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Kim and I had visited a few churches since moving to Houston, but although most of them were fine—they just served to make me angry. My gag reflex for whatever looked like fake, saccharine sweet church-ianity had become so sensitive that I could hardly even walk into one on a Sunday morning. We still wanted to set aside time for weekly worship, and we looked to our crazy landlords for inspiration—we started a house church in our apartment.

I was meeting a lot of people while playing in clubs with Love in Grey. I also met people at my friend’s shows. I think the combination of my spiritual-mystical lyrics, along with the strange poems that I said between the songs, drew the attention of a certain kind of people. I got into a lot of interesting conversations after the shows.

“What do you think about Tarot cards or speaking in tongues?”

“Do you have a favorite prayer?”

“If you’re a Christian rock band, what are you doing in a place that serves beer?”

I started inviting these people to our house on Sunday afternoons for Bible conversation and prayer.

I’d lead the group in conversations like “what does holiness mean?” or “what does it look like to really follow Jesus?” I’d read passages of scripture and we would talk about what it might be saying to us.

We usually had between ten or fifteen people who would show up—there was always someone new. Sometimes they’d come back and bring their friends. Some people were almost always there, and others would only come every few weeks. It didn’t matter to me—I didn’t care at all about how many people showed up or didn’t show up—whether the church was growing or shrinking. We didn’t take an offering, we weren’t trying to be cool or relevant—we just got together, read the Bible—talked about what we thought it might be saying to us, and prayed for each other.

It was very informal and sometimes it seemed like we were simply hanging out at my apartment for a spontaneous discussion about God—there was nothing particularly organized about our religion. There was also usually plenty of spaghetti and garlic bread to go around.

I called it The Cave, named after King David’s time hiding from Saul in the cave of Adullam—that was my only attempt at being clever. I called it that because we were such an assorted bunch of misfits.

We were a mix of believers, unbelievers, agnostics, new age loonies, people who had been hurt by a church, evangelical burn-outs, a couple of self titled Satanists who fascinated with the occult, teenagers, young married couples, musicians, drug addicts, and people who were just curious and wanted to hang around the band—anyone was welcome.

This was our church for the first year or so that we lived in Houston. I like to think that we were House Church before House Church was cool.

Out of our music friends, Dug was the one who came most regularly and sometimes brought people with him. Alan, David, Eric, Jerry and Grace dropped by a time or two. Sam and his wife Donna came once and seemed to have a nice time—they both had a lot of great things to add to the discussion.

One day after rehearsal, Sam asked how my little church thing was going. I said that it was fine and wasn’t trying to be anything more than it is. He proceeded to ask who was responsible for the spiritual health of the people who came. I said, I guess no one—me—I don’t know—it wasn’t really the point. He went on to say it should be the point, and asked who was going to visit them when they were sick? Who was going to marry them? Bury them? When was the last time they had received Communion? Who does the baptisms? How much time do you spend each week putting together the Bible lesson? Didn’t I think they deserve better than a half-assed lesson I pulled out of my back pocket ten minutes before they arrived?

I started to feel the weight of what he was saying. In my reaction against what I perceived to be the phoniness of other churches—I had started a church that was neglecting some very important things. Things the Bible seems to say a true church is supposed to be doing.

He asked if I had ever gone to Kemper’s church. Kemper had been coming to our shows and we had spoken a few times, but I didn’t know he was in leadership at a church.

The next Sunday afternoon we had our last apartment-church meeting. I shared with them what Sam had said to me, and how it made me feel like I was failing them. We had a lively conversation about it, and in the end, most of them agreed to visit Kemper’s church—ChristChurch— the following Sunday.

ChristChurch met in the cafeteria of Lutheran High North at two o’clock in the afternoon—the perfect time for musicians who were out late the night before. I walked in with an entourage of about ten of our house church friends—noticeably adding to the size of the small congregation. We were each handed a Book of Common Prayer as we entered the fluorescent glow of the makeshift worship space.

