“In a turnaround church, blood will be shed, and the blood will be yours.”

Immortal words of Pastor Real, an omen of troubles yet to come. Right now, it’s time to partayyy!! We have freedom here, sweet, sweet freedom. Pastor Real is not only very creative, and innovative, and a compelling speaker, but he also has a hands-off approach to leadership and lets us experiment away… it’s a very free environment compared to the world of tight buns (on your head, silly) and carefully edited conversation of our past experience. Without restriction, we are kids in a musical candy shop, and that music is becoming incredible. We write new songs. We use unique instrumentation and voicings. We add drama and visual arts. We do all kinds of shit we were never allowed to do. And miraculously, the door to secular music is open again. We regret the UPC led destruction of our cassettes and CDs. I reorder my Steely Dan collection immediately. The recordings, ha. (Like one person got that joke. Yeah, it was bad. Sue me.)

Yeah, about that devil music. In the UPC, we had attended a viewing of Hell’s Bells, a “shocking expose” about the evils of secular music. I remember being taught Hotel California was about the Church of Satan, I would get sooo creeped out hearing it on the radio…hey guess what? It has nothing to do with Anton LaVey at all. Fake news. Hotel California is about the evils of fame, a disturbingly accurate portrayal of not being able to return to anonymity once you’re living in the fishbowl. You can check out, but yep, you can’t really leave. I perform the song today, but it always makes me smirk thinking about how wrong I was. And that’s just one tiiiiny example. I was wrong about a lot of things. Probably still am.

Pastor Real encourages us to rediscover our secular music pursuits, how can you have any influence in people’s lives if you’re cloistered in the church?

DH joins a big band, and I at freaking last start singing jazz, my first love and what I had wanted to do in the first place. My premier gig coming out of secular shutdown is with a combo at an outdoor wedding, the weather is perfect and it’s amazing to have one of my dreams returned to me. When you see me perform and I’m throwing down like it’s the last time I will be ever be able to sing, it’s because at one time, I thought it was.

Pastor Real comes to one of DH’s gigs with us and buys me my first glass of wine in ten years. It is alien, but delicious. I’m a criminal. Get the cuffs, she’s guilty of Cabernet. Such debauchery.

The stricter church folk are less than thrilled that we are both playing “worldly” music. Uh oh. Pastor Real knows our hearts and doesn’t care, and understands playing in the professional world only serves to make our worship music even better. The team is expanding, and getting pretty freaking amazing. We have great times of fellowship (for some reason, this is the archaic term used when referring to social events in the church. The church just loves ancient words like narthex and vestibule. Hey church, no one knows what the hell you’re talking about.) and food (though Pastor Real, a pro chef, HATES potlucks. I agree, do you really want that lukewarm pot loaded with dried out overcooked pasta, tuna and peas? And why peas?? Always the peas. There must be a Pea Council. Ugh.)

We almost immediately have growing pains.

Remember those folks who came over from the strict Baptist church? Many were founding members of this church, 17 years before we arrived on the scene. Pastor Real changed the direction and effectively breathed new life into it just a few years ago, which is why it’s referred to as a turnaround church. Some of these founders are supportive, some were until their sacred cows got ground to sausage, but some have been a thorn in Pastor Real’s side since he arrived, and became our chronic headache as well. From here on, I will refer to this stricter segment, the ones who challenge us at every turn because we’re not biblical, or doctrinal, or modest, or whatever enough for them, as the Churchies. I don’t worry what they think of my writing, they would never make it past the cuss word in my chapter title.

Anyway, the Churchies aren’t so happy about all of this irritating growth and annoying new people with piercings that may not be in their ears and clothing that didn’t come from the Modesty Emporium.

This is why turnaround is so difficult, there will ALWAYS be those who want things the way they “used to be”. Churchies will say they want change, they really don’t. They say they want their church to grow, they really don’t. Change requires letting go of things they will never release from their tightly closed religious fists, and growing requires accepting outsiders who don’t look, sound, act, or smell like you. They might even bring in cardinal sins like smoking in the parking lot or wearing a string tank. Oh, the humanity!

Oh my God the conversations: “Well, when Pastor ____ was here, we did it like this.” or “When ____ was leading worship, the songs were so anointed.”

I have grown to hate the term anointed. It has a blanket use as proof that whatever you are lobbying for is an edict sent from on High. It’s putting God’s stamp of approval on an opinion.

Here’s a verse for ya: “Where the stable is empty, the stalls are clean.”

Growth is messy. Good business owners know this, when a venture is rapidly growing you have to ride the wave by the seat of your pants, adjusting along the way to larger leadership. It requires constant readjustment and creativity, and sometimes sloppy but necessary solutions. If you have a bunch of cattle, your barn is literally full of shit. If it’s spotless, it looks good, but you have accomplished nothing. It’s something many don’t understand about growth, and a roadblock in every single church we led. People want growth, but don’t want the mess. But you can’t have the cattle without the shit. People are messy, and they have shit going on, that’s why we are supposed to be there to help.

Tidy, it ain’t.

This church is growing exponentially. The Churchies don’t like the mess. People are visiting from any and all walks of life, and during one well attended meeting, a newcomer stands up and says how much he loves this place, how accepting and awesome, you can come to church and sing together, hear a great life changing message and then have a goddam donut. Or something like that, I don’t remember the exact sentence, but that was DEFINITELY the exact cuss word of this innocent newcomer, so excited about finding this place and inadvertently offending half the flock. It was the cuss heard round the world. The Churchies are appalled that he swore right there in the church, and it tore through the gossip chain (whoops, prayer chain) and they’re off, and suddenly it’s not such a great thing that these new people are dirtying up their pristine church body.

Now if you understand the life of Jesus, and who he spent his time with, you understand how totally absurd this is, the tiny things that the Churchies would get upset about. When Jesus talks about straining at a gnat, he ain’t kidding. These guys would strain after plankton.

We are getting edgier and more passionate with the music, more freewheeling basking in the presence of God than head bowed and hands folded, more rock and relevant than staid and stodgy. We even have the nerve to introduce electric *gasp* guitar. We are top notch troublemakers.

