Brammer Extravaganza America Tour: Home again…
I’m asked ‘Where are you from’ almost every time I meet someone, and without fail, I’m never quite sure how to answer. This is usually because I’m not sure what ‘from’ they are referring to. Is it the place we just came from? Where I grew up? Where I called home before? Where I call home now? There are different answers for all of these questions, so I usually end up giving a recap of the past 5 years after a ‘I grew up in Arkansas and lived there until I was 22’ preface. That story almost always is greeted with another questions that requires more explanation then the first, and another story ensues. The question is usually ‘Why where you in (fill in the blank)’ or ‘What where you doing in (fill in the blank, again)’. It’s exhausting. I think I can safely deduce that if every time I meet someone new that they ask these questions, they are good questions whose answers do tell a good story. At the least, they keep asking, I keep answering, and they keep listening. I think I can also assume that those who know us well have some of the same questions or ones similar. Let me take a few minutes to answer.
I’m from another world. I was born in Arkansas, but I never really felt like I was from there. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Razorbacks and yes, I love catfish. My family is there, and I have great memories of that place. I love to visit. I miss my family terribly, but I got out of there as soon as I came to the conclusion that my heart didn’t belong there. At 15, I moved out of my mom’s house and started living with my dad. That lasted about a year, then I kinda lived with my Nana and Pa. (that’s Arkansas for grandparents). By the time I was 17, I really didn’t live anywhere, but kinda lived everywhere. I had clothes in my dad’s home, my aunt and uncle’s (who I love dearly), and a bed at my grandparents. I didn’t spend more than 2 nights in a row anywhere. My heart was restless.
I went to college and majored in stupidity with a minor in debauchery. Apparently, It only takes about a semester and a half to get your degree in stupidity, and I had to leave college. It only took me about 180 days to burn every meaningful relationship I had with both my friends and family, and I decided to work for a few months, save money, and leave. Good thing I had my friend Josh Lindsey, my cousin Dustin Glover, and my Nana and Pa. Dustin always took me as I was without and pretention or agenda. Nana and Pa always took me for my best and believed in what goodness I had, ignoring the bad. Josh saw me for what I could be and believed in something greater for me. He invited me to Church. I turned him down until I learned that they had free pizza on Wednesday nights. I love Pizza. That night, the guest speaker was a French missionary to Nigeria named Bella Eid (remember, I’m from AR so that my not be spelled correctly). This missionary had been on a 40 day fast and could barely stand. He spoke of a God who was alive, active, and doing miracles for small villages in Nigeria. What was most impressive was how evident it was that this God lived in this missionary’s heart and had power. That was the God I had been searching for.
I joined that Church, was baptized, and within a month I was on a 15 passenger van to Colorado. My heart never came back. I was working as a concrete finisher in AR for two years before I figured it out. I had left part of my soul in the mountains and I had to get back. On Labor day of 06, I told my mom I was going to go to CO for a while. She said ‘Ok… How long will you be gone.’ I said, ‘I don’t know. At least a year’. ‘Ok… When do you leave’. ‘Friday’… Go ahead and imagine the blank stairs. It was awesome. Uncle Ricky gave me a $200 check, and my family let me go.
One year turned into six, and over that time, I had been to thirty states on 10 different tours with the organization I was interning/working for. Traveling exposed me to things I wouldn’t have ever been able to experience otherwise. The cure for simple-minded thinking and bigotry is the medicine of broad cultural exposure. It first occurred that my home (AR) wasn’t my home on my first long-term visit back. My uncle had asked me ‘What? Are you gay now?’, and most of my friends couldn’t understand my love for the prayer meeting and local church. I’m guessing the gay commit came because I wasn’t wearing Wranglers and Doc Martins. I think it was the Empyre soft shell and the Volcom Belt… or maybe the DC slippers. They were like neon blue. They looked like a Duran Duran music video threw up a pair of shoes on the set of Bill and Ted’s (the second one). This notion I’m sure was still at worst entertained until I finally brought Mandy home.
