Jim Burgen - No More Dragons: Get Free from Broken Dreams, Lost Hope, Bad Religion, and Other Monsters

Jim Burgen does an amazing job of authentically telling his story and how Jesus helped him break free. Youll want to read No More Dragons and discover how you can break free from anything and everything that keeps you from being the person God meant for you to be and to help others do the same.

Dave Ferguson, lead pastor, Community Christian Church; lead visionary, NewThing

2014 by James M. Burgen aka Jim Burgen

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Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Italics added to Scripture quotations reflect the authors own emphasis.

Written and edited in association with Ben Foote.

Names and identifying details of some people mentioned in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-1-4002-0562-2

ISBN: 978-1-4002-0563-9 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

14 15 16 17 18 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Robin, my wife, my best friend, and my hero.

CONTENTS

1
YOU, ME, AND DRAGONS

Ive been staring at my computer screen for the last few days in an attempt to write the first line of whatever this thing is that Im about to write. Its not off to a good start.

I could do something along the lines of a twelve-step program: Hi, my name is Jim, and Im a dragon. Then everyone in the circle chimes, Hi, Jim. But that feels weird and kind of depressing.

I could try the late-night infomercial route: Attention! Are you tired of being a dragon? Call now and well send you our No More Dragons kit. But wait! Theres more! If you call in the next thirty minutes, well throw in some steak knives!

Im sorry. This is simply how my brain works. I should probably call my doctor and get my ADHD meds adjusted. (You think Im kidding, but Im not.)

As usual, Im getting distracted.

Anyway, I guess Ill just start typing, and well see what comes out. I promise that somewhere along the way, Ill explain this dragon thing.

FROM PK TO DRAGON

Ill start with my story.

Im a PK. Thats a preachers kid for all you normal people. I was born in Texas in a little town that had one flasher (a traffic light at an intersection, not a creepy guy with a trench coat). My dad, Chuck, was the pastor of a church in this tiny town, but we didnt stay there long. One of the elders told my dad he wasnt allowed to baptize an African American man in the church baptistery. He said to my dad, Chuck, someday youll understand that them Negroes dont have souls. Ive even cleaned up that quote. My dad went home, told my mom to pack, and we left that town in our dust.

We spent the next several years in Oklahoma. I only have two real memories of our time there. Number one: We were at a rodeo when a bull got loose. Everybody had to run to the top of the fairground bleachers in order to escape sure death.

Number two: I choked on a lemon drop during one of my dads Sunday morning sermons, and my gagging pretty much hijacked the service. When youre a PK, the congregation believes they have the right to parent you, so everybody took turns punching me in the back like a three-year-old piata and yelling, Breathe! I guess the Heimlich maneuver hadnt made it to the panhandle of Oklahoma yet.

When I was five we moved to Indiana, where I lived until I headed off for college at eighteen. We lived in the parsonage of the church where my dad worked. This naturally meant three things. First, to most of the church members, our house was public property. No knocking, no privacy, and certainly no skipping church. Second, when it was nasty outside, I could roller-skate in the church basement. Third, in the summertime, when no one was looking, I was able to sneak a swim or two in the church baptistery. (My dad has gone to heaven, which makes that safe to confess now.)

I loved growing up in church. I loved all of it. Sunday morning church. Sunday school with the awesome felt-board Bible stories. Sunday night youth group, choir, Christmas Eve candlelight services, hay rides, summer camp. I did it all, and I loved every minute of it. (Except for once a year when The Wizard of Oz was on television on Sunday, and I was the only kid in the universe who wasnt able to watch it.) I still hold the award for Longest Army Crawl under the Pews Before Dad Catches You and Spanks You in Front of the Whole Church. (Its a long title for an award, but it was worth it.) When I was eight, my dad baptized me. Everything was cool. Life was good.

Until junior high. These three years between elementary school and high school are a merciless burden of pain and embarrassment in any boys life. I dont think God makes mistakes, but if he did, junior high would be on the top of my list. Specifically, the whole puberty thing.

Maybe junior high is awesome if youre an early bloomer. I was not. I sang alto in the church choir until the eleventh grade. Without fail, every junior high physical education class assigned me a locker between Harry Bigfoot and Charlie Chest Hair.

Those were the years when my prayer life consisted of one prayer: Dear God, I know you can do all things. Im not asking for world peace, a cure for famine and disease, or protection from nuclear disaster. Instead, I have a simple request: one chest hair. Please. In Jesus name, amen.

The heavens were silent.

I could go on and on, but I wont. Im just stressing that junior high was rough.

The worst part came from the most unexpected place: my church. For reasons that remain unknown, my church experienced a civil war that was anything but civil. My church blew to pieces.

To use church language, our congregation had a split. A split is when one group of people becomes upset with another group of people about the direction a church is headed. The split usually occurs because of important stuff like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary or which brand of grape juice to use for Communion. So my church started fighting with one another, and somehow my dad was tossed into the crossfire of their religious turf war. In the name of Christian sharing, they would spread vicious rumors about my family via pious prayer requests.

During that summer of my eighth grade year, as I watched my dad come home night after night, rest his head on the kitchen table, and cry as he felt the years of ministry slipping through his fingers, I learned a big lesson about Christianity: Christians are mean.

The truth is that only some Christians are mean, but at the time, I walked away thinking that all Christians were mean.

Christians can talk about love, sing about forgiveness, and quote Bible verses about grace, but when it comes to church politics, all that gets tossed out the window. Apparently, some Christians think they have found secret Bible verses that grant exception to the Jesus and love stuff when it comes to who gets to pick the worship songs and whether or not the choir will wear robes.