The ridiculous part about people being upset about this is that it is the late 1990s and electric guitars, rock music and the Beatles have been around for fifty years. Isn’t it okay for the church to catch up? How many years do we have to wait? A thousand? I swear, some of those churchies STILL wouldn’t die, immortally pointing a crooked mummified finger in our faces for the latest offense, voice creaking out like an ancient hinge, “Buuut we UUUUSED to do it THAAAT wayyyy…”

We like clapping (two and four, the way God intended) raising hands if you so desire, really just having the freedom to worship the way you would like. Some of them don’t like this either, and we get complaints about that. HOO BOY can people complain about music, and it’s rarely to us, they almost always go tattling to the Senior Pastor, who could probably write his own book about all of the complaints he fielded about us.

Drums are too loud, horns are as well, and what the hell is Monica wearing anyway??

I feel a Top Ten list coming on…

We are the new toy.

This is a church of around 200some, give or take. And we are professional musicians, having already led at several different venues in a multitude of styles. We are wined and dined, Pastor Real definitely wants us leading. As I had noted from the very first time we darkened the door of the UPC in my hometown, if you are a musician, you WILL be recruited. They kind of need you for that smidge of inspiring music before the talky bit.

This is the Honeymoon period for us, before all the shiny wears off and they start backing in that inevitable truckload of complaints about the music to dump in the lap of the senior pastor.

Beep, beep beep, dump.

They don’t like the music because whatever. But at the moment we are having a great time, because Pastor Real is, mercifully for us, not full of shit. We are in leadership almost immediately, then DH becomes music director, then is ordained as the Pastor of worship.

This is an Evangelical Free church, and although DH and I share the position responsibilities, I can’t be the pastor of anything because my plumbing is all wrong (I have always been curious about trans folk who go from male to female. It really has to be a rude awakening how many doors are abruptly slammed in their faces once they are women. I understand George Sand completely. Yeah, look it up.) Once again, my vagina is preventing my victory.

This should have been a huge red flag, but Pastor Real runs this church independently and doesn’t give a flying flock what the EV-Free thinks, so I am able to lead all sorts of cool things, though I never do have a title other than Pastor’s wife. You really should carefully read the doctrinal statements of a church before you get involved. Just about nobody does this, but there can be all sorts of weird shit in there that people don’t know about, hidden behind a veneer of a cool looking denim-clad pastor with a hipster haircut and dark framed glasses. Oh, but they will haul this statement out eventually. Because in eight years this is going to bite me in the ass. Hard. And it was in the doctrinal statement the whole damn time, right there in black and white.

But these are the glory days for us, and we are hitting our collective stride at last. We are both strong leaders, he is on the elder board (no ladies, of course) and we both lead teams, I enjoy being up front more and am the main worship leader.

I loved being a worship leader. It was deeply fulfilling to me to see tired souls come in absolutely spent from the everything we all have to deal with in this life…pick them up and help them connect with God and plug into the positive energy of the Creator, to be regenerated from within and have a bit more strength to face life. At the time, I truly believed I was assisting these world-weary humans to experience the greatest, most life changing power with whom you can possibly commune. Maybe I really was, who’s to know?

I knew the Bible well, and would explain the meaning of the words that were being sung, so that it would become more than words, a swell of deep meaning buoyed up by lush chords, melodies, voices and instruments. We were creating a musical gift for the Creator of the Universe, and as far as I was concerned, it had better be the very best gift we could possibly bring, calling on the most skilled musicians, vocalists, audio and video technicians, whomever was involved. I wanted to do whatever I could to make it amazing.

We design meetings calling together the heads of the various teams, combining input from them all to make things exciting and relevant. I am determined that people use all that damn talent we are given that usually remains untapped. We brainstorm up some pretty wild ideas, some are really cool, some are more crazy, but we become solidified in the community as the church that is doing some pretty amazing shit. We grow to 500 in a community of 5000. This church is vibrant and lively, and rapidly growing.

We lead drama teams, worship teams, study groups, small groups, decorating committees, young adult groups, youth worship team, and anything else that is needed or dreamt up. We keep adding more opportunities for people to get involved. I love building new teams for the many new people, and have a blast heading them up.

Most people don’t realize how much they can accomplish. I have a knack for seeing the good, the giftedness in people (this will eventually get me in big trouble with men), and I simply identify it, and place people where they can shine. It is sooo exciting for me to see people discovering their unused talents and using them at last.

This is probably the thing I miss the most, I absolutely loved identifying skills that people often don’t see or simply underrate in themselves, and putting them in a place where they can blossom. It helps everything move forward, but it also gives the person excelling in that area a meaning and a purpose, as well as a great boost in self-esteem, really everybody wins. I mean, can you imagine the world we would live in if everyone was able to discover their gifts, because we all have them, and were able to work with a passion, with a zest for life, with a purpose?

So, enough bragging about the good times. Here we are in this church, having a pretty great time, but there is an undercurrent.

This is what is referred to as a “turnaround” church, it used to be more conservative and has a sizeable group of pious folk who had come over from a strict Baptist church, one I had visited that had rather condemning Scripture verses glaring down from the walls, do this, don’t do that, make sure your hemline isn’t too short and you don’t wear tank tops in the summer and such. Hallelujah and all praises to the cap sleeve and the mouth that never utters a cuss word or imbibes alcohol.

These people… are going to be an issue.

It’s all Shelley’s fault.

We had sworn up and down after all of the craziness, the moving, the travel, concluded by barely dodging a stint in a Los Angeles homeless shelter, we were done with church leadership.

I had gone back to work immediately after the return from L.A., and my son was born shortly thereafter. We bring our infant home to my sister’s basement, which was actually already set up as a fairly decent apartment. It is wonderful to be back, reconnecting with family in my hometown. Thank God for my sister and her husband’s generosity.

We half-heartedly visit a few churches in my hometown, but nothing looks like anyplace we want to go.

Finding a good church is a challenge. Outside of the very obvious fact that we are quite burned out on the whole idea, the middle-of-the-road, less wacko denominations tend to have more stodgy music, and are just too formal for us, while the Pentecostal/Charismatic churches can have the most incredible worship teams, but then we’re back in Crazytown.

We visit a sparsely attended Baptist church in which they clearly hadn’t seen any new faces in years, because the minute we enter the door, they look surprised and overjoyed, and kinda mob us. I feel like a pizza in a piranha tank. They are clearly desperate for new people. I see red flags. The older women all wear buns, the younger all have absurdly long hair, and all of the females are in long skirts, no makeup.

Nope.