Mandy was my new girl friend. She was an intern at the same program that I had interned with and was at the time volunteering. We meet in the fall and started dating in the winter. We weren’t able to make it back to AR for the holiday’s but did plan on visiting in the early spring. Mandy was everything I was waiting for in a wife. She had a vibrant personality, an edge of boldness, and clarity of unashamed and raw emotional drive that was distractingly attractive to me. I knew fairly quickly that I wanted to pursue her and hoped that we would one day get married. We had been dating for a few weeks when the director of the program we were both involved with brought me into his office. Desperation had recently acquired the youth ministry and New Life Church, and during the transition, some of the residual staff decided to not be retained. This left some gaps in the pastoral coverage, and Dan, my best friend, old roommate, and director of the internship had convinced his brother, David, the director of Desperation, to hire me as an interim JH director. I didn’t have pastoral credentials at the time and was in the process of completing associates in Radio and Television Broadcasting.
I took the job. I wanted to fill the role and had been serving in a similar capacity for some time. I felt that I might as well be paid for it. Mandy took the news rather well, but was concerned. When she started dating me, I was a broke student living in what was the equivalent of the church’s basement. Now she was dating a semi-pastor who had a fairly secure career and future. This was a hard pill to swallow because Mandy had told herself and God that she would never be a ‘Pastor’s wife’. I will let her tell that story, but for as far as this one is concerned, I will say that she wasn’t totally convinced on how this transition would work, nor could she see how my tenure as church staff would come to turn out.
That tenure came to an abrupt halt after our first year of marriage. I loved my job, and we loved our church. We could handle were the expectations and pressures of full-time ministry and young married life. We couldn’t fill the roles well and maintain a proper heart position. Before long, we were both frustrated and bitter. We decided that it would be better for us to apply our talents and efforts in the market place professionally and separate our ‘work’ from our ‘ministry’. I had said that I would never work for a Church again.
We intended to move to Iowa to potentially start a camp for abused animals and at risk teens. We had a vision to pioneer a equine therapy based camp with some land that potentially could have been ours. In the mean time we planned on moving Arkansas to be close to family while those details were worked out. To be honest, we weren’t sure where we would end up or how it would work itself out, but we knew that it would be an adventure. Staying in AR was tricky because we were sure it would be permanent; however, we were committed to be all in while we were there. This was not a vacation for us, but an assignment… one we failed miserably. We were living in a trailer in my grandparent’s back yard, which was like a cross between a KOA and a Jeff Foxworthy joke (which I wouldn’t change for the world. I love my heritage) One day, I came into the trailer with my bride of one year on her knees sobbing in agony. I asked ‘Schneka, what’s wrong?’. She replied ‘I have no were to put my things’. Every drawer and cubby in the place was filled with random stuff from the former occupants and she was having a panic attack over it. That’s when I knew that I was riding a cart loaded with dynamite, and the chance for our marriage’s survival would not be in Arkansas.
We left for a convention in Washington, DC after being in AR for about 40 days. While we were there, my brother in law, Doug, asked us to move to Portland to live in his basement. I was in a tight spot and felt that my only option was to take up the offer. We had dinner on the Potomac before we left. The following Saturday, we would be having breakfast on the Columbia. We passed through Arkansas to collect our belongings out of the trailer, and had a similar conversation that had happened 7 years prior. “Mom, we are going to Portland”. “Ok” Mom said, “How long will you be gone’. “I’m not sure. Probably a while’. “Ok… When do you leave”. “Tonight…” Imagine the blank stairs. One would think that my family would be used to this type of behavior by this point.
Once in Portland, the real struggle began. It was easy. No challenges, no obstacles, and no job. We were working from home with a home based business that had proven to be both successful and effective, both in it’s product and it’s business model for us. I never thought I would be a ‘one of those’ work from home guys, but this business was the real deal. We actually offered a product and service that did require actually skills out side of scalping our family and friends and filling a garage up with surplus product. It was something we could believe in. That’s when the vacation began. We kinda coasted into the next few months, but then the inevitable happened.
Mandy was putting on some crazy weight, and as a health coach, that can really hurt your business. She also was being extremely emotional, and had a strange uncontrollable raging desire for Fro-Yo and pickle juice. After 2 months in my brother’s basement, we discovered that we were 13 weeks pregnant and did even know it. It was our first kid, and Mandy wasn’t really that ‘regular’. We were operating under the impression that some of the plumbing was faulty and would require medical intervention for this to even be a possibility. God had effectively pressed the panic button for us and blessed us with our first-born, Lauralai.
