Taylor Young - Fascinated By Faith
Welcome to the Cumberland Road, where I have conversations about how one's faith impacts their daily life, their interactions with others, and their vocation. I'm your host, TJ Malinowski. My guest this episode is Taylor Young. Taylor is the minister at St. Luke Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Madison, Tennessee. In this conversation, we talk about parenthood, youth ministry, and the resilience after a natural disaster. Enjoy this phased journey with Taylor Young.
T.J.:Taylor, thank you for joining me on the podcast. In a few months, you will be a first time parent. Share some thoughts on what parenting may look like for you.
Taylor:So as we're recording this, it is about 3 months away. I am due I mean, we are due. My wife is due. Mid November. Really, really excited.
Taylor:My journey has been very tumultuous when it comes to getting to this point in life, so I feel very happy. I won't speak ill of anyone, but I will say that I had a previous marriage that ended, partially due to a difference in the difference of opinion on wanting children, which was heartbreaking. And so, my my now wife, Lizzie, who is spectacular, and I got married what I would consider a little bit later depending on who you ask. I did not anticipate having my first child at 34. I thought I'd be a little bit younger, but, I just can't stop being thankful because there was a time where I thought this wasn't going to happen, and, we haven't crossed the finish line yet.
Taylor:You know, everything looks promising. Maybe it seems healthy. So I'm just excited, also scared. Scared about the, I love sleeping. Anyone who remembers me as a youth volunteer or youth counselor at camp knew I like to sleep, and I know that's not a part of the program, but I think that'll be well worth it.
T.J.:Maybe this is a finish line in one way and a starting line in another. You are about to begin a new relationship. What do you think that new relationship will look like?
Taylor:Well, so I love kids to begin with, and I'm a big kid at heart. I thought I was gonna be youth minister forever, honestly. So I'm excited about the little, silly things. Like, I still love Disney theme parks, and, having a a daughter come in the world is a good excuse to go to do that more. I'm excited for all the the little things.
Taylor:I mean, I still watch cartoons, without a kid, so adding that in will be great. That's all the fun stuff. I'm sure I will learn to be less selfish, and I'm I'm ready mentally to be in a less selfish life, be in a life that's not as centered around my wants, my ambitions. And I'm I'm I'm aware of that now. I'm sure I'm not really aware of that till I get into it, but
T.J.:How much free advice from others have you received in parenting?
Taylor:Quite a bit. I I actually welcome it. It doesn't bother me if somebody gives me something I don't agree with. So I I like hearing people's perspectives. You know?
Taylor:I was I was raised with a with an iron hand. You know? I I got spanked. I got all those things, and that's really not the journey we're gonna go on with our kid, we think. But, you know, I've had someone say, oh, you gotta discipline them early and discipline them hard and, you know, agree with discipline but maybe not hitting them.
Taylor:And I think that's what they were implying, and it didn't bother me. I you know, I'll listen to anybody. I the the reality is I think it is important to listen to people who've been down a road you haven't been on before, and take what you think is of value and leave what you don't think is of value. And I think that's true with so many scenarios, not with just parenting. You know?
Taylor:And I'm sure my ideas now will be very different in a year and in 2 years and so on and so forth.
T.J.:Adding another person to the family brings a new perspective, a new voice, a new point of view. And these same perspectives and voice and point of view also comes with questions.
Taylor:Well, I've given my wife plenty of practice with that. I already asked her the same questions over and over, so you know?
T.J.:Let's talk about your childhood. What would you want others to know?
Taylor:So I I think mine was pretty good. I mean, I I don't think I have a, I think my tell is valuable, but, it may not be as exhilarating as some. I really wasn't raised in a church per se. I was raised with 2 parents who believed Christian beliefs, did not attend church, were had no offense to it, but they just didn't wanna go. You know, they mom kinda gave me some surface level idea of you gotta pray to God.
Taylor:God is real. Jesus is real. And, honestly, to this day, I've never questioned that, at least that fact of it. You know, I I was, you know, just into silly things. You know?
Taylor:I liked I was in the nineties. I was a Power Rangers kid, you know, and I grew up on professional wrestling and still love professional wrestling to this day, all the fun things. But I, I came about faith through a lot of little, instances with friends. My connection to the Cumberland church actually started with a girl who I thought was very pretty at my middle school who invited me to the youth group across the street, which was Tusculum Cumberland Presbyterian, with Tyler Spradling, who was became my youth minister. That girl had no impact in me, by the way, which is fine, but I found a community that I really enjoyed and a youth minister I still think a lot of to this day.
Taylor:And I was still kinda new to Church World. I knew of God, but Church World really it was weird to me. You know, I went to VBS a few times. I thought my early perception of church people is, wow. These are really strict people.