We visit another in which the music is pretty great, but they are babbling away in tongues and waving around giant flags during the music. Some members are lying on the ground, having been “slain in the Spirit”. Or they got clocked in the head by the flags. Entertaining to be sure, but… Nope.

We visit one which is really popular, but it reminds me of MacArthur’s church, with the saccharine-sweet pious looking down their holy noses. Nope.

We visit several that are just too stodgy. Or too crazy. Maybe we’re just done with church altogether.

And then Shelley.

Shelley, Shelley, Shelley.

Shelley had been on the worship team at the church in Tiny Town with us, and was now on a team at a different church in Tiny Town. She just loooooooves this new church and by golly, she sure does want us to visit.

“You just HAVE to visit my church. Just try it once. It’s just so down to earth, the pastor is awesome, the people are great, there’s even programs for the kids.”

This woman is doing the Coffee’s for Closers speech about this joint.

We reluctantly agree to visit, pretty much so Shelley will shut up. This place is back in Tiny Town, which makes me want to ball up in fetal position and shake. We had sworn off that one-horse, ten-tavern, Kmart-is-the-only-store-to-shop-at place when we left. We were DONE, nothing could possibly make us go back. But we have exhausted every church possibility in my hometown. I guess we didn’t visit the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons or Scientologists, but y’know, all the halfway normal ones without Tom Cruise or Gwyneth Paltrow as their poster child.

We finally decide to go, and on a warm summer’s day drive the half hour to Tiny Town, and pull in, tires crackling in the gravel lot of a building outdated enough to look like the Brady Bunch’s bilevel just has to be next door. We enter and sit down in scratchy rust-orange chairs.

The people are friendly.

So what.

Churches always make a big deal about how friendly they are, but that’s overrated, it says nothing about what’s actually going on. At this point, I know there can be all sorts of bullshit under the hood in a church, all covered up by broad smiling faces.

The worship is pretty average. Shelley is an amazing singer, which definitely helps. I might be kinda overly picky about music. And by might, I mean most definitely am.

The pastor… is AWESOME!

I’m still trying to come up with the right adjective for his name. What do you picture in your mind when I write the word Pastor?

He’s not that. Whatever you pictured, nope.

Pastor Real (there it is!) is a sassy, snarky East Coast Italian who calls things as they are and pulls no punches. His family has ties to the mob and he was a professional chef in Cape Cod. I love him immediately. My own family history lies in a Polish/Italian neighborhood in Chicago, lots of us Polish married Italians. He hates it when people say Eye-talian. So do I, it’s not Eye-taly. Just stop. And don’t even get me started on my love for Italian food, honestly that’s another book I could write. He’s blunt and authentic, drinks cabernet out of a jelly glass, and gets under the skin of the traditional churchy people I’ve never been able to tolerate. We talk to him after the message, and decide we are in. Boom it happens again, we are involved in church.

Things are about to get much, much better.

Then much, much worse.

We are screwed.

Writing this chapter, I feel disjointed. Can’t keep thoughts together. The flow is all herky-jerky. And I’m fairly sure that’s not really a term, either.

Because life is disjointed right now. Everything is out of place, nothing is working right.

Have you ever been in a situation in which everything is falling apart, and you wait, and some lifeline shows up? A job, an opportunity, one night in which suddenly and serindipitously, a few jigsaw pieces line up and click, and you have an idea of something that just might work? That Eureka moment? That magical moment where one bend in the road changes everything?

Nope.

I keep working week after week, at the Burbank mall, at the church with the awful people and sweet pastor. Speaking of Pastor Good, by now he and his family have been ripped limb from limb by those lovely church folk… there are some great people in this congregation, but they are outweighed by folks that want nothing to change and everything to stay in the context they remember from the ’50’s. MAN do people hate when you change things in the church. To this day, I see church leaders make the mistake of changing too much too fast, it really messes with people’s sense of equilibrium. People get pissed. Members tend to look at their churches as places where they find stability, where they can rely on the same old things, time after time. It’s really just psychology at work here, even in leadership outside the church, people freak when you change things too fast. and even Pastor Good is getting tired of fighting this fight.

The seminary is a bust. We have come full circle through church leadership, from Pentecostal to Charismatic to conservative Baptist, from crazy signs n’ wonders folk to stern religious elitists. DH is more than willing to push through to get the golden ticket, the Master’s of Divinity, but with the church salary decrease and me being unable to get licensed in the state of CA, we can no longer pay the tuition.

In fact, we can’t afford much of anything at all. In spite of my full time job at the Burbank mall, we don’t even have next month’s rent figured out.

We drive the ten miles to Hollywood one day, and are both surprised to discover… well, if you have ever seen Hollywood in person, you already know it’s kind of a shithole. The walk of the stars is crumbling and dirty, it always makes me snicker when I see pictures of some celebrity sticking their hands and feet in it, because they probably had to clean up vomit in order to get the pic. There’s the gem of Mann’s Chinese Theater, but really not much else that’s nice. Like so many things in L.A., the hype is so much bigger than the reality. An array of homeless trudge back and forth, pushing along long-lost grocery carts of who knows what in plastic bags, an everlasting testament to life not working out as one hoped it might. I see them now as comrades, another month or two and we might join their ranks, living in a state that is ridiculously expensive and over-regulated to the point that it’s an incredible struggle to stay afloat. I never view homeless the same after this, once I understand how things can fall apart in life.

We run into another funny conundrum. We’re still driving my beloved Honda CRX, a fun, five-speed rollerskate. Did I mention it was a two-seat car? Did I mention there is no space for a carseat, or a third passenger of any kind? Have I also told you in order to sell such car and get something with a seat I can drive my baby home in, the car has to be registered in California? And what if i then told you that it’s over a thousand dollars to register your car in this crazy state, as opposed to the 75$ Wisconsin registration? We really rather hate California at this point.

I try to be patient, to find a solution, but I no longer have the luxury of time.

Because I am about six weeks away from having a third player show up to this party.

I am very, very pregnant. Large. Huge. Help.

I am lucky, though. I have family.

“Come home!”

I am on the phone with my sister in my hometown, 2000 miles away.

She offers to have us live in her basement. Our resources having been depleted, we see this as the only option (There were more options, of course, but I wasn’t a badass yet.)

