If You Build It... Will They Come?
Recently in Iowa a group brought me out to do an event at an 800 seat auditorium. đł I've never pulled a crowd that size. Was this going to be an utter disaster?
Before the event began I paced backstage.
Stretching, fidgeting, looking over my notes one last time.
Nerves shimmered throughoutâas they always do before I speak, but this time was a bit⊠extra.
Was anyone coming?
I met Alice in late â22 after she resigned from her pastoral position (of 20+ years!) because she knew that once she officiated her friendsâ wedding (between two women) sheâd be terminated. She left on her own terms. Respect.
Even still, itâs a lonely feeling to leave the only work youâve ever known, and to have the instinct that once youâre on the other side, many people you once knew and loved and worked with will not be there with you.
I can relate.
âWe need to bring you to Iowa,â Alice told me one afternoon. âThis place needs your message.â
After several emails back and forth, and after Alice had rallied friends, colleagues, and local-non profits to help raise the money, we had a plan.
On April 6th Iâd fly out and preach Sunday morning at a St John Lutheran churchâwho, by the way, were a mere weeks away from voting to officially become RIC, Reconciling in Christ, a process Lutheran churches can go through to become officially an open and affirming congregation. So freaking cool. đ„ł
Then Sunday night weâd hold an event at the University of Northern Iowa inside a place called Lang Hall titled, âWhy LGBTQ Affirming Christianity is NOT an Oxymoron.â
It was going to be an all new presentation for me, a combination of new material and re-organized ideas from previous lectures/sermons.
I was really, really stoked for it.
And thenâŠ
my heart sunk when, during the planning stage, Alice sent me this photo of Lang Hall.
It seats 800 people. đł
Now, I loved Aliceâs optimism, but I knew the kind of turnouts for events like this.
I knew because, well, Iâm always there. Me and (on a good night), about a hundred people.
I donât have a big platform. Iâm not a big draw. Thereâs no way we were going to get enough people in that room to even make it feel decently attended.
Now, please trust me when I say, I do not care about crowd size. Iâm just as thrilled to be in a Sunday School class of 15 people as I am preaching to several hundred.
My whole mission in life is to be a conduit of love, and Iâm not responsible for who or how many people that love spreads to.
Iâm just asked by God to show up and be the conduit.
But I do know a thing or two about room dynamics, and critical mass, and energetic space. Spread out 75 people in a room meant for 800 and itâs just going to feel⊠off.
Yet Aliceâs enthusiasm was palpable, so I kept my worries to myself.
After all, Iâm wrong all the time about all sorts of things.
Maybe this will be one of them?
Itâs about 20 minutes before the event begins and I sneak out from backstage to look for a restroom. My nerves are manifesting, I must tend to them.
Descending the side stairs I dare glance at the room, preparing to be like, âyup, that checks out⊠just a handful of folks tonight. Itâs gonna be an awkward empty room.â
Holy smokes.
Iâm wrong.
Very wrong.
There are people here. A lot of them. And theyâre still coming.
Approximately two hours ago the stateâs most exciting athlete had just competed in and lost the national championship. We wondered if this might impact the turnout.
It did not.
Turns out, people can be both bummed that Caitlin Clark and Iowa lost⊠AND⊠show up for an evening on why affirming Christianity is not an oxymoron.
Walking toward the back of Lang Hall I look at whoâs in the seats. The diversity of the room delights my soul.
Where did all these people come from? And why are they here?!
Itâs funny sometimes for me to think about me, myself and I.
Like, I know who I am. I know that not only am I not all that interesting of a person, but Iâm also quite a goober. Overcompensating for this, I often project an air of someone who has got it more together (see: Enneagram Type Three).
But, like, for reals, Iâm just a random dude from a small town in Oregon.
Why do people read anything I write?
Why do people show up to things when I talk?
I actually know the answer to this: the aforementioned concept of me being a Conduit of Love.
When Iâm at my best it actually has nothing to do with me whatsoever.
Itâs the eternal Love, flowing through all things, that finds (hopefully) in me a vessel it can pour through. To quote Paul, âwhen I am weak, then I am strong.â When thereâs less of me (read: less of the pretending-me, the projecting-me, the trying-too-hard-me), then Iâm actually at my best.
