Monday, November 3, 2008
"Las Vegas?!?! Why in the world Las Vegas?"
"Las Vegas?!?! Why in the world Las Vegas?"
Wonderful question, amazing question actually. A question I am still asking myself.
But the answer goes back a few years to around 2002, the year I discovered the online ministry xxxchurch.com. Incidentally it was their first year of life. They started out as a completely outside the box ministry dedicated to spreading the simple message that "Porn is a bad thing but Jesus loves you" and their goal was to spread that message in as unconventional as possible, trying to add a bit of humor to an otherwise awkward and at the best of times a disturbing topic.
As the years grew so did the ministry, they started traveling to porn conventions around the world and setting up booths inside of them handing out Bibles and tshirts with the words "Jesus loves porn stars" and began to build relationships with those in the industry. Eventually this led them to setting up a fund to help the actors and producers get out of an industry that for most people becomes inescapable because of debt, drugs and no one wanting to help them get out.
Flash foward a few years into early 2009. xxxchurch will be setting up the first church on the actual Las Vegas strip itself, wedged in between casinos, strip clubs, bars and whatever else is there. The closest churches are a few miles away, tucked safely into the suburbs. This going to be their first actual church plant where they will be having daily services and setting up outreaches to the area targeting things such as business conventions, offering support for those visiting the city and are afraid they may fall into temptation and of course they will be reaching out into the depth of darkness to those who are being trodden down by the world and told they are worthless and have no future.
Where do I fit into all of this? I mean, it's not like I actually have a hidden past of being a ex-porn producer or something but the burden on my mind that doesn't let me sleep at night is that there are so many people shunned by church as a whole. How many of us actually go to churches that would welcome prostitutes, AIDS victims, porn stars, people openly homosexual, people who lost their entire lives to porn, people that grew up being sexually molested and have no idea what a normal and healthy relationship, those who molested those kids and those still shaking violently from coming off their last high? How many churches would actually risk getting the blood on their carpet and having their lives 'stained' by accident, simply because they came into contact with these 'undesirables'?
I don't say this to simply provoke feelings of pity because the last thing these people need is pity. They need justice, they need the love of Jesus to help them sort out their hellish lives so that they might actually be able to leave the past behind. Pity by itself is useless. They need emphatic compassion, the kind Jesus would show if he was here in person. He would walk up to these 'lesser ones' and hug them and tell them he loves them and that even before creation and he spoke them into existence he was madly in love with them and just wanted them to be his and for them to love him back.
It is this 'furiously passionate love' of Christ that they need and what we so often just neglect and at times forget completely. It's easy to develop a callous heart and an apathy to those that it hurts to look at it from out mid ranged level suburban prison we look ourselves in to keep the bad people out.
Everyone has different gifts and callings for different people and places and one of the few things I know for certain is that I'm being called to go and live in the darkest places to try and actually make a difference. I have only been sure of a handful of things in my life:
-Jesus loving me and calling me to be his
-Jesus telling me to get off my lazy butt and go tell others about him as a life and occupation
-Jesus telling me to go to the University of Mobile
-Jesus telling me to go to the loveless and love them
-And from what I can tell he told me to apply for an internship with xxxchurch
It is moments like these that life makes the most sense in but at the same time it scares me greatly because it means my life isn't mine and I'm simply on borrowed time. That everything physical is fleeting and the only way I'm going to be able to serve is by sacrificing every personal comfort and being willing to loose what I have.
This past year has been an incredibly frustrating one because although I did a semester of seminary it felt so cold and alien. It felt like I was slamming my head into this glass box and I was wanting to cry because I didn't fit. It's like everything except me was perfect and that I was the crazy one. And so after a semester I took a break and entered the work force migrating from one depressing sales job to the next, not sure what in the heck I was doing and why I was doing it.
"Work to eat and eat to work."
After a few months of this I started devolving excruciating stomach pain which resulted in the removal of my gallbladder in June and at least a dozen blood tests and another dozen assortment of x-rays, cat scans, endoscopies and many other things. Eventually I had another minor surgery where I had my bile and pancreatic ducts messed with and what would have been eventually a massive liver failure was averted in the nick of time but still, I am having problems with pain in just every day life and most of the time have no joy in eating food.
Throw in another stress factor of my family just being so wrapped up in their own problems (ie my step dad regressing back into alcoholism all gung ho style and trying to kill himself and me and my mom having to 'deal' with him and me and arguments, yelling, headaches, tears and just the insanity of it all was about enough to make me have another nervous break down all by itself) to really feel much sympathy for me. Thankfully I have had a close group of friends around here to support and encourage me and even though I don't know why this is all happening, it IS for some reason.