We have one credit card with just enough space left to rent a U-Haul, the piano, clothes, books and dishes go right back in yet again. I am so pregnant by now that the free clinic doctor explains in kindly broken English that I must stop every two hours to get out of the truck and walk around, or I may go into labor. We drive through Los Angeles one last time, past the taquerias, untrimmed palms and sardined-together buildings, headed back to the green trees and blue lakes so familiar to me.

I wind up giving birth on the side of a dusty road in Utah, a random Mormon couple having pulled over their bicycles and helped out, really messed up his neatly pressed white shirt.

Kidding. We make it back to Wisconsin, move into my sister’s basement, and my son is born safe and sound in an actual local hospital with my sisters yelling “Push!” just like it’s supposed to happen. And we are done with church. We moved fourteen times in seven years. We ran the gamut with denominations, and saw the dark side of ministry leadership. I immediately find a salon and start working, DH is teaching piano lessons, and we are finally stable. NO MORE MINISTRY. We resolve to find an okay church and sit our asses in a pew and do nothing.

But God is laughing.

Laughing his (her?) ass off.

“How greeeeeaaaat is our Goooood. Sing with meeee…”

pastor Good dashes up the middle aisle, taps a gentleman on the shoulder and whispers in his ear. The man follows him out the side door

“Howw greeeeeat is our Gooooood. And all will seeee….”

he dashes in again, tapping a different gentleman on the shoulder and he also proceeds with the pastor out the side door

“How greeeeeaat….how greaaaat…. is our Goooood…”

There is DEFINITELY a problem outside, though by now I know when I’m up front leading, the best thing to do is press ahead and trust things are being handled. This is a bit unusual, though. Flashing emergency vehicle lights join the sunlight streaming through the stained glass at the side of the sparsely filled room.

Uh oh.

I lead the congregation in prayer while Pastor Good approaches the front, looking like he swallowed something rancid.

I hand off the service to him, and he awkwardly tells us our pianist has passed away of heart failure. She literally played the opening, walked out, and dropped dead. It’s a sad day for all of us, and a stark reminder to me how precious and short this life is, one life snuffed out while another life is growing inside of me. I am still wondering what the hell we are going to do about our situation.

The latest issue with this particular situation is the seminary DH chose. At the time he picked it out, we had seen so much crazy in the Charismatic movement that we fled the opposite direction, the proudly anti-signs ‘n wonders Master’s Seminary. The founder went so far as to write a book titled Charismatic Chaos. These are NOT people who would ever believe God spoke to them through burn marks on their toast that resemble Jesus, or insist Mother Mary spoke to them through a cardinal showing up on their grandma’s birthday, or EBay a potato chip in the shape of the Vatican.

A few months into DH’s classes, we at last have time to visit the legendary church associated with the seminary.

The first time we go to John MacArthur’s church, I am VERY excited!! We had read several of his books and we had been listening to his radio show for some time. He was doctrinally so deliciously solid, man let me tell you if we thought we knew the Bible in the UPC, now it was going under a microscope.

Doctrine, doctrine, doctrine.

Like so many twentysomething idealists before us, we had pursued The Truth at any cost, and once again, we were sure we had found it, and it was sealed up, locked and loaded… ready to go for the rest of our lives. Mission accomplished, boy were we ever smart for figuring out the answers of life so young.

We enter the church John MacArthur founded. I smell cookie-cutter immediately. Everyone is wearing that irritation called “business casual” (Who the hell invented khakis anyway? Do they look good on anyone?) and has these kinda phony grins.

Ohh boy…

We enter the worship service.
Oh. My. GOD.

The worship team stands in a structured formation, all dressed in matchy-matchy everything, looking stuffier than a couch at a Country Club.

The music is TER. RI. BLE.

Oh, it’s technically correct, but these people have painted-on fake toothy grins as if you handed out Halloween teeth before the music started. It is unbelievably stiff and stilted, and in my professional opinion, this music was DOA. Completely devoid of true passion and feeling, in their effort to make everything doctrinally perfect, they had censored the life right out of it. Their worship team evoked memories of the laughably outdated Lawrence Welk show, like all of the happy is just staged. (A’wondafull, a’wondafull. If you got that, you’re older than me.) This is an abomination down to my core. I HATE it. My love for music comes from deep in my soul. I started writing songs as a bullied tween in tears at the piano, angsty songs emoting what was going on in my life, expressing the heart of a too-deep twelve-year old. It is my survival skill. To me, music is a freedom, a passion, a true story told, an unrestrained authenticity straight from the inner being, you know when it’s real. It moves the spirit and speaks to the soul. And you clap on two and four. But there is no passion in the music at this Karen convention.

I try out a ladies meeting, led by the founder’s wife. I’m excited to see what wisdom she has to share, and discover more about leadership and spiritual growth, but it is waylaid by recipes and instruction on proper care and feeding of your husband. She instructs us it is imperative to provide our husbands with a hot meal every morning. Wait, lady, I don’t recall seeing THAT in the Bible. They are all dressed in a style I will call less-edgy librarian, and she preaches at length about the importance of modesty. You must check yourself out in the mirror carefully, front and back, before you leave the house, so you don’t have a stray piece of skin that’s going to make some man’s pants fall off. Oops, I slept with a guy. ‘Cause that’s how it works, right??

This is all reminescent of my time in UPC, and it’s making me nauseous. Actually, it’s even stricter in some ways. UPC at least ordains women and has female evangelists and pastors, and though I am allowed pants and a haircut at this church, I can’t lead shit except for women and children, totally not in my wheelhouse. I would have loved to take classes and learn as well, but women are not allowed to study at the Master’s seminary, it is an all-male student body and they do not ordain women. This is not the first time 1 Timothy 2:12 will become a thorn in my side, the verse reading NKJV: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.” I’m screwed. My leadership ability and absolutely un-quiet personality is not going to work here, and once again I find myself dulling a lot of my personality in order to fit in. Unbeknownst to me, someday this verse will take away my career…

At the Master’s Seminary, the only degree I have the hope of achieving is the PhT, AKA the Putting hubby Through certificate, because of course, I am the one working my ass off so he can do this, full-time plus at the Burbank mall.