This was a liturgical church—meaning they read formal prayers in the king’s English, chanted creeds, and knew the secret rhythms of standing up, sitting down, crossing themselves, kneeling and responding with phrases like “and also with you.” It made me feel like an idiot when I didn’t instinctively know when to do what. I had never been to a service like this before—was it a Catholic church? The ministers wore black cassocks and looked like medieval monks. I had to admit that Kemper and his ArkAngel guitarist David Marshall (who was also one of the ministers) looked pretty awesome with their long rock-n-roll hair and black robes.

I didn’t know what to think about all this—it was strange to me, but we went back the next week anyway.

I had a lot of questions, most of them I had based on wildly inaccurate presuppositions—but I didn’t know that. I asked the man who was handing out Prayer Books at the door some of my concerns about the previous week. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I know how he made me feel—like I was in the wrong place and this wasn’t the church for me. He seemed to be saying, “ You don’t get it, and you might as well put the Prayer Book down and drive back home.”

I think this is what they call “seeker insensitive.”

Kemper must have noticed something about the conversation from across the room because he came charging up to us and interrupted, “Hey Frank! I’m glad to see you came back.

The over-eager greeter jumped back in, “I was just explaining to Frank how this kind of worship isn’t for everyone…”

Kemper interrupted him again, “Come over here, there are some people I want you to meet.”

As I walked away, I overheard the greeter begin to talk with the nice Satanist couple I had brought with me.

He introduced me to David Marshall and his son Jonathan, both of them were playing acoustic guitar in the worship band—which consisted of another guy on acoustic guitar and Kemper on mandolin. They led us in songs from a small paperback songbook filled with folky praise compositions by Kemper Crabb, John Michael Talbot and others.

One thing that was very different about this week’s service from last week’s was the sermon. This week Kemper gave the sermon, and it was amazing. He taught from the book of Colossians about the ultimate authority of Christ, and I swear I had visions of Jesus returning to earth like a victorious superhero—complete with a billowing cape spun from threads of pure gold. As a preacher, he was soft spoken and mostly read from his handwritten notes verbatim, but I had never heard a more powerful sermon.

After the service—which other than the sermon was every bit as strange to us as it had seemed the week before—they were having a potluck lunch. It appeared that the luck of the pot was mostly Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was fine by me. Especially since it gave me the opportunity to sit across the table from Kemper for most of the afternoon, where we began one of the most important relationships of my life.

I learned that he had not only been coming out to our shows, but was actually a fan. He told me how much he loved my bass playing, our dark ambient music, and the thought provoking lyrics. I was extremely flattered by his encouraging words.

He said, “You are obviously a reader to be able to write lyrics like that.”

I was a little ashamed to admit that I really didn’t read anything except the Bible and comic books—although, to be fair, I was talking about really cool comic books like The Watchmen, Sandman and Stray Toasters.

Along with the Bible, he had also read all of the comic books I mentioned—I was impressed. Then he went on to express his shock and subtle disgust that I hadn’t branched out a little more in my reading.

“Really? You haven’t read C.S. Lewis? G.K. Chesterton? Flannery O’Connor? Not even Tolkien? Are you serious—dude, we have to talk,” and after that he started throwing books at me—all of the authors I mentioned, plus Francis and Frank Schaeffer, Rookmaaker, Thomas Howard and so many others. That conversation was over twenty years ago and since then I have probably averaged two or three books a month—many of them handed to me by Kemper.

On the way home, Kim and I were talking about ChristChurch—comparing it to our little house church experiment.

“I don’t know—I don’t really like all the liturgical stuff,” she said, “it seems weird.”

“It feels weird to me, too, but I think we could get used to it.” What I actually meant was, I felt like we were supposed to be part of ChristChurch for a while—whether we liked it or not. We kept going, and grew to love it pretty quickly, though. It wasn’t long before we actually started to prefer liturgical worship.

