my Christian experience
(and speaking in unscientific statistical terms), the black
Christian community is often the demographic least like Christ. We
are so very quick to anger. We are so thin-skinned that we can't
take anything. We are vengeful and we hold grudges unto death. We
over-dress for church (the new trend in white Christianity being
polo shirts and khakis, with cappuccino machines in the lobby),
wear too much cologne, too many jewels, and go to great lengths
and expense to have a shiny new car at all costs. We look down our
nose at people who have less than we do. We experience a rush of
exuberant gratification just knowing our expensive car and
expensive clothes sets us above our lessors in the congregation.
READ
ESSAY
kiss the cook
 In
26 years of ministry, it's been my experience that there's always
been some amount of friction between musicians and the churches
they serve. Musicians are a special breed of people, with a
special purpose and calling [2 Chronicles 5]. They are utterly
unlike any people you know (unless they are also musicians). They
don't think the way regular folk do. They don't have the same
interests or appetites regular folks do. Musicians will, likely,
not want to come to your cookout but will drive from here to
eternity to hear (or better play with) other musicians. When a
musician is in the church, sitting in the congregation, he or she
is, on some level, desiring to be playing. It's inbred. It's what
we do. The most basic advice I can offer you for dealing with
these people is for you to come to terms with the fact They Are
Not You. Just accept the notion that you will, likely, never
understand their perspective on things. That they have their own
unique view of the world, and the church they go to is not the
same church you go to because their view of the world is just that
different. To be fair, and no offense to anybody, musicians tend
to be more practical and better informed than a lot of lay people
and even ministers. Musicians know Where To Put The Flower Vase.
Seriously, if you're not sure Where To Put The Flower Vase, ask a
musician. They know. Musicians tend to see the world through the
eyes of, well, a musician. They tend to see things in 16 bars with
a turnaround, and attend to practical matters of the church in a
less emotionally-driven way than non-musicians, who see much of
what goes on in the church in the context of a larger tradition
and in the fuzzy warmth of childhood memories of This Is How We've
Always Done It.
READ
ESSAY
the
unexpected god
 There's this preacher I know who spontaneously comes up with these extraordinary truths. Wonderful ideas and precepts that you just want to run and write down because they have so much meaning for and bearing upon your life. One day he was praying and he was thanking God for doing unexpected things with unexpected people. Unexpected people. Yes. That's about right. Too often, in Our Church Thing, we marginalize people and pigeonhole people and ignore the greater good— the enormous wealth of possibility, anointing and purpose— we all, as fellow strugglers in this humanity, present. Voices silenced and hands stilled by the Elks Club mentality of routine over purpose. The church, you see, should never have a routine, but should always have a purpose. The two are rarely congruent and almost never interchangeable. In routine we find comfort and reassurance in the structure of ritual. In purpose we find the anxiety of the unknown and the reward of the unexpected. The unexpected gifts of unexpected people.
READ
ESSAY
table
for one
 Over the years I have learned I am not like most human beings in that my need for humanity and human contact is not nearly so great as my need for peace in my life and for being understood and respected. I have learned to enjoy my own company. To enjoy resting my voice for days and sometimes weeks on end. I like me. It's taken years, even decades, to undo the terrible damage inflicted by a childhood of emotional abuse, a Hebrew stranded in Babylon, surrounded by other kids who had no clue about me or my purpose or why I was so different. I am a loner. I've always been a loner. That's the problem. I've spent a lifetime apologizing for and making excuses for the fact that I am different. In my nightstand by my bed there are two major documents, Thomas A.
Kempis'
The Imitation of Christ, and an old Newsweek review of Marcelle Clements'
The Improvised Woman, which deals mainly with women facing a crisis of singleness.
Clements
writes, "At some point there came [a] very perplexing
realization: I was fine." And I am. There's nothing wrong
with me. I don't need fixing. I don't need stalking. In large
measure, I require only your kindest thoughts, your prayers, and
your honest attempt to understand I'm a guy who just is who he is:
a loner. Comfortable in his own skin and with the sound of his
own voice. Now,
here's the scary part: chances are, you're just fine, too.