In the “social” time following (no alcohol, of course), the ladies (I have heard it preached repeatedly that it is offensive to call us ‘women’… I’m still in the dark as to why.) are chatting vacantly about recipes, knitting, shopping, and I am losing my damn mind over here because I am interested in absolutely zero of this. I don’t want a Pampered Chef party, I don’t want to talk about that cute top you saw, or how you can crochet a coozy for your dish detergent, or the latest method of freezing 30 days of meals… PLEASE GIVE ME THE RED PILL AND GET ME THE HELL OUT!!!

There’s a problem here… all of this obsession with doctrine, the splitting of hairs, the obsession with being perfectly RIGHT… dismantles the freedom, the love, the ability to understand that no single human being has all of their shit together and DAMMIT we need to stop expecting this perfection of others because NO ONE has it 100% together. This was the Achilles heel at MacArthur’s church, at the Master’s Seminary, and even at the Baptist church we were working at.

These people were obsessed with knowledge and doctrine and endless study, yet did know how to simply love.

That fateful worship service at MacArthur’s church was the beginning of the end of L.A. for us. DH was getting increasingly disillusioned each day he attended the seminary, and I was as well. Week after week, we slogged through leading contemporary worship at a church who largely wanted traditional hymns, the congregation divided and angry about this matter as I have seen so many times. Boy, if you want some dissenting opinions, just start asking about music, especially in the church.

In the meantime, my belly keeps growing, and we are running out of money…

I watch the second pink line form.

You HAVE to be kidding me. I laugh. I cry. Now??!!

I hear another car alarm go off, the daily music of Los Angeles.

I am pregnant.

HOW could this have happened?! I mean, I guess I know, technically, but let’s back up a little.

At thirteen my mother had taken me in to the emergency room after the second day of watching me writhe in pain on the couch. I was diagnosed with endometriosis, and two surgeries ensued. Every doctor I had seen in the fourteen years after warned me that I would likely never conceive, and since endometriosis gets progressively worse, I had long written off the idea of cribs and strollers. I hadn’t considered birth control in the almost ten years I had been with DH. This wasn’t even a blip on my radar. And yet, here I was, thinking gee, it sure has been a while since Aunt Flo visited, having gotten a test just for kicks.

Seriously, God? You wait until NOW, the worst time possible, to finally have me able to conceive? Part of the mental process when we moved across the country was that we were doing things we couldn’t do if we could have kids, and now here I am staring at a positive test. Obviously, with our jobs having fallen through, and DH being in seminary full time, and living in Los Angeles away from any family or friends, the timing is laughably bad. (Wanna laugh harder? I became positive the only way I could have gotten pregnant was from a toilet seat until my son was born and looked just like DH. Because how in the world could this not work for almost ten years and all of a sudden BOOM ya pregnant?)

No job, no insurance, I go to the free clinic. They are very sweet, and I do get everything covered. Of course, now I’m interviewing for jobs, of course I don’t land one until I finally hide the fact that I’m pregnant under a bulky sweater. The manager looked a bit perturbed when I informed him only a week after being hired that I was quite pregnant, boy THAT was a forced smile if I ever saw one. They aren’t supposed to use pregnancy against you, but I definitely wasn’t getting hired when being up front about it, so… meanwhile DH is going to seminary and we are running the worship ministry at the Baptist church.

I go to the Pregnancy Information Center, and they are wonderful and give me lots of maternity clothes and other things I will need. When I thought I was infertile I used to volunteer there, now I’m the one with a crisis pregnancy.

On the other hand, I’m excited!! This is miraculous. Horrible timing, but I can feel this new life inside me, and it’s something I never thought I would experience. Of course, I have NO idea how I’m going to pull off taking care of a baby while trying to get DH through seminary, but I’m going to have a baby! I keep thinking of the Bible story about Sarah and Abraham being promised a son, and her questioning God, and finally giving up, until at last when she’s an old lady, yeah THAT’S when her test comes back positive. She’s gonna have stretch marks on her wrinkles. Ha, ha. Good one, God, got any others?

Well, DH is in this great seminary, right??

Yeah, about that…

“Whelp… it looks like we aren’t going to be able to pay you as much as we thought.”

Oh no.

We have uprooted and moved our everything 2000 miles to discover that this Music Ministry position will pay less than half the salary that was promised. Thanks, Church board, you guys are the best. Okay, well yeah, we probably should have asked for a contract before moving clear across the country, but it’s a church! These people are good Christians. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, I know now, but I was spectacularly naive about church at the time. Welcome to sunny Los Angeles, here’s your kick in the pants. At least I get to wear them now.

This is going to be a problem, a how-will-we-afford-to-live-here-now dilemma that is exacerbated by some uninformed person at the Department of Licensing in California giving me misinformation about my state cosmetology license. I will not be able to work as a hairdresser here, either. Uh oh…two jobs gone in a POOF of unpredictable smoke.

And what the exact cornbread hell are we doing in L.A. anyway? DH has decided he would like to become a pastor, and has hand-picked John MacArthur’s extremely conservative yet absolutely NOT Charismatic or Pentecostal Master’s Seminary, and it is in Sun Valley, a suburb of L.A. The music ministry position in which we’re getting the shaft is at a Baptist church in nearby Woodland Hills, where the pastor is very uncomfortably explaining to us that the salary for the ministry position is less than half what was agreed upon.

We are in biiiig trouble.

Let’s back up a bit…

After a full summer of working at a North Carolina camp that turned out to be a bit wacko, we had crammed everything right back into the CRX and retreated, the nausea-inducing switchbacks of the Blue Ridge Mountains fading into the past. We had two weeks total to get back to Tiny Town, throw everything into a U-Haul, hook up a tow rig for my precious CRX, and haul our crazy asses the 2000 miles to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, for the uninitiated, is insanely packed with people. Almost 19 million in the greater L.A. area, while the STATE of Wisconsin has 5.8 million. I grew up in Chicago, where an hour’s drive will take you out of the city, while in L.A., you can drive for hours and still be looking at endless urban sprawl. It’s not even urban sprawl, it’s an ocean of three-story or less buildings, an odd landscape created by earthquake being an option on the California menu. It makes for a very different city, having been raised near the skyscrapers and hi-rises of Chicago.

We arrive on a sunny day, because of course it is. Everyday L.A, almost annoyingly sunny. The residents there are excited when they “have weather” because it’s usually just the same old sunny day. The undesirable side effect of this continual lack of rain, is if someone spits on the sidewalk, or loses their lunch, or spills anything at all, it remains untouched possibly for months. The petrified garbage of SoCal, an enduring monument to filth.

