Yesterday was an awesome day. I got to work with Oxfam on their Farm Bill Campaign. We had a booth at the Vans Warped Tour. The Warped tour is a collection of bands you’ve rarely heard of unless you are part of the subculture. Half the bands were thrash-metal and sounded pretty good musically but I really had no idea what they were saying. The average age was probably eighteen, a good mix of male/female. The average person wore black, had a tattoo(s), a piercing(s), and looked like they were there to be seen. None of which is a slam because I saw Jesus in the midst of these people.
Because I was working for Oxfam, it was my job to talk to these people about extreme poverty. In almost every instance, they were just like me. Real people. But there was also a deep sense of pain and longing for acceptance. One girl I met had a brand on her arm with marks from where she had been cutting herself. One guy I met had large amounts of piercings in his face. One girl had a fishnet stocking shirt, and a see through bra that exposed her large breasts. Most of the guys were there to stare at the girls, nod their head to the beat of the music, and think about what it would be like to talk to the girl over there. And the overwhelming sense I got was that this was a collection of kids who had banded together because they had been rejected. They didn’t fit in. These were the kids that would likely scare the average church goer on Sunday. And in the process, they are typically sitting outside the church. I was reminded of a book I read in college, “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?” by Beverly Tatum. They did so for protection. They did so to find some sense of collective support because they were the “different” ones.
Walking around the park, I kept getting a sense that somewhere along the way they believed the message that they weren’t worth it. They were the rejected. And the images they were projecting were almost exlusively about death. A lot of the posters for the bands had something to do with gothic imagery or rejection (All Time Low, Desperation Squad, Bad Religion, Total Chaos). And in the process they had banded together and celebrated that rejection. They were wearing their rejection on their sleeve. And I kept wondering how we as a church could find a way to transcend our expectations of what someone looked like so that they could find a true sense of restoration that Jesus was offering. How do we “be” love for these people. Not in a way that says, “You’ve gotta lose that hair, son.” But in a way that would just be love to these people. Because the reality is that these kids are just as important to God as I am.
How can we as a church show these people love so that they may know they are worth it to God? How do we transcend our own fears and bridge that gap that exists between us. If we really believe in a mission of restoration, how do we show these group of kids they are loved.
Again, your thoughts are appreciated.
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Missio Dei 