Ghost

I used to work at a Chinese restaurant called P.F. Chang’s as a back waiter. I remember meeting the bar tender one of my first days working there in Spokane Washington who happened to be the Youth Pastor at a Church near my house. I thought it was pretty BA that they had a bartender/youth pastor and I can honestly say that’s why I went to the Church. I walked in on Sunday and it felt very real. There were five guys smoking out front, the auditorium smelled like beer, and a guy from a biker gang greeted me at the door. Yeah, this is my church. I later learned from the Senior Pastor that over 90% of the congregation was on two months sobriety, a great deal of x-convicts attended, and many struggle financially. The Church is in the poorest zip code in Washington. As my Pastor explains it, ‘it’s a place where we can all come together and be open about the fact that the cheese has fallen off our cracker too.” I can’t even explain how wonderful it is. I have never felt more accepted and loved by a group of people.

                The youth group is even better. There are about 20-25 kids that come every Wednesday night and they are all from the neighborhood. They all walk there. These kids come from every type of background you can imagine. I’ll save some of the specific stories but I will say that most of them come from broken homes, have absent fathers, and have abusive backgrounds. I lead worship for the youth group and when I first started I was really excited about getting to teach the kids “how to worship God”. What an honor it is to teach them how to come before the throne! Like I deserved a cape and tights or something.

                I remember the second night we did worship and I looked out into the crowd and saw the kids. They had their eyes shut as tight as they could, arms bent with balled up fists, it was like watching a baby take their first steps. I introduced the idea of raising your hands in the air as an external expression of what’s happening internally. Hands rose all over the room and it was powerful. I felt like a grandpa sitting on the ground watching a kid run around wondering where he gets all his energy. It inspired me. I realized that it was less of me teaching them how to worship, and more or less pointing them in the right direction.

 I watched these kids meet the Holy Spirit. Lives were changing. Tonight we had 6 kids commit their lives to the Lord and four re-committed their lives to Christ. That’s half the group, amazing. Sometimes we think it’s us doing the work to change lives when really it’s God working through us. That takes the pressure off I think. We can’t fail that way, we can only do as much as God wanted done. That’s a nice thought. I like how John Mark McMillan says it, “I’m a dead man walking with a ghost who lives within the confines of these carbon ribs.”