Back to our dilemma, we are living with Pastor Good and his family, they are really wonderful people who genuinely aspire to live according to the best bits of the Bible, being a loving, caring clan who are compassionate and consistently do the right thing. They are all great.

The congregation… not so great.

After having dealt with some pastors who weren’t exactly the best, here the situation was flip-flopped, Pastor Good was… well, good, and much of the membership was awful. They were going through pastors like whiskey at an Irish funeral, and once I spent some time around the congregation, I could see why. Gossipy, mean-spirited, overly pious and self-righteous, there was a core of people here who had been puppeteering the leadership for wayyy too many years. I think of it as upside-down church, in which the congregation basically tells the pastor what to do. This will eventually end in a horrific meeting in which insults and personal attacks are launched at Pastor Good and his family, resulting in their loss of yet another pastor, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So. Here we are in Los Angeles, and we have a month of staying with Pastor Good to find a place of our own, because Pastor Good really isn’t supposed to have extra people staying in his condo, which presents us with an interesting dilemma: with both of our jobs having fallen through, how are we supposed to pay for all of this?

See if you can figure out what happened next.

I NEVER could have guessed.

“It’s HORRIBLE, Monica…just listen.”

I am listening to a voice message, one of my very best friends in Tiny Town, and her voice seems uncharacteristically distraught.

She has sent me a cassette, and we pop it in, a recording from the church in Tiny Town. I recognize a familiar voice. The voice of my fellow ministry leader announces he is leaving his wife and children. There is another woman. He is moving away to be with her. I had worked alongside him and his wife ever since we came to Tiny Town. He has been cheating on his wife the entire time. You can hear the reaction of the crowd and my dear friend is right, this is horrible. Jeez, you think you know a guy…

I do believe there is a reason why cheating is prevalent in the church, but I will get into that later.

The call comes in as we are driving my favorite car clear to North Carolina. Somehow we manage to sardine everything we need for the entire summer into a tiny five-speed two-seat CRX that could give sports cars a run for their money, simply because it was such a damn rollerskate. I still miss her.

It is in Pastor South’s church that we begin to tire of all of the Charismania. The histrionics of signs and wonders are wearing a bit thin, and we are longing for something more… normal, please. We are done with the tongues, with the “God told me this” and “God told me that” and seeing how all of these “God told me”‘s can really mess up people’s lives. There are those who refuse proper medical treatment because God told them they would be healed. There are others in terrible circumstances but refuse to change anything because God told them to stay. There are some who don’t pay bills, or won’t allow their kids to summer camp, or whatever the hell the dumb decision may be, GOD TOLD ME or gave some sort of impression or they had a dream or a feeling or saw a sign with the number 8 in it or whatever. I have observed that the concept that one is receiving instruction directly from God can create a real shitshow, from Manson to Jonestown to Koresh, people who believe God told them something special can be a serious problem. We are both so ready to be done with the Magic Conch approach to religion, and we begin a search for a more normal church setting.

We are offered a job at a Christian camp in North Carolina. I say, why not? I have been declared totally infertile by my OB-GYN, so why not do some cool things you can’t do if you have kids? Sorry, parents.

DH and I are excited to be involved in a ministry with a more balanced view. This Christian camp is nondenominational, so that has to be better, right??

So, we drive. The camp is in the idyllic foothills of the Smoky mountains, so beautiful, so green. There are little waterfalls down the sides of the freeway. Lovely. The only hitch is that our starter on the CRX breaks, and for a month we have to park on a hill and pop the clutch in order to start the car (ask your mechanic). It’s actually kinda fun, until we mistakenly kill the engine at a hotel with a flat parking lot and DH has to push the car around the parking lot until there’s enough momentum to pop the clutch, bystanders rubbernecking at the guy grunting behind a car while his wife is in the driver’s seat. Hey, someone has to pop the clutch. Sorry, DH.

On the camp website were multiple pictures of a large, inviting pool with a lovely concrete deck. The beautiful blue water seemed to call my name. I did find it a bit suspicious there were literally no pictures of the rest of the camp, just the pool. Hmmm… What could possibly go wrong?

Pulling into the camp on a balmy summer day, immediately we sensed something was off. Crackling over gravel, all we were seeing is a few old military-style buildings with an arched metal roof. There were several old cabins that barely qualified as shelter, 2×4’s halfway up, the rest just rough screen stapled to the wood. Everything looked like it was from about 1950. Where were the dormitories? I mean, this place put the rust in rustic. Now I understood why the only picture in the advertising was of the freaking POOL. We discover later that this was an old military training ground from the 50’s. We weren’t surprised.

We wander around for like an hour because we can’t find anyone. When we finally do, she can’t figure out where we are supposed to stay. They never do find a place for us, and we are shuttled back and forth between makeshift accomodations the entire summer. For a full month of this we are exiled into a rotted Airstream camper that had been flooded and stunk of mold, black spots throughout the interior.

But the biggest problem with the camp, is that it is STILL CHARISMATIC!!

We went halfway across the country to escape this, but this place is even more whacko than the church in Tiny Town. Now what??

These pastors are hell-bent (lol) on getting these kids to have some sort of supernatural experience… speaking in tongues, signs, wonders, whatever. The problem is, I have seen kids AND adults really seek hard after these things, and when it doesn’t happen, they think something is wrong with them. If you’re reading this and this happened to you, rest assured you are just fine. It wasn’t you. Trust me.

I recall in one service, I was in the middle of leading worship and, in this room of 150 kids, I can see a commotion all the way at the back of the room. A head of blonde hair, snapping back and forth, arms and legs flailing. I could see she was yelling, but you couldn’t hear it over the music. A girl was having a seizure or something, and several people were surrounding her trying to assuage the commotion. It is the strangest feeling when you are singing in front of a crowd, and they are all involved in the music, and you can see something no one else can see, because I’m the only one facing the opposite direction. I can’t respond or react, I know this would make it worse, and possibly cause group panic. This is the first time I realize that one person’s response to something can affect many others, and likely why “the show must go on” exists. So many times in life, the show must simply…go on.

As it turns out, one of the counselors had a grand mal panic attack, so it just looked like someone was violently dying. (I have had someone die while I was leading worship, but we’re not up to that yet.)