It turns out that “for a while” was going to be the next eleven years.
I’m thankful and humbled that God put those amazing men in my life. He used them to challenge me and stretch me into who He wanted me to become. There was nothing I had done up to that point, and there was nothing I was ever going to do that could deserve such extravagant honor.  Sometimes it seems like they poured wisdom and knowledge all over me, and I just let it roll off of me onto the ground. It seems like most of it was just wasted on me—but, I guess that’s what I mean when I say that it’s humbling.

RainDog, our big black chow got pregnant. We had bought her in Missouri just after we moved into our second trailer home. Chows are very protective dogs, so she helped us feel a little more safe living in a sketchy neighborhood of the big city—especially the times when Kim was alone. RainDog was a fantastic pet, but one night while she was doing her business in the grass behind the apartment complex—she met another black chow. It seems unlikely for two AKC registered Chows to find each other behind a dumpster in Houston, but it was love at first sight. RainDog was going to have a fluffy little family.

As the birth day got closer we became concerned about her making a mess on the carpet, so while we slept or when we left the apartment she was confined to the tile floor of the kitchen. One morning we woke up hearing angry squeaking sounds coming from the other room. As I entered the kitchen I saw RainDog in the corner with four little black pups happily nursing on her. In the middle of the floor was a fifth pup—It had managed to crawl away from her and she couldn’t reach it because of the chain. The fifth puppy was furiously screeching at the top of its voice. I reached down to slide it over to its mother and the poor thing became vicious—growling and biting at me like a tiny demon—It was simultaneously hilarious and frightening.

As the puppies grew, they were the cutest things we had ever seen. They looked like little fluffy bears made from magic clouds. We gave one of the pups to the father’s owner in exchange for AKC papers and were able to sell the other puppies for a few hundred dollars each. Obviously this money was an amazing blessing. We sold all of them except for demon puppy—no one wanted the evil spawn lovechild of RainDog. Kim was the only person DemonPup would allow to touch him.

My dad found a buyer for DemonPup if we could get it to Illinois. We had now lived in Houston for several months and were ready to visit home, so we thought this was a good excuse to go—the trip would pay for itself. We hopped in the van with the two dogs and started driving north, but we didn’t make it far. We were barely two hours into the trip when the motor started running hot just outside Corsicana. I pulled off the freeway and into an Exxon station. I was freaking out a little since I had just rebuilt the engine, and I opened the hood—steam was shooting out the front of the radiator.

I should have known better, but I used a rag and twisted off the radiator cap. It shot toward my face like a bullet—cutting my forehead—and hot antifreeze and steam exploded all over my arms and face. I ran away from the van screaming. Kim got out and came over to me, I was hunched over and covering my face with my hands—I could taste the hot coolant, and water was dripping off me. My face and arms felt like they were on fire.

Kim was praying, “Oh, God! Please let him be alright!”

“Franki, are you alright?” She is trying to look at my face and I’m afraid to show her.

“I think so,” and I was—amazingly. I recently searched Google images for “a radiator explosion burned my face” and what I found was not pretty. It should have melted my face to look like wax, and sent me to the emergency room with bleeding blisters and a need for plastic surgery—but that’s not what happened. This is another one of those annoying miracles just begging for a skeptic to dismiss, but God protected me. My face was a little red—partially from embarrassment—and I had a small cut where the metal cap hit my head, but otherwise I was fine.

It was late and the station was closed, so we were going to have to wait until they opened in the morning. We locked the doors, got in the back of the van and went to sleep.

The hot July sun woke us up pretty early. As the manager of the station was unlocking the doors I followed him inside and told him our situation. His name was Deward, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. He came out to have a look at the problem and said it was obviously a hole in the radiator, but he wouldn’t be able to get a replacement for it until Tuesday. It was Saturday morning and Monday was the Fourth of July—we were stuck for a few days.

We went for a walk, got some breakfast at Waffle House, then returned to the van. I opened the windows and the sliding side door, then we sat in the back with the dogs. DemonPup would leave me alone as long as I left him alone. In the late afternoon, Deward came over to talk to us.

“You planning on just staying in the back of your van until Tuesday?”

I said that was pretty much the plan, we didn’t have money for a hotel, and didn’t see many other options.

