I’m standing in a field watching two bare-assed children play in a mud hole. One of them is mine.
The other belongs to friends I haven’t seen in years. We didn’t plan for this impromptu swim session. We packed sunscreen but not swimsuits.
We left a lot of other stuff back in our car and hotel room. Shame, judgment and expectations, to name but a few.
In between the cackles of laughter from naked children and their older clothed siblings, I take in the Woodstock-like scene. We are surrounded by Jet Streams and other giant RVs. There are tents of every size, supporting an array of colors that would put a Crayola box to shame.
I can smell a New York block’s worth of different foods sizzling on grills and personal hibachis. Chicken, hamburger, frankfurters and bone-in pork chops do their damndest to lure me into neighboring encampments. Coolers, mini-fridges, and iced buckets are filled to the brim with cold beverages.
Need a bottled water? Just ask.
Experiencing a parchedness only an airy pilsner can quench? That’s here, too.
A new friend just a few camps down, Tim, tells me, “If you need a drink and you’re down this way, just move the makeshift gate and grab whatever you want out of the icebox.” I do. Twice.
This communal ethos is everywhere and it’s helping me understand what the Goose is all about.
For reasons I can’t quite explain, I never attended the Wild Goose Festival while living in North Carolina. Granted, I only heard of it after I entered seminary.
When classmates and clergy colleagues mentioned it, I always had an excuse not to go. Classwork, church work and becoming a parent kept me occupied and away from the festival in the nearby mountains of Hot Springs.
But then, a chain of events unfolded. The stars aligned, as they sometimes do.
Organizers from the Goose called and I answered. And so, in early July, my family and I headed south from New England toward Union Grove—back home to North Carolina to refamiliarize ourselves with the heavy humidity of southern summers.
Thanks to a never-ending stream of shuttling golf carts, my family and I drop into the Goose the day before things take off. Already, I can sense this progressive gathering puts out a particular feel. The air is thick with a spirit of dissension, an inner urging to make elbow room for yourself like you’re standing next to the stage at a punk rock show.
There’s an invitation to challenge and disrupt. Folks walking around aren’t playing by a predetermined set of rules. The whole scene is full of relief, found in welcomed discomfort, and everyone there is in on it.
People flock there because of its divine divergency. I believe it’s the sort of wilderness Jesus fled to in hopes of connecting with God.
For three days, I soak up moments like a sponge.
Each day, a seed rooted in the Goose’s unconventional soil grows within me. I get a crazy idea.
I share this idea with other renegade and radical followers of the lowly Galilean who I know and am still getting to know. I watch as their faces grow in excitement.
All are enthusiastically moved to join me, add kindling to a growing fire moved by the Spirit and the actions of iconoclastic baptist preacher Will D. Campbell.
Campbell, whose 100th birthday is the following week, is an irreverent saint to baptists and Southerners, but not Southern Baptists. He is known in misfit-laden circles for his critiques of the institutional church and his definition of the Christian faith: “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.”
Over the years, I’ve collected Campbell stories like some collect baseball cards, retelling them to shake the pillars of what ministry is supposed to be.
Since coming to the Goose, one of them has been working tirelessly from my heart, coming up through my throat until finally resting on my tongue. And like the disciples of Acts Chapter 2, I’m ready to spit fire. I’m ready to tell the story about Campbell, a fellow named Andrew Lipscomb, and the Lazer Creek Congregation.
On Saturday evening, the last full day of the Goose, I witnessed a dozen friends who are my spiritual kinfolk make their way down to a friend’s RV. Elton John’s lyrics fill my head as they approach: “I thank the Lord for the people I have found.”
I slightly amend his verses, thanking the Lord for the people who have found me, too. We make a semi-circle and after an opening prayer from another minister, I begin to tell the story:
“Many of you know I’m a little ‘b’ sort of baptist because I was exposed to the writings of Will Davis Campbell. He was called a rebel, an apostate and a heretic by some. He was also called a hero, the moral conscience of the South and a true disciple of Jesus. He marched to a different drum and lived his unique call.
This call meant challenging powers and principalities, establishments and institutions.
He once did this, helping his friend Andrew Lipscomb. Lipscomb was a United Methodist minister who was threatened by leaders of his denomination with being defrocked and losing his ordination credentials for not accepting a new assignment. Campbell and friends came to his aid.
They formed the council and committee-free Lazer Creek Congregation.
As a gathered community of believers, they ordained Lipscomb so he could continue to perform marriages and other ministerial duties. This would be one of several times the Lazer Creek Congregation would convene.
They would do so again for a woman who worked with prisoners on death row. She needed ordination credentials to continue her work, but because of life circumstances, she could not attend seminary or receive standing in the traditional way. Lazer Creek affirmed her call to minister to the least of these.”
And with this, my story shifts to the present:
“In the vein of Campbell and the Lazer Creek Congregation, we stand here, a group of believers, presented with an opportunity to affirm the call of another who is walking her own pioneering path. But first, we must agree that we are called to do such. We must confess we are neighbors. Committed to each other’s lives, not bound by physical proximity but by a love that transcends any and all boundaries. For those who wish to be brought into this fellowship, say ‘amen.’”
Nothing but amens echo back at me from sincere faces. I continue:
“Now that that’s settled, I present the candidate in question for ordination.”
She stands off to the side, and I speak of her life and the call she feels has been placed upon it. I reference Psalm 46 and recite the words attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: to preach the Gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.
I talk of her desire to be an ally to those oppressed and suffering. I share her desire to be a presence to those in need of comfort and to stand up to those who need to be made uncomfortable.
I walk over to her to issue vows that tie her to her call to live out the gospel with her life— vows about her love of God, call to service, faithfulness and preparedness to sacrifice. She answers with a willingness that feels all too familiar.
I placed a borrowed stole around her neck. It is green and made of silk, with images of an empty cross and a promising rainbow.
Stepping back, I invite others to come forward and speak over her. All come forward, whispering charges to this soon-to-be minister.
I catch snippets of them, words not intended for me. Affirmation passed through the Spirit, spoken between those who believe in the scandalous notion of a priesthood of all believers.
Finally, I am given the honor of having the last word. We kneel together.
Hands rest on her shoulders, blanketing her with a radical faith tradition I wish I saw more of. I stare at her– my wife, my spouse, my partner– and fight the urge to weep.
Our foreheads touch, our eyes close, and I tell her what I think of all this.
I tell her how my walk as a congregational pastor has sometimes left me disheartened and that, as of late, I’m having trouble believing in anything anymore. But what just happened here gives me hope.
She gives me hope and I know what she’ll do will be greater than what I’ll ever do. Through her and the people here, I’m confident God is still moving in this world.
We stand.
I pronounce her the Reverend Lauren Pack.
People clap.
The church claps.
And all God’s people say amen, again.
Lauren shares from her heart and talks about finally finding “her people” here at the Goose. The borrowed stole becomes her first.
We left the campground later that evening, promising to return next year. The Goose is now a must for us, a pilgrimage we have to take every year. Our family must go to hope, dream, and recharge there.
And who knows, maybe next year, our patched-worked congregation will need to reunite again, perhaps laying hands on another.
Or at least, laugh, cry, cuss, and love on each other.
We’ll do this because that’s what neighbors do.
We’ll do this because that’s what the church, a people, do.
received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity. He is an ordained minister affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and enrolled in the doctor of ministry program at McAfee School of Theology. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. He currently resides in New England with his family. His thoughts and reflections are his own.