This summer is an endurance test, we don’t agree doctrinally with anything that’s going on. In retrospect, we would have been much better off if we just went with the flow and enjoyed the people around us, but at this point, our belief system had traveled wayyy across the spectrum to the strict Baptist side, NOT a denomination known for its sense of freewheeling fun.

In fact, DH has decided he is being called to be a Pastor. (Highest calling, ammirite?). Which means he has to go back to school AGAIN for his Master’s of Divinity, AKA the M. Div. He has chosen one of THE MOST conservative, Bible thumping seminaries in the world, led by John MacArthur. The Master’s Seminary, clear in Los Angeles, CA.

We…are going to L.A.

The pew beneath us is literally shaking.

All three of us are attempting the impossible.

How in the HELL are we supposed to keep a straight face?!

I, DH and his brother sit in a small church in Tiny Town, a burg of about 5000. Not exactly what I had in mind, at least it’s rather pretty (pretty empty, ammirite??). Pastor South’s church is in the middle of a building project financed, of course, by the sale of Pastor Kind’s former church (Not sure I’ve ever seen a church that wasn’t in the middle of a building project. It’s kinda their thing.)

Two older ladies are singing about the crucifixion, obviously one of the saddest, most tragic stories you can possibly tell, but this particular song turns the whole somber story into a five minute joke by putting some VERY serious lyrics to the melody of On Top Of Old Smokey. The three of us are doing an extremely poor job of trying not to laugh. I am biting my tongue HARD.

“Thirty pieces of silver, thirty shekels of shame…” sung in an old timey croon to a scratchy accompaniment track that had to have been recorded the first year cassettes were made. (Sidenote: So. Looked this up online and turns out this was some sort of country hit for Hank Williams Jr. Now I feel bad. But honestly, could YOU keep a straight face through this? I mean, I grew up with the lyrics being On Top of Spaghetti, All Covered With Cheese.)

Music in the church is…interesting. A recurrent problem is that individuals somehow become convinced that God has called them to sing, when it is painfully obvious that a far more sinister being had to have been involved. Try to explain to someone convinced that they can sing, that they can’t. It ain’t easy, and to this day I’m pretty sure my picture is on dartboards across the United States, owned by the people I had to turn down. It sometimes was honestly worse than the most cringey American Idol auditions, and could make William Hung seem like a rockstar.

We are now Independent Pentecostal, kind of a catchall denomination for those who left the UPC and their strict holiness standards behind. But wait, there’s more!

Still plenty of rules to obey, one of them being that secular, nonreligious music is off limits. Cheesy gospel good, MTV bad.

Not that there wasn’t any great music that happened here, because being musicians ourselves, we always had friends who were really good musicians. A few of our friends developed a Christian rock band and had some success, as well as their own collection of stories about the Christian contemporary music scene, which had a dark side along with a tendency to overlook bad behavior in musicians…the better the musician, the wider the latitude for their moral and ethical missteps. I saw this with pastors as well, those who were really compelling speakers could get away with murder. It’s fascinating to me how some charismatic individuals could be so charming yet hide so much.

Pastor South kind of inherited us from Pastor Kind’s church, we follow along and move to Tiny Town, and our lives become very small. We are worship leaders, and put together the music and the worship team. We are not paid, this is considered a Calling, and you’re supposed to obey a calling, and all that you give is returned to you, right?… RIGHT??

From the very beginning of my experience in the church, we are putting full-time effort into something that doesn’t pay anything at all. (but the retirement plan is out of this world! Ha ha.) We are taught that what you give to the church will return to you, pressed down, shaken together and running over (that’s a verse, for those of you who aren’t from a tithing denomination.) We are taught that ministry is the highest calling. We are taught that God will take care of our needs. In retrospect, I suppose that’s true, I’m still alive, clothed and fed today, but during the years when you usually are building your nest egg, buying a house, starting a retirement fund…, well, all of that just kind of didn’t happen. We’re stringing along in our rusty Ford Escort, living in cheap apartments and sometimes on donated whatever of some sort. Some pious individuals think they are doing us a big favor by giving us things that are either broken, or simply things no one would want. Newsflash: Please don’t donate garbage to the needy, it doesn’t help and now you have given them the chore of getting rid of more shit. Yes, this includes multiple trash bags full of clothing from 1962. Likewise, there’s a woman in the church who offers for us to live for free at a house she owns. A month after we move in she changes her mind and we have to move out. ONE MONTH. Good grief.

We do eventually settle in an apartment, and we also take in a guy from the church who needs a place to stay. He’s fun and funny, and he lives with us for a summer. One night we come home to squad cars in the driveway and him being splayed against the side of the house by two officers. We explain that he lives there. Years later I discover that he’s a sex offender with a history of being a peeping Tom, which explains the police visit. He never did anything to me, but I’ll never know if he watched me. Won’t be the last story I tell of creepers finding the church a safe place to hide, there’s a reason why this is common.

There’s a pattern that develops. Someone will invite us for dinner, followed by an annoying bait-and-switch where they use the social time to unload all of their grievances about how we’re running worship ministry. One woman has the nerve to pop in a VHS showing her old church’s worship team (“The worship there was SO anointed,”) and literally shows us how we should be running the ministry. I’ve definitely had better dessert.

There are a lot of things that are not what I expected working in ministry leadership. We continually attempt to help people who are down and out or homeless, but the heartbreaking truth is that people carry nearly indelible habits that either build or destroy their own lives…which makes a bad situation extremely difficult to change. Take someone who has a good work ethic and is wise with money. You can take everything away and they will find a way to rebuild it. Now take someone whose habits resulted in them living on the street and give them money, food and a place to stay; most somehow manage to lose it all. I recall reading a book about winners of massive jackpots, every single time they managed to wind up worse than when they started UNLESS they already had their financial lives together before the windfall. This becomes a perpetual frustration for me, to this day I still don’t know of any really great solutions to change one’s circumstances for the long term. I’ve seen people change, and I’ve done it myself, but it’s extremely rare and a helluva lot of work. I wish it were more common, but it just isn’t.

Eventually we manage to develop a stability, I have a salon that has really taken off, and DH has a pile of private students. But we are both getting weary of the constant weirdness that pervades Pentecostal churches, and DH is about to pursue something that will yank us right out of Tiny Town.

As in, both coasts.

In less than a year’s span.

