Dad did what he could to steer me back toward Christianity. When all else failed, he shipped me off to Arizona to a young ministers training camp called Master's Commission. As advertised, it was all about control. They had been forewarned about what a hellion I was, so the counselors (all in their mid-twenties) mapped out roles for dealing with me: One person would be good cop; another the bad cop; a third the flirtatious fellow rebel. It was like a bad John Hughes movie, and I saw right through it.
I did meet two kindred spirits in the place, however, and we decided to break out together. Mike Wall was a tall, charismatic hard-core-punk kid; Kelli Miller, Mike's partner in crime, was a free-spirited hippie throwback. They had the idea of starting a ministry that would cater to skater and punk kids in a language and style they could understand. With me as the requisite skater brat, we had our outcast bases covered.
For a while, it worked like a dream. We bailed on Master's Commission and started putting on punk shows under the name Revolution Ministries, using great local Phoenix hard-core bands to attract a crowd. We took no small amount of pride in the fact that our preaching was the wildest part of the night. We had all sorts of antics: Mike would smash TVs with a sledgehammer; I'd pretend to puke onstage. We got ourselves banned by some local youth groups, which did wonders for our street cred.
I was in so much personal pain that I had no trouble relating to the suffering of the troubled teens our ministry attracted.
If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that God was through with me: I had even failed at the burnout-and-misfit church!
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