But you may not realize it. And maybe you're spending way too much
time and way too much money and, frankly, way too much of
yourself
trying to find someone or something to externally validate you.
breakfast
in sodom
 It's difficult for me to talk about Riverside without getting ticked off. I think my current rage at the backwards, head-in-the-sand sensibilities of the black church has its roots in my experience with this, a youth-oriented community choir I organized in 1996. A large group of teens aged sixteen to early twenties, Riverside had a kind of Sounds of Blackness R&B feel, and we sounded more like Prince than Kirk Franklin. Within six months, we became the outlaw choir of the town, shunned and opposed— sometimes loudly but usually in cowardly telephone fashion— by most every major black church here in the Springs. I became blacklisted after a fashion as some ersatz pied piper leading decent church kids astray, one pastor admitting to me he feared I was going to open my own church and lure his sizeable youth congregation. The whole thing, the whispering campaign against a group of kids who never bothered anybody, was so capricious, so virulently anti-Christian and antichrist, that the experience cemented a certain odd man out (if not quite pariah) status for me here in town, and my contempt for the men involved is not something I'm very good at hiding.
sunday
at the elks
 Our Christian response
to our disenchanted youth has been, for the most part, to take a nap. To jam into churches on
Sunday and holler and sweat and then rush down to Furs Family Dining to
while away the afternoon congratulating ourselves and comparing
gregarious hats. For many young people God is an, at
best, abstract concept. The endless programs of the church have little and often nothing whatsoever to do with young
people, and nothing to appeal to them; the Black church in particular functioning much more like a
Buffalo Lodge or Elks Club than an actual house of worship for all
people. The older people run the
church because the younger people don't have any money. I spend a great
deal of time helping my pastor run their church. It's their
church. It's not mine. It probably won't ever be mine because it
is not designed to be mine. It's not a church. It's The royal Order of
The Buffalo Lodge No. 23. We may as well all wear shiner's hats because that's
how the politics work there. A friend made the
observation that we'd landed in a retirement village, as out of place at
the church as Kramer was in Del Boca Vista. These are nice, swell
people, but this is their church, and they have absolutely no
interest and no motivation for materially extending themselves to other
voices and ideas. The bigger and better the show, the more packed the house,
the higher the gauge of success. But it's a counterfeit win.
These are counterfeit gains. These are gains in body count over the dead
souls of young people who anyone can see have emotionally disconnected
from the goings-on.
new
witness
 I was scared to death of
them. A half-dozen or so gawky teenagers, most of whom had literally ignored me for the year and a half I'd been visiting my friend Pastor Donald A. Frazier at Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church of Fountain, CO. I really had not noticed them much more than they had noticed me. Yet, here we were, sitting in the same room, staring at each other. Wondering if this was going to work. I believe I made some brief inroads with them when, in the middle of my Lou Gossett Officer & A Gentleman rant,
"Putcha toes on the white
liiiine, you slimy worms!" I told them we'd eventually be doing fund raisers for the youth department, so the kids could go on ski trips or excursions to the amusement parks or, I dunno, buy themselves a big bag of weed— whatever kids do these days. Instant connection.
Youth Coordinator Mildred Hayes, who had worked with me on my Riverside project some time before, once told me youth ministry is a lot like extending your hand to a child to help her walk, or to stand up after a fall. Only, with teenagers, you have to reach for them through a meat grinder.
he
came back
 There
won't be any parking at our church this Sunday. Late arrivals will
discover both a long walk and a long wait to get into the building.
There may not be room enough for the overflow of people. And, yes, it
will be hot. Very hot. Hot enough to discourage most thinking people
from wearing their Sunday Best for fear of ruining it with perspiration.
The service will be long and likely emotional. There will be extra
activities and extra songs and extra speeches and extra extras. Then
there will be families cooking and families traveling and families
cleaning up and all of that hugging. For many, it will be a long, long
day, a labor of love, one that will leave a great many of our extended
family famished and exhausted by the day's end. And most everyone will
be broke, having spent the farm on new clothes. This is, traditionally,
the meaning of Easter Sunday, a day in search of a better name. Some
churches call it Resurrection Sunday to better distance themselves from
the word "Easter"'s pagan origins. But, while the word
"Easter" conjures up images of bunnies and colorful eggs, the
word "resurrection" invokes the gloom of an empty tomb and the
desperation of women crushed by the apparent desecration of a cherished
loved one, only to find comfort in the Good News that, although they'd
come seeking the dead, there was no dead to be found.
