In Their Words

Steve Case, Florida

Years ago I was working as a youth minister is a rather dysfunctional church. It was not a happy place. I was youth minister number 5 in seven years. Not a healthy church by any means. I lasted 17 months, which was actually a bit longer than the guy before me.

I remember being at a National Youth Workers Convention: Five thousand youth ministers all in one building. Normally this would fill be with joy but I was so stressed and so angry and so much in sorrow about the job I had waiting for me back home that I could not find any moment of peace. Two of the members of the church who volunteered to work with youth attended the same conference and it seemed like they were following me around watching me. Keeping notes.

Sitting in one of the main sessions a singer by the named of Ken Medema was on the stage. Ken sings from his heart and will often open himself up to God’s will and make up the song as he goes. Trusting that God will give him the notes and the words. On this night, Ken began to sing these words.

You be the potter
I’ll be the clay
Pour down your water
On me this day
Break and remake me
In a thousand ways
You be the potter
I’ll be the clay

That was the chorus. The room picked up on it and sang along with Ken each time it came around. Then he started this verse.

I dreamed last night that I saw you Steve.
A hopeless and hungry man.
Who wants to do the best for God
and does everything he can.
Oh what a wretch this man has been
But here’s the wondrous thing.
He’ll be a jar on a shelf in a room
That holds the throne of a king.

There was no reason for him to sing to Steve.

I had never met him.

He didn’t know me.

But he started singing to me.

At that moment I lost it. I broke down. Most people can cry and then compose themselves but sometimes you literally break down and weep uncontrollably.

I was gone. I was totally wrecked.

I have tried to describe this experience in the past and the most accurate words I’ve ever been able to find is, it was like a toilet flush.

Emotionally.
Mentally.
Physically.
Spiritually.

I was holding my head in hands weeping. My tears pouring through my fingers. I couldn’t sit up anymore and fell to my knees there in the row of chairs. A woman named Marjorie who later became one of my greatest friends held my shoulders and let me cry.

At that moment, all of my anger, all of my hate, all of my stress, all of my fear, all of my doubts, all of my anxiety, all of my life just came pouring out of me. I couldn’t’ stop. I just cried and cried and cried.

I believe at that moment I was beyond the CRASH maybe it was a full on collision with God. I’m sure of it.

At that moment I was beyond myself.

I was fully and wholly in God’s presence and He was emptying me.

I was being emptied so that I could be filled.

I didn’t last much longer in that church.

I was fired just a few months later.

I am now at a much better place with people who love me and respect me and appreciate what I do.

I believe I was in the presence of God at that moment because “I decided to.”

No, of course there is no proof.

But I know it because I know it.

~ This is a story from Steve Case, which he included in his recent book, Crash: Prayers from the Collision of Heaven and Earth. Steve has been doing youth ministry for a really long time and is currently the Youth Minister at Windermere Union United Church of Christ in Florida.