I feel like I am on the crux of something big. A large change that has been a long time in coming. I've never been the best at evangelism but I do know I have had times where God put me in places to talk to those who were downtrodden and even just being able to say "I'm sorry but I do care and Jesus does" is enough reason for me to go. Being able to share in peoples sorrows and pain and FEEL their pain with them is so draining...seeing peoples tears and feeling the knives being drive into their hearts will never become easy but it is a gift I have been given.
Just like any gift it has be used, the gift of love, the gift of faith and the gift of compassion. They have to be exercised like any talent and any muscle or they will become unable to function and die.
The natural desire we all have when we face pain is to run away and hide and to a lesser extent I've tried that for years. Who in their right mind wants to accept a calling where they know they are heading for a beautiful contradictory life of hardship and misery with the only reward being honest love? I mean, it sound ROMANTIC, don't get me wrong. That's one reason I love calling myself a "Freelance Minister", it sounds wicked awesome and makes people think I actually am something cool...but in reality it just means I just am not sure about aligning myself with any one particular denomination because really I don't care about the 'how' and 'why' as much as actually getting into the mess of life and doing something for once.
See? I'm running into another one of these crazy contradictions about myself. I want to serve and I don't want to serve, just like how I wish I could just get an IV of morphine pumping in my body 24/7 so I could be pain and stress free but at the same time I know it is PAIN that shapes us, that defines us, that makes us, that crafts us, that refines us and DEMANDS who we become.
I feel sort of like I'm crazy, of course anyone who knows Jesus knows that feeling, but despite the craziness there is this giddy excitement of psychotic horrific dread that my great uncle must have felt when he jumped out of a perfectly good landing ship and charged up the hellish Omaha beach on June 6th 1944.
It's paradoxical, this love and desire for love, being loved and still searching for that love but that is sort of what life is. Fitting together all of these little pieces and knowing that most of them won't fit but still trying, knowing that little we do matters in the long run but what matters is knowing we do the right thing for its own sake.
In a nut shell I think that is why. Partly because I feel called to do this, partly because I have to do this and partly because it is the right thing.
The most I can ask is prayer. I know how absolutely insane all of this sounds and I have no clue how, why or many details but I feel this is something I need to throw my life into.
Thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing.
Wonderful question, amazing question actually. A question I am still asking myself.
But the answer goes back a few years to around 2002, the year I discovered the online ministry xxxchurch.com. Incidentally it was their first year of life. They started out as a completely outside the box ministry dedicated to spreading the simple message that "Porn is a bad thing but Jesus loves you" and their goal was to spread that message in as unconventional as possible, trying to add a bit of humor to an otherwise awkward and at the best of times a disturbing topic.
As the years grew so did the ministry, they started traveling to porn conventions around the world and setting up booths inside of them handing out Bibles and tshirts with the words "Jesus loves porn stars" and began to build relationships with those in the industry. Eventually this led them to setting up a fund to help the actors and producers get out of an industry that for most people becomes inescapable because of debt, drugs and no one wanting to help them get out.
Flash foward a few years into early 2009. xxxchurch will be setting up the first church on the actual Las Vegas strip itself, wedged in between casinos, strip clubs, bars and whatever else is there. The closest churches are a few miles away, tucked safely into the suburbs. This going to be their first actual church plant where they will be having daily services and setting up outreaches to the area targeting things such as business conventions, offering support for those visiting the city and are afraid they may fall into temptation and of course they will be reaching out into the depth of darkness to those who are being trodden down by the world and told they are worthless and have no future.
Where do I fit into all of this? I mean, it's not like I actually have a hidden past of being a ex-porn producer or something but the burden on my mind that doesn't let me sleep at night is that there are so many people shunned by church as a whole. How many of us actually go to churches that would welcome prostitutes, AIDS victims, porn stars, people openly homosexual, people who lost their entire lives to porn, people that grew up being sexually molested and have no idea what a normal and healthy relationship, those who molested those kids and those still shaking violently from coming off their last high? How many churches would actually risk getting the blood on their carpet and having their lives 'stained' by accident, simply because they came into contact with these 'undesirables'?
I don't say this to simply provoke feelings of pity because the last thing these people need is pity. They need justice, they need the love of Jesus to help them sort out their hellish lives so that they might actually be able to leave the past behind. Pity by itself is useless. They need emphatic compassion, the kind Jesus would show if he was here in person. He would walk up to these 'lesser ones' and hug them and tell them he loves them and that even before creation and he spoke them into existence he was madly in love with them and just wanted them to be his and for them to love him back.
It is this 'furiously passionate love' of Christ that they need and what we so often just neglect and at times forget completely. It's easy to develop a callous heart and an apathy to those that it hurts to look at it from out mid ranged level suburban prison we look ourselves in to keep the bad people out.
