Part L

Late winter and spring of 1987 was a generally good time. I had good friends, passion in my commitment and a total unawareness of either my hypocrisy or of that which surrounded me. Even though the High School pastor, Keith, had a pretty low opinion of me, he and I would have lunch together 1-2 times per week. I even took great pride that he used me (anonymously) as the subject of some of his lessons, even though it was never in a good or positive context. Our Music Pastor had me write out the Hebrew for his early morning Hebrew class, Charles and I started a new drama ministry and Kurt left to take a job as a youth pastor up by Lake Tahoe. Kurt was the Senior Pastor's son, so I totally understood his need to be his own person. I started printing a newsletter for the Junior High group, but having to come up with all of the content on my own, I only did 4 months. We searched for a new pastor and I took classes with our College Pastor, Rick, on preaching. Things, in my perception, went pretty well until summer hit.

Late in June, Rick called me in to talk about the upcoming Junior High Camp at Alliance Redwoods and told me I could not go. I was really looking forward to it, and if he gave me a satisfying reason for the decision, I do not remember it. I just remember being angry and then humbling myself as much as I knew how. Eventually, they allowed me to go, but not to be a counselor...I got to clean things and get the generic term "staff." In the end, I still believe it was the same prejudice towards people who were different that did me in. I did not fit in the box of what people were supposed to be like with youth. I did not treat them like subordinates, but rather like equals. It was probably this equality which drove people crazy, but it may have been that I spent too much time with the girls. I did not have the Christian culture down enough to have a problem with inter-gender discussion and I was not self-aware enough to realize that young girls like the attention from older guys, even if the older guy is woefully unaware of what that would mean to them. It still cracks me up that some people had a problem thinking that I was gay for the way I dressed and being involved with drama and others thought I was on the move with the young girls. Either way, there was probably only a handful of people who realized that my intentions were pretty pure and I was just someone who was different.

Oh...In late May, my friend Allan had returned from College for the summer and told me I could save some money if I lived at his house for free. I do not believe he ever asked his Mom if i could, he just showed up with me one day. So, without notice, I left Mark's family hanging and moved out. I was so unaware of how my actions effected others, so dismally self-involved. It is hard to write this, to look at it on the page and realize that I hurt people and never even really thought about it.

August of 1987 was a tough time for me. Early in the month, the new Junior High Pastor was hired and began working. He let me know that I could be a probationary worker with the group until he had time to assess what all of the objections were to me. After having served in the ministry for 7 months and giving my full-throated support to this new hire, I was so offended that I told him he could keep his ministry to himself and I would move on. A week or two later, I received some other news. I had been hanging out with a girl and we were really friends. Regardless of what people thought, we never even held hands, but we did spend a lot of time together. She was in High School and Keith had gone to her parents and told them that she should not be allowed to date me so they made her stop spending time with me. This had an immense irony to it because not only were we not dating at all, but Keith was dating someone who had just got out of his High School ministry. My friend, Paul (who was the High School intern), also had a problem with my relationship with this girl and made it fairly clear to me. I can't figure out if I was dense and there was more to this relationship, or if I just came across as creepy to the extreme, but no one wanted me hanging out with her. Late in August I was called into the office of the administrative pastor and the new office manager to let me know that the church needed to make some cutbacks and they were eliminating my job and putting the old person back into it. They told me I could look for a job on my work time, but without pay. Since I could not afford to miss an hour of work, I waited til the two weeks were up. Also, around the same time, Allan told me that staying at his house was only until he went back to school, so I would need to move out within the week. I was left with few friends, no ministry, no job, feeling an outcast at my church, no home and I had no car even to get around with. It had been a year since I had become a Christian and things were most definitely, not getting better.