Cause itâs not about me at all.
Ainât that a relief.
I make it to a bathroom and enter as Chuck is leaving.
Chuck is Aliceâs husband. He had just come from the womenâs restroom where he (or maybe he had a woman do it? yeah, probably that) was removing flyers that had been conspicuously left for attendees of the eveningâs event.
There werenât any in the menâs restroom⊠yet.
Later Chuck showed me one of the copies of the flyers he/his team kept confiscating.
âThe Truth About Unclobberâ
the flyer announced, before spending the next 1200 words going clobber passage by clobber passage and refuting my conclusions.
While I admire their commitment to warning people of me and my work, Iâm a little offended that they didnât at least refill their ink prior to printing. That backside is super faded.
Saving peopleâs souls isnât worth $24.99 at Staples?
âExposing Lies In Unclobber by Colby Martin,â the paper starts out, unsure of its commitment to what letters get capitalized and which punctuation feels good where. The lack of editing continues, âLetâs at what Colby Martin says in Unclobber, including the scriptures he uses, followed immediately by the biblically based response that cannot be refuted.â
Refute their grammar and spelling? Go for it.
But refute their biblically based arguments? Impossible.
It occurs to me: does this mean Iâve officially made it?
When people show up at my events and smuggle in oppositional pamphlets in an attempt to warn people against my heretical ways?
How exciting.
Only a few minutes now until the show starts.
I make my way back to the backstage area but am momentarily caught up by the brilliantly talented Melissa Barrison, who is providing the pre-show entertainment. Sheâs got the crowd dancing, clapping, and singing along, wowing them with her electric violin prowess.
I take a seat in the front row, for a minute or two, just to soak it all in.
As I watch her perform I steal glances around the room, remembering the photo Alice sent me several months back.
I canât believe what Iâm seeing. Almost the entire downstairs seating is filled. Folks are now having to sit up in the balcony.
And theyâre still coming in.
Shaking my heading in disbelief I leave my seat, sneak up the stairs on the side of the stage, and slide behind the curtain for a last few moments of calm before giving my talk for the next two hours.
Iowa. The home of corn and Field of Dreams, a movie in which timeless words were forever etched in our cultural lexicon, âIf you build it, they will come.â
Alice (and her team) did it. They built this night. Through cunning advertising, relentless optimism, and sheer will-power, they spread word of our event to their mid-size towns in middle America.
And the people came.
I was wrong. So wrong.
And thrilled about my error.
Iâll have more thoughts later about how the night went, and what happened next, and all that. But for now, I just wanted to share this part of the story with you.
About how wrong I was, and how good that felt.
And itâs not so much that the point here is to swoon over how 500+ people came out to one of my events. Sure, that felt good, and it made for an incredibly dynamic and memorable evening. Yes and yes.
Rather, what stands out to me most, and the things I want to illuminate, are:
The fabulous efforts of those who made this happen. Alice Shirey, your passion for this is contagious. Thank you, thank you, thank you for you leadership and for making this happen. And thank you to Robin and David and the rest of the Threehouse Campus Ministries crew for your efforts. And thank you to the Tyler Greene Fund and other donors for believing in this work.
People still need to know that you can be Christian and LGBTQ. Or, Christian and an affirming ally. Often times folks just need an opportunity to think about this, to hear more information, to meet people. For that many people in that part of the world to give up two hours of their Sunday evening, itâs just the kind of heart-expanding, hope-generating energy we need.
Two hours later I would walk off the stage and go back through the curtain. But this time, as I paced the darkened room, the nerves would be replaced by tears.
As the applause continued out front (for far longer than Iâm accustomed to), I wept.
And wept.
Overcome and overwhelmed.
This work is holy.
Itâs also⊠heavy.
And somehow at the same time, light.
Wow, I thought, how did I get so lucky to get to do this?
I shed some tears reading this as well, as a Christian who is an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. Thanks for representing this cause so well. :-)
This brought back every feeling I had that epic night, Colby! Unbeknownst to you, I, too, feared the room would feel empty. I was flabbergasted to watch all those Iowans fill the seats. Your words (as I said that night) are the words this world needs right now. You, my friend, you conduit of love, are the real deal. đ„đ„đ„