“RIDAMAHONDAINAGADDADAVITASTAYATARAMADATHASSASPICYAMEATABALLA!”

pause…

pause…

line?…

line?…

“Yea, though you walk through the valley, I am with thee…” yadda yadda; some person in the congregation would interpret the message. I never, for the life of me, could figure out why interpretations were given in archaic and totally irrelevant King James’ English. Welcome to Tongues and Interpretation, just one of the many gifts of the Spirit. Enjoy your trip!

Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up and hope you’re not shy, you WILL be called to the altar because you are in a Signs and Wonders church! It’s the three-ring circus of Christianity, and let me tell you, they do NOT disappoint. You may even get lucky enough to see the Dollar Freakshow in the Back Tent. I saw most of these first hand and experienced others, there’s only one so bizarre I never actually saw it. You ready for a list?

Here it is, the Top Ten Weirdest Signs and Wonders:

10: Tongues and Interpretation: This is the opening reference, it’s basically one person yelling in an unknown language and then another interpreting it, usually in Ye Olde English for no reason whatsoever. What’s really awkward is the silence after, when you wonder if anyone is EVER going to do the interpretation. Line??…

9: Just plain old Speaking In Tongues: Mainstay of the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Apostolic movement, this is theoretically God speaking through you in another language. All of the tongues-speak kinda sounded the same to me, why did I never heard click-language?

8: Prophecy, Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom: AKA knowing shit you probably really don’t, from life direction to which car you should buy. This one can get kinda funny, I heard SEVERAL accounts of God telling some young gentleman that some lovely puritanical girl was to be his bride. Imagine some guy informing you God told him you were meant to be together. What the hell are you supposed to say to that??! Sometimes this would result in the hysterical, like the time a guy pulled this: Brother Desperate Dan stands up, “BLA BLA BLA, Sister Hotchick is to be this man’s wife. He doesn’t realize he’s saying this right now, as he is overcome by the Holy Spi…” Pastor: “SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP, Brother Dan!” and yes that actually happened. You will ABSOLUTELY be hearing more stories about Prophecy in the Church. Shit happens when people believe God is giving them direct information.

7: Casting Out Demons: This is just about exactly like they show it in Hollywood, minus makeup and poorly digested pea soup (dating myself with that reference) with all the histrionics, yelling, lurching, and whatnot. I often wondered if those who were “demon possessed” were actually mentally ill. I suspect schizophrenics can be in churches for years and be viewed as having special “gifts” that others don’t have, but actually are in desperate need of psychiatric care. For example, several individuals I knew over the years would be extremely demonstrative up front, speaking in tongues, dancing in the spirit, giving words of knowledge listed in #6, etc… and later would be in the parking lot screaming at the Pastor about some minor infraction. ABSOLUTELY the church has an inordinate number of crazies. Or the possessed. Whatever you choose to call it, you can find plenty of ’em at church.

6: Anointing with Oil: Little dab’ll do ya, little more is better? When David was anointed King in the Bible, he was anointed with oil and it ran over his head and down his beard. Why not continue? Often, when people would come forward to receive prayer, the pastor or an elder would dab oil on the person’s forehead. No biggie, right? Whelp. I met a lady who would drive over decrepit bridges pouring gallons of Crisco out the window. Lo and behold, those bridges would get fixed!! Never mind the fact decrepit bridges are generally scheduled to be repaired anyway…

5: Slain in the Spirit: If you have seen Benny Hinn wave his coat at a crowd and they all fall over, you are already familiar with this gift. It’s this experience in which you become overwhelmed with the Spirit of God, and fall slap over. I have experienced this, and who knows? Was it real? Was I just tired of standing? One thing I do know is that pastors would invite you up to be prayed for, then they would put one hand on your forehead and the other behind your neck in such a way that it’s almost impossible to remain standing. Pastor South told us of a camp meeting in which a woman fell FORWARD and broke her nose, but no one knew for a while because if you came into a service at this point, it looked like casualties on a battlefield, bodies lying everywhere in all manner of twisted contortions. Sometimes, if a woman fell over in a skirt and was, well,…indecent, the men would take off their suit coats to cover her. You will meet a hypnotist in Part 2 of this book. I watched his performance, and how he was able to get people to do things on stage, and it was so eerily reminiscent of this… but we have a lot of ground to cover before I become Wonder Woman.

4: Dancing in the Spirit: “Dancing” is a bit of a misnomer here, I have to say that I LOVED dancing at the churches that had fantastic music, but this reference has little to do with the common understanding of the word dance. This is theoretically someone being completely taken over by the Spirit of God, which I never understood, because we were taught when you get saved the Spirit of God is in you?? So is it just more Spirit of God, like a bigger dose? Or they would say the Spirit is moving. Does it otherwise stand still? Anyway, it’s more of a lurching or sometimes like a running in place while in a sort of trance (the sort of trance thing happens a lot in these parts), voice wailing like a truck arriving at a five-alarm fire. It’s very noisy… and very time consuming, this can go on for hours.

3: Dreams and Visions: I tried REALLY HARD to see something, ANYTHING, during my time in the churches that believed this. I didn’t see shit. I heard so many accounts of people seeing things or hearing things, I’m not saying this didn’t happen, but does anyone ever stop to think when someone keeps seeing visions of things that don’t exist that there’s just a teensy chance they might be delusional? How do you tell the difference?

2: Holy Laughter, Barking And Other Strange Sounds: Happened in both the Pensacola Outpouring and the Toronto Blessing in the 90’s. In revival services as they would call them, if the spirit was really REALLY moving, and people were being Slain in the Spirit and already lying on the ground anyway, they sometimes roll around and start making noises, sometimes laughing uncontrollably, sometimes just crawling around repeating shouts that well, yes, sound just like a barking dog. By the way, this rolling around started in the tent revivals earlier in the 1900s, where the term Holy Roller originated.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, the number One Weird Thing that Goes On in Gifts of the Spirit???

1: Snakes in the Church: Once again, yes, there is scripture to support this. I never saw this personally, but if you get on the fringes of these denominations, there are churches that take literally the verse “they shall take up serpents” and handle poisonous snakes during the service. Wonder if that’s in their advertising? I never attended a snake handling church, but it is estimated there are about 120 in the US, so if you want to visit, they’re unsurprisingly mostly in the South.

I dealt with snakes in the church, but they had little to do with reptiles…