I got a job immediately… Vacation over. I started work at this little retail soap shop called Lush. This was the first environment I had ever been in were I was the minority. I was still a white male, but I was the only straight, evangelical, married, white male in the shop, and quite possible the entire company. Once my peers learned that I was ‘an Church person’, my perspective on what it meant to be a Christian was challenged and changed irrevocably. I expected my peers to assume I was a bible thumping, closed minded bigot and to be hated for it. They assumed that I would see them as hated-by-God queers and pagans, and that I would judge the for it. We were both wrong. I loved the team I worked with. They were the nicest, most accepting sub-cultural group I had even known. Truly misfits that found their fit in each other’s beautiful disaster who were quick to accept me as part of there little world to spite or differences. This characteristic is something the Church has lost and would do well to remember that the people Jesus kicked it with were fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, scribes, lawyers, businessmen, and sinners who were in desperate need of a physician, not a judgmental teacher who did nothing to bring hope or comfort. Those had plenty of that dose from the religious piety of that time. I loved those friends, and did my best to resonate the love of Christ to them. He who was forgiven much had much to learn about how to love much. That lesson consisted of tolerance, listening, and the courage to help and encourage those who needed it most. The bummer was that I didn’t have great insurance options, and I had a baby on the way. That’s when a good friend from my church approached me about working with them.
I had meet Tracy Glen and a small group we were both involved with. I helped teach a few classed in the absence of our sponsor. The sponsor later asked us to be the college pastors for our campus. We couldn’t help but to accept. It started with the café. We both were trained baristas, so we helped there first. Because we had ministry experience, the next transition to lead small groups was natural. It was a progression we were compelled to follow. Even though we didn’t want to work for a church, we couldn’t help but to find ourselves serving the Church. This commitment to the local Church body provided for us the opportunities to help us be everything God had wanted us to be. We were in the perfect spot to grow and mature. The process was hard.
Working with Tracy was at IBM was one of the more challenging parts of the process. I was completely unqualified to work there, but was given the chance because of the relationships I built at church. What I realized when I got there, that even though was I wasn’t’ qualified, I was more than capable to be one of the top producers. I learned that my life experience and everything I had been through for the past decade was an education for something greater. I also learned that sitting at a desk in a toxic work environment with high-pressure expectations would be the fatal to my soul. Within one year of working at IBM, I was diagnosed with a panic disorder and a heart arrhythmia. Everyday at work was a nightmare, not knowing when the next attack would come and if it would send me to the hospital. The only place of solace was I the church, serving. Our heart was changing and we were maturing. No longer did I see serving the Church as a role to be filled, but a calling to walk in. The Lord was giving us ideas and vision that we couldn’t possible walk into without working for a Church full-time. For eight months we focused on preparing ourselves for full time ministry by working for our youth pastor. When we first approached him, we asked to do anything. He gave us the freedom to do what ever we wanted. We started producing our service and building service teams. This was our training for the next season.
We started getting calls for old friends who we knew from our days at New Life Church. We were being asked about volunteer positions as college pastors, associate youth pastors, and church admins. My response was always that we were content as volunteers at our current local church. I didn’t take any offer to seriously until we began to interview for an associate youth pastor position in San Antonio. I genuinely believed that this was the role we had been waiting for. The interview process was smooth, and we enjoyed the church on our visit. I was sure we would get an offer. We didn’t. I was never sure what the miss was, but we were now sure that pastoring youth was not just a role we wanted to fill, but a calling we were called to.
So that brings me full circle. I started in ministry as a young, raw, recent convert with no clue, became an fiery intern with blunt edges, then a full time church staff, to a bitter, burnt out quitter. Broken and tired, the Lord took us on a journey to be reshaped and molded into who we are today; A young couple full of vision with a passion to serve the local church and who have been called to ministry. For the past 10 years, I’ve done what ever was necessary vocationally to provide for my needs and allow for ministry. It’s taken me that long to figure out that ministry has been my vocation the whole time, and the work was simply means to a greater end.
This past January, we received a call from our former pastor who gave us the number of a pastor in Castle Rock, CO at Castle Rock Bible Church. We contacted Pastor Mark and began the next and really final leg of the Brammer Extravaganza America Tour, BEAT for short. This leg would be the last phase of our nomadic journey to home. We are finally here and now know what home means. Home is sure of who you are supposed to be, not only where you are supposed to be. Once that’s figured out, you can stat spelling Home with a capital.
splanchna (σπλάγχνα) 