“You’re welcome to come stay at my place if you want to.”

I didn’t like the idea of going to a random stranger’s house—Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all. Even if he didn’t want to kill us and make us into sausage, it was sure to be a few days of extremely awkward conversation. Then again, it was unbearably hot in the van and he was the manager of an Exxon station. If you can’t trust the hospitality of the manager of an Exxon station, who can you trust?

So before I knew it, my pretty wife, two dogs and myself were climbing into the pickup truck of a perfect stranger and headed into the mysterious outer limits of Corsicana Texas—probably to never be seen again.

We traveled on farm roads for a while, then he slowed down to turn on an unmarked dirt road, which we continued on for quite a distance. We had put the dogs in the bed of the truck like I have seen a lot of people do—but they were never my dog. RainDog had never ridden in the back of a pickup truck and I worried that she was going to jump out. As we slowed down to go over a bumpy patch of dirt road—that’s exactly what she did. She jumped out of the truck while we were going thirty or forty miles an hour and she rolled several times as she hit the ground. Fortunately, I was keeping my eye on her, otherwise we wouldn’t have noticed.

I yelled, “Stop, the dog jumped out!”

I was worried that she was hurt, but she was fine. She ran over to me when I called her, and I attached a leash to her and the spare tire so she couldn’t jump out again. DemonPup snarled and growled at me, as usual, but he was too small to jump over the side.

We finally got to Deward’s house, a little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. We went inside and he offered us something to drink. Kim and I had a cola and he poured himself a glass of whiskey—then he poured himself another. Within twenty-five minutes he was slurring his speech and rambling on about how dangerous it can be out here in the country—how you just can’t trust people anymore.

He had a wire kennel on his back porch where we put the dogs for the night. Deward muttered something about coyotes and foxes.

He insisted that we sleep in his bedroom and he would take the couch. He showed us to our room, gave us another pillow and left us alone. It was eerily quiet except for the sounds of our host shuffling things in the other room. Kim and I were pretty creeped out by this time but didn’t say anything, not wanting to freak each other out. There was a bathroom inside the master bedroom which I was thankful for, and I went inside and shut the door. As I was sitting on the toilet I noticed that against the wall, stacked waist-high, was a collection of porn magazines—adding the jeebies to my heebies.

As we were laying side by side in this strange man’s bed, looking at the ceiling, quietly talking about how we wished we had just stayed in the van— suddenly Deward busts into the room. He is standing beside the bed and he has a pistol in his hand. Kim grabs my arm and squeezes it tight—our eyes opened wide and we hardly dare to breathe.

I’m thinking, “Oh, God! This is it. This is how we are going to die.” I’m wondering how sick and twisted this night of torture is going to get before he finally kills us—how many other young people have come to the Exxon with car trouble and fallen prey to his hospitality?

He speaks with sleepy slurred speech, “It can be pretty dangerous out here at night—you really have to be careful these days. I thought y’all should have this gun to protect yourselves.”

Then he carefully places the gun on the nightstand beside Kim. “Good night. See you in the morning.”

He leaves the room shutting the door behind him. Kim’s eyes are still as wide as saucers, my heart is racing—she looks at me and says, “I thought that was it.”

It was a long time before we were both asleep.

In the morning he fried eggs and served us breakfast. He asked us questions about DemonPup and RainDog. He said we could stay at his place until the van was repaired on Tuesday, but we opted to go back to the Exxon station. We stayed in the van the next two nights until Tuesday morning when they replaced the radiator and we were back on the road. I’m pretty sure he was hoping we were going to give him the puppy for his hospitality, but it was already spoken for.

We sold DemonPup to a coal miner friend of my dad’s for $300, which paid for the radiator repair. They say he turned out to be the sweetest dog, was gentle with kids and was loved by the whole neighborhood. I also heard that one day he attacked a kid and had to be put down—I don’t know which story is true.

It felt good to be home and with family again, but under the surface of all the conversations was “it doesn’t sound like things are working out for you in Texas, maybe it’s time to come back home.”

After a few days we headed back to Houston for round two.