Ch. 2, Pt. 2: Nostalgia of a Pastor’s Kid (PK)
Photo by Jorge Vasconez
Have you read Pt. 1?
When I was little-little, I associated CHURCH with pews, red velvet sanctuary carpet, booming voices singing hymns, pipe-organ music, flannel-graph Bible stories, and all the interesting smells produced by the "fellowship hall" (a.k.a. the church basement).
Also, silk flowers.
Our church in Kansas – where we moved from South Carolina for my dad's first pastoral assignment – had a stuffy room behind the stage solely dedicated to silk flowers for every season. As a first-time pastor's wife, my mom took it upon herself to get acquainted with this room and the "skill" of arranging these dusty, fake flowers.
*My mom is the most resourceful person I know! She also took up stenciling - to spruce up the church basement’s cinderblock walls and those of the rundown parsonage where we lived. As well as crocheting blankets and doilies, gardening, canning the countless cucumbers that our garden produced into pickles, piano, singing, bread-baking, and breeding kittens – all hobbies (or side hustles) that were apparently useful for the ministry there.
It felt like we made an inordinate amount of house calls as a pastoral family (our church had a sizable elderly population) - gifting loaves of homemade bread wherever we went. The people we visited almost always fed us, which was nice but made the lengthy visits (from a kid’s perspective) last even longer. We ate chicken and noodles, casseroles à la “cream of mushroom” or “cream of celery” cans, and all manner of Jell-O desserts…
At home, my little sister and I enjoyed making up games and building forts with the long-abandoned furniture and cobwebby boxes in our basement. We prepared magic shows and musical performances for any guests who dropped by. We played “house.” We played outside in the dirt or the freshly laid, twinkling snow. We ate mulberries from the tree in our front yard, sucked the nectar from our honeysuckle flowers in the backyard, and watched the "helicopters" (maple seeds) meander to the ground, as we too swirled and landed in the soft grass. In the summer, we ran through our (one) garden sprinkler in our swimsuits. It moved from side to side, spraying its thin, even streams of water – nothing fancy. But the air was hot, the water was cold, and we were kids – so it was the best thing ever!
We recorded Little House on the Prairie, Christy, and Dr. Quinn re-runs on VHS tapes, to be able to watch "on demand." We were gifted all the VeggieTales (groundbreaking Christian media, featuring animated vegetables as Bible characters) and especially loved the segment called “Silly Songs with Larry”: the cucumber who sang hits like “Oh Where Is My Hairbrush?” “Everybody’s Got a Water Buffalo,” and the tune I most often performed, “I Love My Lips”! On our yearly road trip to Colorado for the pastors and families retreat, we listened to Adventures in Odyssey on cassette tape. Music by Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael W. Smith, and Carman was all the rage.
My sister and I were homeschooled, but I went to a (predominantly) Amish school one day a week, where I learned how to jump double dutch during recess and (ironically) how to type on a computer keyboard #mavisbeacon. It was here that I also learned I did not like boxed milk or square pizza.
Trading Tornados for Hurricanes
Then, when I was 9 years old, we traded tornados for hurricanes, snowmen for sandcastles, wheat fields for orange groves, and Dorothy for Mickey as my family and I, and our three cats, made the (24 hrs + stops) drive from Kansas to our new house in a suburb of South Florida.
At the end of our long move-in day, we all donned our swimming gear to hit up the neighborhood pool. The way I remember it: the sun was just setting, the sky was pink and dotted with clouds, the palm trees swayed in the breeze, and the pool was warm as bathwater.
I was awestruck that we could now call this place HOME – with orange and red hibiscus flowers lining the walk to our front door, a community pool where we could meet kids our own age, a grassy island with sand-volleyball and a playground right in front of our house, all on a quiet cul-de-sac where we could ride our bikes. It was PARADISE!
This neighborhood, and this house, came to represent CHURCH to me.
The church our family started: “The Lighthouse Church” – the reason we moved to SoFlo – never would have a consistent physical meeting place. The Sunday service moved more times than I can recall over the course of 10 years (I think I’ve heard my dad say 16x) ...from a movie theater to a hotel banquet room, to a school cafeteria, to a gazebo in a park...we never were able to settle anywhere for long. But the real-life of the church happened in my living room on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, anyway.
In church planting lingo, The Lighthouse was a “parachute drop,” meaning: we had no pre-existing relationships in Florida. We were starting from scratch. And, as 1 of 4 people on the O.G. Lighthouse launch team (along with my mom, dad, and sister), I was IN IT. The inner workings of the church were indistinguishable from home and family. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.
My parents, sister, and I were a complete unit, each of us with a unique role in the ministry. Some PKs rebel as teenagers (so I’ve heard), but I leaned in the opposite direction. I embraced the community of faith, was happy to have a voice in leadership, and loved that I had a built-in, extended family there for me week after week.
This beautiful community: all the (once) strangers who became close friends...this is what made me want to be a pastor and church planter. Communitas! – that’s what I thought church planting was about! And I was right.
This coming together, this joining of so many different types of people (who wouldn’t normally belong together) on one shared path of faith, felt miraculous. It felt like a unique expression of humanity and love in the world. And it made a monumental impact on my life.
