Two things right off the top: I love music, and I love working with youth & young adults. That hasn't changed in two decades, nor does it seem likely to. I love it. I'd even wear a tie-dye shirt out in public in the 21st century (see pic @ left).

Grade 12: best 3 years of my life
(just kidding --
it was only 2)

At my age (none of your beezwax), there's far too much history to recount, so instead, I'll opt for a number of short vignette-style snapshots of the various times God has wreaked havoc on my safe little evangelical world and worldview.

One of the first that comes to mind happened when I was 17, a few days before starting grade 12 (I'd been a follower of Jesus for about two years). I was visiting overnight with a friend from summer camp who lived in downtown Toronto, and about 1 am., his common-law parents came home -- drunker than anyone I'd ever seen outside of a movie. Before the night was over, the police were there, the "dad" tried to beat our heads in with a metal table leg, we took a long walk among the dealers, pimps, and prostitutes before taking the TTC (subway) half-way across T.O. & sleeping on the floor at somebody's apartment. As I rode the "GO-Train" to my middle-class suburban home the next day, the cognitive dissonance (brain fart) caused by the experience created the first of many "paradigm shifts" in my thinking.

When I was 19, I played in a "secular" band in my hometown of Sarnia, trying to be a musical evangelist. Aside from the scandal this caused in my (extremely) conservative church, I learned tons about being salt & light, and having meaningful friendships and conversations with people who didn't believe the same as I did. I also continued to sort out my thinking on what it meant to be "in the world but not of the world", and (on a different level) what it meant to be a "Christian" musician -- another source of controversy which once was the cause of my being literally, physically thrown out of a church in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg turned out to be a "hidden jewel" in Canada, and the proof is in Wendy, who I met and married there 'back in the day' when Miami Vice was current.

Considering how controversial this was, don't I actually look quite early-80's tame?

Grad Weekend @ Providence:
4 years of dodging the hair cops

Providence College consumed my life in the mid-80's; I think I got more out my classes than some others did -- primarily because I had specific friends back home that I knew would be asking about what I was learning, and I wanted to "be prepared to give an answer...".

It was during this time that I also met George Mercado, the crazy wildman from New Yawk, who not only gave this long-haired freak a chance to do ministry alongside him, but also mentored me into the kind of leader who is always in danger of getting fired -- just like George. We spent six years of ministry together, and I'm forever indebted to his friendship, example, and constant love for me and my young bride. I wouldn't be in ministry today of any kind, vocational or volunteer, if it hadn't been for George.

Being involved with the Vineyard movement in the 90's was a little like voluntarily requesting a "resume stain" that would preclude you from being taken seriously by most other denominations. Like they say, "Vineyard isn't something you join, it's something you discover you are." We loved the freedom in worship and vision for making church a "safe place" for those who were not yet followers of Jesus.

Vineyard Canada is also where I was first publicly referred to as an "ecclesiastical anarchist" -- followed by the speaker (national director Gary Best) wondering aloud "Is McAlpine on drugs, or is he on to something?"

Vineyard was also another of God's infinitely creative ways of answering my prayer of the late 80's: "Oh God, whatever You do, don't let me get comfortable". During my years in Southern Ontario, I saw materialism as the greatest single threat to vibrant Christianity -- forget the New Age. Not sexy enough. Hence my desperate request to the Throne.

Be careful what you pray for.

Leading worship in Victoria BC:
"We sound sincere and devout -- but pretty bad." - Daryl T., rhythm guitarist, listening to an old "Rox Night" tape

1993's March 4 Jesus:
B.Y.O.M.
(Bring your own mullet)

Once upon a time, while I was in seminary (I've already heard the joke about 'cemetary', sorry), I came to the conclusion, after six years of preparing for ministry, that I didn't want to do it. I looked around the landscape of "church" and got the dry heaves. Working as a pastor seemed to require prostituting yourself to a corporate agenda (still true today for some churches).

Through our house church in Kitchener, and full-time work in a young offenders maximum security setting (Hope Manor), I sorted out what it meant to be "called" to ministry, although at the time my patron saint was Jeremiah: "You deceived me and I was deceived..."

Reading St. Paul's resume (beatings, imprisonment, etc.) helped give me some perspective.

"We're far more dangerous as Reformers than we are as Protestors."

Seems like we've come full-circle to our thinking of the late 80's: too much of church is corporate-driven, and house churches are the way to go. Or are they? Some house churches act just like "institutional" churches, just the faces and names have changed. Same politics. Same insecurities. Same old. "Whatever..."

Maybe the problem isn't the structures after all. Maybe the structures merely reflect the hearts of those who are supporting them? Maybe we've been too narrow-minded and reactionary in reducing the possibilites to only two widely-seperated options: established church or house church (which history tells us will be the next 'established' church that people will react and rebel against).

How do we avoid the "routinization of charisma"? How do we keep ourselves and our communities of faith flexible, functional, and healthy? How do we provide a prophetic alternative to "same old" churches and simultaneously be reformers from within? How do the "old wineskins" and "new wineskins" co-exist peacably and (dare I say it) honor and appreciate each other?

Welcome to the journey.

Older, balder, fatter, but still an incorrigible rocker in the 21st century