Taylor:You know, they're they're not into my my shenanigans, and that that may have been a misconception, but perception is reality. And Tyler was the first person I thought, he can build my shenanigans just fine. So, you know, maintained my relationship there, asked a lot of questions. I was so intrigued by everything. I loved asking questions and discussing.
Taylor:Discussing things is it's it's where I I I grow. You know, he said I threw him off because I learned some words in school. I said, what's the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation? If you could imagine just a youth kid asking you that in the middle of a lesson. Yeah.
Taylor:So, you know, I I went on and, made the decision. Of course, not raised in a church, wasn't baptized at a young age, so I made the decision at 15 to get baptized. Still being relatively new to Church World, I also had a Church of Christ friend, very one of those Church of Christ friends who, I was sleeping over at his house, and he said, hey, man. I I just really don't want you to go to hell. We're going to church in the morning.
Taylor:Do do you think you wanna get baptized there just so I can make sure? And so I did. So tongue in cheek, I tell people, you know, I'm covered on both ends, there. So I was poured in, poured on, and then I was submerged in the, Church of Christ. But, yeah, faith as a kid was just I think I was just so fascinated, by God, by the higher existence, by a a life that's more meaningful than the one in front of us.
Taylor:You know? So I I always latched on to that, and it was the only thing that made sense at 17 years old, wrapping up high school, applying to colleges for I had no idea what, and hearing a girl say, I'm gonna go to school to be a youth minister. Fun fact. She did not do that, but I did. I heard her say that, and it was like a bell went off in my head.
Taylor:Sat down with Tyler Spradling, talked about it, came under the care a few years later, went to MTSU, got a degree in social work that I never used, and went to MTS and kind of never looked back. It was there wasn't a lot of fight in me about these things. I was just so fascinated. It was it was easy to wanna go pursue it.
T.J.:The youth group that you were a part of at Tusculum, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Did it consist of students from one school or multiple schools from the Nashville area? The reason I'm asking is I attended a youth group that consisted of students from different schools, and it created for me different spaces that fed and nurtured my interest and exploration of what it means to be part of different communities.
Taylor:There was a little bit of a hodgepodge. I would say when I started there, I was always into, like, punk rock and hardcore music and things like that. And a lot of the friends I hung out with were skateboarders. I tried to be, but I was awful and really scared of getting hurt, so I didn't really skateboard much. But I hung out with my friends, and, Tyler had this wild idea.
Taylor:Since all these kids were skateboarding in their parking lot, which, allegedly at the time, many of the older members had a problem with. This was, let's say, 2003 ish. He decided, oh, let's block off an area and let him do it, and then I'm gonna invite him into youth group. And for a few years there, Tyler had a gigantic youth group because of that. So there were those of us even though I didn't skateboard, I'd kinda consider myself a part of that that group that came in there.
Taylor:There's a group of folks who were I I would say, like, church trees kids, kids whose parents went to Tusculum, who came up there, that sort of thing. And a lot of them went to the area school being Overton High School, and the the feeding middle schools. A lot of them went to the McMurray Middle School where I went, at the time. I went off to a magnet school called Houghton Fogg, and I was kinda the only one there from that, but a lot of my friends from Overton were still there. I think there was a, a handful of folks from right across Bullying and Rutherford County, in kind of the Smyrna, La Verne area.
Taylor:But I I really think there was a segment not so much on schools as it was, like, the kinda raised in the church group and the group that kinda came in out of the parking lot. And it wasn't, like, vicious or anything, but I think there there was kind of a 2 different circles there.
T.J.:Yeah. Distinctive. Mhmm. What about your interaction with the adult Christians in the church? Was there any overlap between the youth and the adults?
Taylor:So for several years, I would say there was not. And it's I don't blame anybody because I didn't get involved in camps or, any kind of the extracurricular stuff for quite some time. I just went to Wednesday night. So there was, miss Terri Gray, who's a wonderful woman, still serving NAACP church, I believe, and, Tyler, and those were pretty much my adult interactions for several years until I probably got into maybe college and started attending Sunday morning service.
T.J.:Interesting. The connection to the Christian faith was solely through the youth group.
Taylor:Mhmm. Yes.
T.J.:I am wondering and this is a broader question. I'm wondering how the church can strengthen the relationship between the youth and the adults within a faith community like a congregation?
Taylor:This is maybe where I'd speak more from my youth ministry being a youth minister days than being a participant, because I'm gonna own that I was a hard headed kid. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Probably still have that problem today. But I do remember the experience of being done with youth group and most of the people not coming back for Sunday morning service. Or, they even had a young adult group going for some time with Nathan Wheeler, and I would say the majority of my friend group, so to speak, my circle did not come to that.