the
king and i
 I
know nothing and less than nothing about Textual Criticism, Manuscript
Tradition, Hermeneutics or Orthogonal Deductive Reasoning. The truth is,
I can barely program my VCR. I am the absolute last guy you should be
taking pastoral instruction from. My intent here is to (a) get us to at
least think about these issues, and (b) get things off my chest. Mostly
(b). This essay barely scratches the surface of a subject so complex it
requires volumes of writing and years of study. The study of Biblical
Errancy, Historical Theology and Textual Criticism is one scholars
devote entire lifetimes to. I am frequently accosted by zealous
Christians, more often than not from the black Church, over the
relevance and authority of the Authorized King James Version of the
Bible. I have been admonished about reading other translations (such as
the wonderful New International Version) or paraphrases (such as The
Book or The Living Bible) in official church functions. The poetically
cryptic language of the 17th century translation is the only voice of
any authority within most black churches, and a great many of our
parishioners— especially the elders—
do not even accept scripture read from another translation, and will
often ask to have it re-read in the "real" bible, the King
James. For me, God's Word is Holy in any language and in any
translation. In spite of the many problems that arise upon any
reasonable study of how this Bible came to be, I prefer to keep my eye
on the ball: the essence, purpose, and meaning of God's Word, the intent
of the authors in preserving and defending it, and it's value to us as
children of God.
go
to hell
 I am not God. I never pretended to be God, I never wanted to be God. I lack the qualifications and credentials it takes to be God. Never went to God Academy, no advanced degrees in Master Of All Creation. Flunked the whole parting the Red Sea thing. And I can't even clean my house in seven days, let alone create a planet. So, I'm not God. And you should be happy about that. For, if I were, in fact, God, there's a whole bunch of you I'd send straight to hell. Chiefly for this reason, I'd make a lousy cult leader. Actually, I don't have the hair for it. Your typical cult leader has fabulous hair.
The comforting simplicity of the Christian myth of Good People Go To Heaven, Bad People Go To Hell, does not address
any of hundreds of problems any reasonable study of theology would present. The myth, embellished by our human logic and human desire for swift and reasonable conclusions to such matters, applies standards of morality and reasonable conduct to a God who is beyond either. A God who chose, for reasons we may never understand, to breathe life into creations who would inevitably rebel against Him, requiring an unthinkable sacrificial gesture to reconcile creation and creator. Today's amusement brings to me the question of hell, and going thereto, sense and nonsense about eternal damnation.
the
good that i don't
 The choice to do good, or do right, or simply do what God has asked you to do, is never an easy one. The status quo is the most powerful current of thought within most any religious organization, as is the prescient state of mind and state of affairs of most any social organization. New and different ideas are, more often than not, viewed with fear and suspicion, and those who raise their hands and raise the question or idea end up on a mental hit list of rabble rousers and trouble makers. The greatest temptation we as Christians, as humans, face is to do nothing at all. The Good I Don't Do. We become extremely reluctant to step in when we see other things done at the church inefficiently. For every good thing I do, now there are ten that I don't. And, The Good That I Do is weighed against how important it really is, overall, to the church versus how much hell I am sure to catch for doing it. All of which makes me wonder how much other good is not being done, how many other people have thrown their hands up and said, "Not worth the hell." This is, of course, a largely human response, a vitiation of our Christian duty is to do good. Just Do It. If you see something that needs doing, Just Do It. Give the guy a buck, whether he's a wino or an angel. Install The Flashy Thing and defend it until the nice old folk grow accustomed to it.
why
it's important
 I've been confronted with people searching for the truth. Searching for answers. Looking for me to say or do something— I dunno, stand on my head— to finally flip the switch in their mind enough for them to believe. These are people who want to believe. People with money and cars and friends and careers who are still missing... something in their lives. The God-shaped hole, the
insatiable desire and unquenchable thirst. But, these folks are often tripped up by the nagging doubt fueled by a reasonable intelligence and healthy skepticism, especially of Christianity and the bible. More than any other religion in the history of the world, Christianity has more often been exploited, perverted, misinterpreted, often for terrible things and usually in the pursuit of money, fame or power. Religion has done more damage to Christianity than anything else. Despite what may once have been noble and wonderful motives, Christians have made it nearly impossible for anyone to believe in Christ. Religion is, in essence, mankind's search for God. Faith implies a relationship with God. The expression of that faith, of that relationship, can be organized into a religion, but the religion in and of itself does not necessarily constitute faith.
