Mike Sares - Pure Scum: The Left-Out, the Right-Brained and the Grace of God

Pure Scum

The Left-Out, the Right-Brained and the Grace of God

Mike Sares

www.IVPress.com/ books

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400
Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
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2010 by Mike Sares

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org .

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version NIVCopyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The song A Broken Man, written by Mark Heard, is 1992 IDEOLA MUSIC (ASCAP)/Administered by BUG MUSIC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

The song House of Broken Dreams, written by Mark Heard, is 1990 IDEOLA MUSIC (ASCAP)/Administered by BUG MUSIC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

The song Dont Do Anything, written by Sam Phillips, is 2008 EDEN BRIDGE MUSIC (ASCAP)/Administered by BUG MUSIC. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

The song Thats Why We Dont Love God, written by Randy Stonehill, is 1994 Stonehillian Music (from Randy Stonehill The Lazarus Heart Street Level Records) and is used with permission of the publisher.

Design: Jonathan Till
Images: Rural school children in Texas, 1943. John Vachon/Library of Congress, LC-USW36-830

ISBN 978-0-8308-7928-1 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-3629-1 (print)

Dedication

For Mary Patricia Francel Sares

Miluji t. ' . I love you.

Contents

Acknowledgments

M argaret Feinberg and Leif Oines, I am in your loving debt. You put me together with the Likewise Books folks. You helped me to start and finish this book in your home (and even took dictation when I was stuck). You kept me focused and pushed me to be a better writer. Thanks gobs and gobs and gobs.

David Zimmerman, youre a superhero without the cape or tights. (Hmm... I probably shouldnt have mentioned tights. An editor would have deleted that reference, Ill bet.) Your vision for Likewise and this project, and your masterful editing, made this book much better than it would have been.

Big thanks to Anna Till and Mollie Fitzpatrick for help in typing the manuscript from stuff I said. Good thing they deleted my ridiculously long pauses.

Thanks to Chad Allen of Baker Books for helping me gather my thoughts in a cohesive outline and for the pithy chapter titles. (And thanks for not hating me for going with Likewise. My only defense is from Acts 26:19: So then, Chad , I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.)

Joy and Scotty Sawyer, you were the first to envision this book back when Scum of the Earth began. Joy told me that being fired earlier was Gods kiss on my forehead. (Smartypants.)

The Preaching TeamRev. Les Avery, Rev. Jim Emig and Rev. Steve Garciayour wisdom is peppered throughout Pure Scum. Without you, much of my life would suck swamp water. Im not talking about the beverage. Im talking about the stuff that sustains mosquito larvae.

And heres to Ray Nethery, Ned Berube and the Alliance for Renewal Churches (a.k.a. The Rebel Alliance). You took me in when others balked at the idea. Youre like my own Obi-Wan and Yoda. You make 1 Thessalonians 5:11-13 an easy task.

Jonathan Till, Scums Designer Laureate: youve known that Ive always been an unstylish guy stuck in the middle of much hipper people. Thanks for making the book look cool, at least.

Books take time. I so appreciate the council and staff at Scum of the Earth Church, who granted me a sabbatical, filled in during my absences and put up with my necessity to focus on writing at times. Were in this story together, so, uh, lets make it... um... a comedy!

Special thanks to my wife, Mary, who helped me to remember the things I forgot, and to correct things I remembered. You couldve stopped the whole Scum thing from happening in the first place; thanks for taking the risk with me! Thanks to our children, Katina, Sophia, Luke and Ethan, who in ways that few understand took that risk without having a choice to do so or not.

And thanks to Mom and Dad for telling me to finally go to Denver Seminary.

o o . o , o , o o o.

Invocation

A t the funerals of ancient Greek warriors, it was simple. No one wasted the time and effort we spend in the modern era trying to justify the lives of the deceased by assigning meaning to their deaths, or attempting to grasp something purposeful in their lives that we may apply to our own. Instead, only one question was asked of the recently departed by the friends and family that gathered to remember them: Did they live with passion? Mike Sares is, without any argument, the most passionate person I have ever met.

In the summer of 1995 I was a very lost young college student who had stumbled through the doors of the church nearest to my house. I had recently been asked to leave the third church I had been to in four yearseither that or cut my hair, or at least stop dying it obnoxiously bright colors, and get rid of some of the earrings and the nose ring. It was, in a way, the death of church as I knew it. Not that I had stopped believing in Christ or that the church had ceased to be alive to me, but that the smaller institution of churchas in the buildingwas becoming far less relevant to me. And as it quietly started to slip away, and as I was somehow attempting to find purpose and meaning in that death (much in the same way we still do at funerals), I met Mike.

He was, at the time, the young adults director at Corona Presbyterian Church in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Denver. I had gone there expecting to be shunned, or at least looked down on, but that was never the case. Every person I met there genuinely accepted me for who I was. Something beyond the superficiality of handshakes and turning to the people next to you and greeting them existed there, and at its apex was Michael Sares.

In the beginning, three or four of us from Five Iron Frenzy were going there, because, as I said, it was the closest church to our house. What transpired was an act of what I can only say with tremendous understatementprovidence. Where others saw rebellion, Mike could somehow only see potential. When he found out that there was some sort of punk band with horns attending his church, instead of condemning us, he steered another of his parishioners, Dennis Culp, to try out as our trombonist. Not only did Dennis become the musical anchor of our band, but soon Mike became our spiritual mainstay. He pursued us all vigilantly, sometimes helping us to sift through record contracts, sometimes feeding us, sometimes providing advice and, oftentimes, just listening.

Mike is a natural shepherd, and were it not for all of the botched attempts at mentoring inflicted on me throughout my formative years, I would never have known what a great mentor Mike really is. Over the past thirteen years that I have known him, he has been a pastor, a friend and a father figure to me. This book is about thatnot just a story about mentoring but a story of how Mike saw the value of just taking in some lost punk-rocker-type college kids, and believing in them.