Taylor:I mean, their experience with the church kinda stopped and ended with graduation. I stuck around, but, yeah, it was that was kind of difficult. And I for going into my youth minister days, I really wanted to put more of an emphasis on including kids regularly in service. We did youth Sundays, but I think that's always kind of a pageantry sort of Sunday. Let's look at the kids.
Taylor:Let's see how great they are. We're so proud we have them. But now we're back to the regular scheduled program next week, which you're not a part of. And I think that's problematic in that if it's just sort of a pageantry Sunday once a year, you're not really integrating kids. You're you're you're sort of celebrating them once a year or twice a year, however often you do it.
Taylor:I'll say Clarksville got really good. I was the youth minister at Clarksville for, 6 years. Got really good about integrating kids into at least the liturgist position, which gave them a role, and some of them were helping with usher responsibilities. And just several roles they had around the church that I thought was a step in the right direction.
T.J.:This may not be problematic in a smaller congregation that is or that consists more of a family led church where a child or youth is integrated at a young age in worship and leadership roles. Anyway, I believe it's a discussion that we could be having.
Taylor:Yeah. I I try to put myself as much as I can. I've worked in churches regularly since 2012. So, I mean, I guess that's 12 going on 13 years now, you know, the majority of my adult life. But I try to put myself in the shoes as church attendee tailor.
Taylor:If I'm not the pastor, I'm walking into a church. And I can't speak for everybody, but I can speak for what I think I was. And, you know, I always want something that's relevant, and I want a community that looks like me, but I also want connection with people who are older with a lot of wisdom. And so I think that's the struggle in a lot of our CP churches to begin with, is that some of those tools that I think Taylor, the attendee, would want, we just don't have the resources for sometimes, the amount of people there. And I really haven't figured out a great solution to that, kind of a chicken or the egg scenario.
Taylor:You know? Do you need young people to get young people, or do you build a program and they come? You know, is it filled of dreams? But, I'm I'm sort of a believer. You need you need young people to invest to get more young people to invest, and that's a that's a tricky situation I haven't figured out at the start to.
T.J.:Mhmm. And then I believe that there is a reluctance among many congregations to consider having faith conversations outside the confines of the church structure and the church building.
Taylor:I did an experiment, I'll call it that, a few years back, and I I honestly just ended it because attendance, waned pretty quickly. But I tried doing something, and I called it The Table at the time, not knowing there was a church in town called The Table, which me and that pastor talked, and she was actually quite wonderful, but she didn't have any issues. But, anyway, the idea was that we could go and discuss anything. We'd we'd have a a set topic for the week, and I would try to let them steer what we were gonna do each time we met. We try to do, I think, twice a month, and we would meet at, like, a, brewery, a restaurant, or something, you know, kinda take this.
Taylor:My thought was take the stigma off of. So if you wanted to order, an alcoholic drink, you're welcome to. If you didn't want to and just wanted to eat, you could eat, but we're all gonna sit there and discuss. And they were really, beautiful times when we were able to do it, but I think I also caught a another one of those situations where we had a person group that was just so lopsided. I had, you know, an 18 year old and a and a 38 year old at the same table, and they're in 2 different situations.
Taylor:And, you know, I think the 18 year old could remember the 38 year old being their counselor. And so I think there was that sort of scenario, plus, I mean, just a lot of obligations where, maybe we didn't have quite the total buy in from everybody that we were hoping for. So, it was definitely worth worthwhile to try, and there's something cool to it, but and I think under a different scenario, I think it would actually work again, but it's another one of those chicken or the egg scenarios.
T.J.:There is beauty in experimentation and the recognition that we move through seasons of life. Believe that our needs change as we change. And one of the challenges resistant to recognizing change is the distinction between growth in faith and church attendance. Church attendance or lack thereof is often perceived as an act of disobedience. And church attendance or lack thereof often is perceived as a reflection upon the ministry of the minister.
Taylor:Well and, you know, there's a we don't like to use this word. We like to pretend like we can ignore it, but there is a business side to the church too, that, you know, pays the grocery bill and gives us our yearly review. And those things oftentimes, are based on metrics people can see. And so I think sometimes it's a really hard balancing act to sort of please the metric or or work towards the metric of, like, attendance, membership, giving, but do it in a scenario where we are acting faithfully in doing what I would just call good ministry.
T.J.:And then there is the aspect of the individual who will say, I am a person of faith because of my church attendance.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. And I I to be clear, I don't think, attendance is a direct equation to faithfulness or or servanthood. I mean, I, you know, I believe very genuinely that my parents were and are Christian and love god, even when they didn't attend church for years years years.
