Mike Yaconelli - Messy Spirituality: Gods Annoying Love for Imperfect People

Contents

Messy Spirituality
Copyright 2002, 2007 by Michael Yaconelli

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ePub Edition March 2020 ISBN: 978-0-310-86787-6

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yaconelli, Mike.

Messy spirituality : Gods annoying love for imperfect people / Michael Yaconelli.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-10: 0-310-27730-2 (softcover)

ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27730-9 (softcover)

1. Spirituality. I. Title.

BV4501.3.Y33 2002

248.4dc21

2001007125

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

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from T HE M ESSAGE Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

Interior design by Beth Shagene

Printed in the United States of America

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For my mom,
Marguerite Yaconelli,
who instilled in me a fondness for grace

July 24, 1942October 30, 2003

D isorganized. Full of integrity. Kind. Sincere. Intense. Eccentric. Passionate. Spontaneous. Periodically angry. Extremely bright. Painfully honest. Gregarious. Deeply insecure. A curious mix of introversion and extroversion. Fun loving. Doubtful faithful faith full faith nurturing. Impractical. Extraordinary. Carefree. Lonely. Inquisitive. Adventurous. Blunderer. The absolute master of romance. Introspective. Inspiring. Forlorn. Tender. Energetic. Stress cadet. Snuggly. Grace obsessed. Grace filled. Grace spreader. Passionate. Clueless. Poetic. Road-rager. Indescribably hilarious. Both steady and erratic. Sensitive. Moral. Selfless. Whimsical. Prophetic. Artistic. Unruly. Wise. Honorable. Angst infested. Rebellious. Generous beyond description. Mess maker. Childlike. Remarkable. God haunted. Jesus lover. Jesus stalker. Jesus inhabited. His childrens loving, devoted, playful, motivating, and encouraging father and friend. My true love, soul mate, and incredible, one-of-a-kind husband: Michael.

Sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. on October 29, 2003, our familys life was irrevocably changed in the blink of an eye. Michael and I had been moving his father into a new apartment in southern Oregon, and the three of us were headed an hour and a half south to our home in northern California to spend the night. My father-in-law, whod had aortic-aneurysm surgery a couple of weeks prior, seemed too tired to drive himself, so Dad rode with me while my husband went ahead of us in his fathers small pickup truck.

As we pulled in the driveway, there was no white pickup to greet us. My heart began to race as I tried to assure Dad that Michael had most likely stopped at the store and would drive in shortly. Ten minutes later, when I phoned the California Highway Patrol with the license plate number of Dads truck, my worst fears were confirmed: Michael had been in a serious, single-car accident and was in the hospital with major injuries and massive head trauma.

At 4:00 a.m. on Thursday, October 30, 2003, with family by his side, Michael Charles Yaconelli passed from mortal life into the eternal glory that is beyond time.

Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.

Sir Walter Scott

Mike Yaconelli doggedly chased after Jesus from the time he was ten years oldthe real Jesus; not the ethereal, white-robed, sonorous-voiced, halo-headed, float-above-the-ground Jesus, but rather the earthy, untidy, wild, gritty, table-overturning, fully human yet divine, tender, compassionate, dangerous, understanding, grace-filled Jesus. That Jesus gradually revealed himself to Michael throughout his life, but never more profoundly than in the ten to twelve years preceding Michaels untimely death.

In the 1980s and 90s, as the editor of a satirical Christian magazine called The Wittenburg Door, Mike became a bit of a table-overturner himself in the face of the excesses of tel-evangelism. (No need to name names from those daysa quick search on Google will tell you who they were back then. Theres a fresh and plentiful contingent of them today.) He was appalled at the false gospel that was being sold to people through their television screens. For nearly twenty years, Mike used the vehicle of The Door (the name the magazine had morphed into) to expose the outrageously fallacious and downright ridiculous things being done in the name of the Jesus he so loved.

Mike began introducing young people to Jesus as a church camp counselor in the early 1960s, when he was just eighteen years old. Rebel that he was, Mike was kicked out of two Bible colleges before ultimately graduating from San Diego State University with a degree in communications. He was always fond of telling people that it took him ten years to get his four-year education, and he gleefully told the stories of how he came to be kicked out of those two Bible colleges. These stories encompass unbelievably terrible things like violating the eighteen-inch rule by sitting too close to a girl at a basketball game; hiding in the dormitory bathroom stalls (by propping his hands and feet against the walls) during the lights out room checks; calling the Dean of Men a liar and telling him to go to hell when wrongly accused of planning to meet up with a girl (it was accidental, but he did use the opportunity to chat with her); using real blanks in a shotgun during the performance of a play he was student directing (flames shot ten feet out of the gun); and so much more. Im pleased to report that Mikes mischief-making continued to be part of his repertoire throughout his life, growing into much more sophisticated pranks that had me, the kids, and most of our friends laughing so hard we were frequently in danger of needing a change of pants.