Everyone has different gifts and callings for different people and places and one of the few things I know for certain is that I'm being called to go and live in the darkest places to try and actually make a difference. I have only been sure of a handful of things in my life:
-Jesus loving me and calling me to be his
-Jesus telling me to get off my lazy butt and go tell others about him as a life and occupation
-Jesus telling me to go to the University of Mobile
-Jesus telling me to go to the loveless and love them
-And from what I can tell he told me to apply for an internship with xxxchurch
It is moments like these that life makes the most sense in but at the same time it scares me greatly because it means my life isn't mine and I'm simply on borrowed time. That everything physical is fleeting and the only way I'm going to be able to serve is by sacrificing every personal comfort and being willing to loose what I have.
This past year has been an incredibly frustrating one because although I did a semester of seminary it felt so cold and alien. It felt like I was slamming my head into this glass box and I was wanting to cry because I didn't fit. It's like everything except me was perfect and that I was the crazy one. And so after a semester I took a break and entered the work force migrating from one depressing sales job to the next, not sure what in the heck I was doing and why I was doing it.
"Work to eat and eat to work."
After a few months of this I started devolving excruciating stomach pain which resulted in the removal of my gallbladder in June and at least a dozen blood tests and another dozen assortment of x-rays, cat scans, endoscopies and many other things. Eventually I had another minor surgery where I had my bile and pancreatic ducts messed with and what would have been eventually a massive liver failure was averted in the nick of time but still, I am having problems with pain in just every day life and most of the time have no joy in eating food.
Throw in another stress factor of my family just being so wrapped up in their own problems (ie my step dad regressing back into alcoholism all gung ho style and trying to kill himself and me and my mom having to 'deal' with him and me and arguments, yelling, headaches, tears and just the insanity of it all was about enough to make me have another nervous break down all by itself) to really feel much sympathy for me. Thankfully I have had a close group of friends around here to support and encourage me and even though I don't know why this is all happening, it IS for some reason.
I feel like I am on the crux of something big. A large change that has been a long time in coming. I've never been the best at evangelism but I do know I have had times where God put me in places to talk to those who were downtrodden and even just being able to say "I'm sorry but I do care and Jesus does" is enough reason for me to go. Being able to share in peoples sorrows and pain and FEEL their pain with them is so draining...seeing peoples tears and feeling the knives being drive into their hearts will never become easy but it is a gift I have been given.
Just like any gift it has be used, the gift of love, the gift of faith and the gift of compassion. They have to be exercised like any talent and any muscle or they will become unable to function and die.
The natural desire we all have when we face pain is to run away and hide and to a lesser extent I've tried that for years. Who in their right mind wants to accept a calling where they know they are heading for a beautiful contradictory life of hardship and misery with the only reward being honest love? I mean, it sound ROMANTIC, don't get me wrong. That's one reason I love calling myself a "Freelance Minister", it sounds wicked awesome and makes people think I actually am something cool...but in reality it just means I just am not sure about aligning myself with any one particular denomination because really I don't care about the 'how' and 'why' as much as actually getting into the mess of life and doing something for once.
See? I'm running into another one of these crazy contradictions about myself. I want to serve and I don't want to serve, just like how I wish I could just get an IV of morphine pumping in my body 24/7 so I could be pain and stress free but at the same time I know it is PAIN that shapes us, that defines us, that makes us, that crafts us, that refines us and DEMANDS who we become.
I feel sort of like I'm crazy, of course anyone who knows Jesus knows that feeling, but despite the craziness there is this giddy excitement of psychotic horrific dread that my great uncle must have felt when he jumped out of a perfectly good landing ship and charged up the hellish Omaha beach on June 6th 1944.
It's paradoxical, this love and desire for love, being loved and still searching for that love but that is sort of what life is. Fitting together all of these little pieces and knowing that most of them won't fit but still trying, knowing that little we do matters in the long run but what matters is knowing we do the right thing for its own sake.
In a nut shell I think that is why. Partly because I feel called to do this, partly because I have to do this and partly because it is the right thing.
The most I can ask is prayer. I know how absolutely insane all of this sounds and I have no clue how, why or many details but I feel this is something I need to throw my life into.
Thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing.
Beginnings
The amazing thing about creation of any kind is starting with the raw materials and after long hours of joyful yet frustrating work you start to get something that is at least passable for art. After deleting or setting it on fire you start again with a renewed passion and create something else subpar. After a few more tires and countless hours of self loathing you just throw something against the wall and accidentally create a masterpiece.
NANOWRIMO is like that, except with the fastfoward button held down.
The amazing thing about creation of any kind is starting with the raw materials and after long hours of joyful yet frustrating work you start to get something that is at least passable for art. After deleting or setting it on fire you start again with a renewed passion and create something else subpar. After a few more tires and countless hours of self loathing you just throw something against the wall and accidentally create a masterpiece.
NANOWRIMO is like that, except with the fastfoward button held down.
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