Donovan Lee

So a Lutheran youth group walks into a bar . . . 

Not the beginning of a joke, but the reality of trying to find a table for 18 people in Whitehorse, Canada on a Friday night. It truly was the only table open and I didn't know it would be in the bar right in front of the live musician who looked like he walked out of the biker gang and onto the stage.

Teresa told him the music was too loud. That won us points. The musician was already thrilled to have a crew of teenagers sitting right in front of him staring at his two toned beard. He made it PG-13 for us, which meant he didn't drop the f-bomb, but everything else was allowed.

So there we are in the bar and I suddenly imagine that this evening is going to go poorly. It's our last night, we're exhausted and emotionally raw and really hungry. The beatdown on TV was about to become a reality.


That's when we lied.

Because every scary biker, two-tone bearded country musician wants a church group of teenagers as his main audience, Kirt and I told him that they were all our children. 

He liked that, but then we confessed that it was a church group. And he told us we were screwed.

That's when he started to tell us that he and Jesus were not doing so well right now. He had a year when nearly everyone he loved died, including his wife. 

And then he sang us a song that made me cry. 

And then he sang us every song he had about Jesus, which was two. One of them was called The Bible or the Bottle. We fell in love with him and the vulnerability of loss and ache he shared with us was a God moment for many in our group that night.

The final song he sang, 
"You gotta love the ones that you got, one day they're here and the next day they're not, you gotta hold 'em tight and keep them near, keep them close to your heart with the things you love so dear, live each day like it was your last, don't live with hate in your heart, dwelling on the past, you gotta love everyone even the ones that done you wrong, and one day when you have kids of your own, I hope you pass this on."

We're thinking about making it the camp song next year. 

When we wrapped up our wild week with our hodgepodge crew of kids, one of the older ones who will be transitioning soon said something like, "That's what we're doing. We're passing the grace and love down to the next crew of kids." 

Maybe the church should hang out in bars a bit more often.