At Lighthouse, I experienced the best of the church – a pulsating body of life and love, divinity and humanity, struggles and triumphs. I think anyone who spent time with our small community of faith felt the radiating life and love within — that we were a family and took care of each other.
A Glimpse into the Best of Church
We were a loud and rowdy bunch, always eating. My central-Pennsylvania-native, “meat and potatoes” family was delighted to try cuisines from around the world, thanks to friends who immigrated to Florida from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Italy, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Croix, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, South Africa, Lebanon, and dozens more locations. I mean: picadillo with red beans over rice, overflowing arepas, squid ceviche, chicken cacciatore and split pea soup, jerk chicken, FLAN!!! Potlucks were epic! And also never without several boxes of Publix fried chicken thrown in for good measure!
*The expansion of my family’s knowledge of food is a microcosm of all the ways our lives were expanded as a result of our move. I mean, we were introduced to cooking staples like cilantro, mangos, and avocados for the first time! Who would I even be without avocados?!
Who would I even be without this move…these people…this community? I have no idea.
We were an active bunch as well (especially the youth group), often found playing manhunt, flag football, or capture the flag. One time, in an accidental and hilarious combination of elements, we played soccer in an outdoor hockey rink at night — no lights — slipping and sliding in a downpour of rain. By the end, we were drenched from head to toe and laughing hysterically — kids and adults alike!
We spent whole days together at Hollywood beach, threw dance parties and holiday picnics, planned roadtrips to Aquire the Fire and Rock the Universe, and also just sat around doing nothing. We were very good at loitering, actually – around Town Center, in Starbucks, at the Sawgrass Mall, or Regional Park. Someone always had cards in case the opportunity arose for a competitive game of Spit or Nerts.
There were plenty of times the Bible was read, prayers were prayed, and people were baptized (in the ocean) too. When I picture my living room, I see Dad sitting on our old burgundy Lazy-boy, wearing basketball shorts, a Yankees T-shirt, and long white socks — a hefty, leather-bound Bible open on his lap — surrounded by a gathering of youth. Some sitting on the staircase next to the door, some on our old green-plaid couch against the wall, some listening from the kitchen. Many, admittedly, just waiting for that last "amen" to run and grab a handful of my mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies from their "hiding place" on top of the fridge. Or to run through the laundry room to the garage to resume the game they made up with a volleyball on the pool table (volleypong).
I can still hear Dad asking, "What's one thing that stood out to you from the passage tonight? Or one thing you'd like to pray about?" and we'd go around the room. Though some would "pass," everyone was given the opportunity to participate. The room gave each voice its full attention. Everyone was made to feel like they mattered.
Thursday night youth group was never flashy or "cool," but it was consistent. It was love and life and family broken open for anyone who walked in. Sometimes it was 10 people, sometimes 25, but it was always the same place, same time, same vibe.
Sometimes the chocolate chip cookies would be replaced by blonde brownies or tawny cakes, and the people would protest. Because they could. They loved to pick on my mom because they loved her like a mom. She embodied warmth, generosity, and inclusion.
I don't think any of us knew quite how special or rare it was at the time: the anomaly that was our youth group. But now we do. Because it’s been difficult to find anywhere else!
The Lighthouse Rubric
When Gabe and I were church planting, we thought a lot about The Lighthouse: what it meant to us, what made it the way that it was, what gave it that “it” factor. We tried to filter our plans through that rubric, because it was the best church experience either of us had ever had.
But we couldn't recreate it.
We were planting in 2013, not 1999. We lived in Central, not South Florida. Rather than having a 7 and a 9-year-old with built-in affinity to other “young families,” we and our team members were fresh out of college, newly married, and childless. Rather than meeting disconnected Catholics and non-practicing Christians, we were meeting people of other faiths and people with no religious affiliation or interest.
Rather than seeing evidence of God’s miraculous presence leading us to “divine appointments” and outrageous answers to prayer like my parents experienced – God seemed to be taking a much more quiet and subtle approach in our case.
We were disappointed to learn that we were Gabe and Felicia, not Patrick and Sherry. We didn’t have my dad’s charisma, persuasive vision casting, or skill for entrepreneurship, or my mom’s effortless hospitality or ease in mentorship. And “The Lighthouse rubric” (start a church service and the people will come!) – was not a good fit for us or our context.
We were tossed around by these, our own expectations, too.
It's tempting to glorify the memories of something post mortem, like The Lighthouse. Tempting to remember the highs and forget the lows. But, when I think a little longer, I remember the struggles too. The money struggles. The endless “giving” required of my parents to "make it happen." The transience of South Florida, with the love and loss of friends who came and went. The agility and readiness necessary to change plans on a moment's notice. The weariness that slowly but surely set in. My parents' own burnout. The day we left.
I lived that struggle, so I KNEW that church planting would be HARD. But, I thought I knew what kind of hard and I thought I was inoculated from it. I thought Overflow struggles would be the same as those of Lighthouse. I thought I knew what to expect!
I thought…I thought…I thought….
But I didn’t know.
I couldn’t know.