a
time to dance
 The
band modulated through this full-throttle kaleidoscopic assault of Prince
licks (all over the place) and hyper grooves melding into clever reversals
and triads and thrilling beyond description breathless coaster loops of
thick, beefsteak funk sliced up with Ella jazz improvisation and Mahalia
country preacher Hammond B3 pads. In the eye of the tornado was Kim
Burrell, a young thirtysomething church gal who probably should have been
into the more ladylike Yolanda Adams or Cece Winans, stalking the stage in
full command of the chaos. These were her songs. These were her
arrangements. The notion of the church policing social behavior is a
ridiculous and antiquated one. If a Christian does not truly know Christ,
he or she has greater worries than Burrell's music. Keeping Christians in
pens, in small cells of mind-controlled social stasis, is the laziest
expression of ministry. Ministry is about meeting the physical, emotional
and spiritual needs of people. Ministry is about connecting people to
God¾ not policing behavior or thought. Of course, doing the mind control
thing is perhaps easier than doing our real jobs; helping someone get to
know God in a real way is much harder than getting them a haircut and
dictating patterns of behavior.
a
dangerous unselfishness
 Today,
most of my fellow parishioners are going about their lives. I will be
going about my life. Sunday, there was not one word mentioned about Martin
Luther King or the powerful Gospel he gave his life for. A man who died
for the stupid drunks screaming at the barbecue. For the nice, smart, Big
Hat people who yawn at his legacy. Who perished for people who idolized
him but never quite understood him. In similar fashion to another man two
millennia before. People like this, all over this nation, have completely
misunderstood Jesus' ministry. Jesus never preached The Gospel Of Nothing.
The Gospel of Big and Colorful Hats. These same people, nice people, smart
people, have gone all over the country naming streets and avenues after
MLK. But Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is, typically, in the worst area
of town. The black area, the run-down area. The dangerous road. Missing
the point altogether: MLK Blvd should be in a white neighborhood, on a
nice street. An integrated street. A street of hope for what we, as a
people, as Americans, could and should become. But, alas, we can't even
get that right. Next Sunday, it will be business as usual. Lots of
singing, lots of celebration, lots of big, colorful hats. A few more steps
on the road to nowhere.
who
we are
 Your
average six year-old has no idea how to negotiate a 30-year variable-rate
mortgage. Nor should he. He's six. His biggest challenge should be
matching socks. The scope of our adult's vision is far wider than your
average six year-old's. That's why we adults are charged with seeing to
the welfare of the children. By the time we're 30 we've carved out a
functional diagram of Who We Are, and we've
settled into it. Of course, the scope of God's vision is far wider
than your average 30 year-old's. There are things He wants to show us.
Things He wants us to know. But, we're not six. We're thirty, and nobody's
going to grab us by the collar and drag us into doing what we don't want
to do....
priorities
 We
need to know what's important and what is right. That means ministry
first. That means connect with the kids, listen to the kids, be there for
the kids, don't judge the kids, don't betray the kids and maybe, just
maybe, they'll someday let their guard down enough to actually let Jesus
truly reign in their lives. Priorities. That means playing street corners
rather than choir contests. That means setting aside religious dogma and
Church Folkspeak in favor of plain, direct talk. Priorities: be willing to
extend yourself and your personal likes and dislikes in favor of getting
the job done...
the
gospel of impotence
 They
could become doctors or welfare queens. Although we doubt many nine
year-olds dream of becoming impoverished unwed mothers, a great many end
up becoming exactly that. Welfare Queen is a career path. It is not an
inevitability. It takes the same skill and initiative for a kid to pursue
Welfare Queen, Junkie, Hoodlum, Lowlife, or Inmate as it does for
them to pursue Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer or Rocket Scientist. It's really a
simple matter of values. Of deciding what is and what isn't desirable and
essential...
if
i had a flame thrower
 All
my life I've seen people incredibly busy doing absolutely nothing.
Practicing ushering drills, rehearsing ceaselessly, traveling, working
well into the night. Putting on programs. This Day and That Day. Frying
chicken while ten year-olds are squeezing off the first rounds of an
adolescent murder career and some girl barely into her teens is laying
down in her mother's bed (or. just as often, the church basement) for some
housing projects Don Juan who's ensorcelled her with affection she's not
getting anywhere else.
the
next angel
 I
once met an angel on Madison Avenue. She didn't look like an angel. She
didn't sound like one. She had no wings, only a grubby old coat and
matted, thinning gray hair. But she was an angel, appearing in an
unexpected place and an unexpected way. She irritated me. She smelled bad.
And my first concern wasn't what I could learn from her but moving on down
the street to continue my walk unharrassed. I didn't even realize this
person was an angel until she vanished, leaving me standing in the snow on
Madison Avenue at 2AM, quaking in the realization I had failed to accept
and realize this divine vision. She'd come to challenge me, to help me be
a better man, a better soul than I am now. And then, just like that,
she was gone.
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