T.J.:Let's go back to your senior year in high school. How did you decide your college and your career path?
Taylor:I wanted to just go somewhere that had a big campus with a lot of options. And so I wanted to be able to sort of explore different ideas. And, I was a diehard UT football fan, but, actually, I did not get in there. And I wound up at Middle Tennessee State University, which I had a very good experience with. Loved it.
Taylor:Would recommend it to anyone who's thinking about it. But I wanted to have a pool of different degrees, a large community of people to try and meet. I just wanted that experience so badly. I wanted to know something and someone different than what I had known, and I think I got that in so many ways from that experience. I think I was exposed to a lot of new ideas that I could appreciate even if I didn't agree with.
T.J.:How did you choose the path of social work?
Taylor:So going into college, I knew from the get go, I wanted to go into wanted to go into seminary, so I was I was a weirdo. I knew right from day 1 I was going to seminary. And the basic understanding I had was you have to have a degree. It doesn't matter what it's in. Started out initially declaring as a public relations major, lost interest pretty quickly, and just kinda looked around.
Taylor:I thought honestly, I started getting into practical terms. I'm like, okay. What's a degree that seems useful, could do something similar to what I wanna do without being completely useless at the bachelor's level, which might be a joke on me now because the bachelor's in social work's nearly useless now too. That's a master's level program for most people. But so I I was always intrigued by psychology, which I wound up minoring in, but thought social work would be a much more, practical degree.
Taylor:And and I did learn some things that actually informed ministry, so I was glad I went into it because it was about you know, a a large portion of social work practice was connecting people to resources, and, we learned interviewing skills, and not not like job interviewing, but I don't quite say counseling, but, you know, interviewing, talking to people, skills like that. So I found some of that useful, and informative when going into ministry. I thought what could be sort of a a supporting degree for ministry.
T.J.:Walk me through how you entered into youth ministry. What was your thinking? What was your process?
Taylor:I think from a young age, I realized the amount of critical decisions that young people have to make and the support that they need. Really encountered a lot of friends who had been through a lot of trauma in my young age. You know, I've had friends who revealed to me, I mean, terrible abuse from sexual abuse to physical abuse, in their lives, and, you know, they confided in me at the time, and I thought, you know, how could you how could you at least be a positive space for people like this in the future? Because I wanted to be a positive space for them as a friend at the time. Knowing what I know now, probably should have reported a couple things, but, you know, when you're 13, you don't know these things.
T.J.:Even at the age of 13, you have your peers who are seeking you out and confiding in you. Mhmm. Looking back into your life, what do you think that says about your character when you were younger?
Taylor:It made me feel trusted, and I I think you know, I have a stoic, really crass sense of humor. But at the same time, I think the compassion I have for people shines through. The care I have for people shines through. And so I think that's when I became aware of that as one of my strengths, and I'm not a person who is very confident in a lot of my strengths. Like, I'm not good at any sport.
Taylor:I'm not particularly great at any instrument. You know? I've filled around with some things, but there's nothing I'm gonna get up and do a talent show for you on, which is a bit of an insecurity for me, honestly. But I'll say the ability to work with people and be compassionate to people felt like the first time I felt like I was good at something. And so it not only shined a light on that, but it kinda gave me meaning.
T.J.:I wonder if it is your nonjudgmental demeanor tone, the way you carry yourself that is a unique way that makes you approachable? Yeah.
Taylor:I'll say I'm not without my faults, but I do my best to try to not jump the gun on anything and just listen. And if somebody's been through something that's rough, I mean, just just take it and and and process it. This is maybe my soapbox, but maybe me becoming a curmudgeon. But one of my my my recent just complaints with I'll just say society. It's a word I I don't know if I came up with it, but I'm calling it outrage culture.
Taylor:Watch the Olympics. Right? We saw something we didn't like. We got online, and we and I say we, I just mean society, bashed it into the ground. Right?
Taylor:We we reacted. We didn't take in the information. We just screamed, we have a problem with this. How dare they? And then another thing happened to the Olympics.
Taylor:And we screamed, this is unfair. We don't like this. We didn't even have all the information. And then some of us stayed willingly ignorant when the information on that came out, which is even more mind bogglingly, problematic. And I see this not just saying you shouldn't have your convictions, by all means, have your convictions.
Taylor:But, man, we'd benefit so much if we would just slow down, take some information in, process it. Don't feel the need to respond, and then figure out what we have to do to make the world better. And sometimes making the world better with things like that is just being silent, and it's just listening. Now I know this is you know, when we deal with Olympic athletes, these are, like, people who are not in our immediate sphere and realm, but I think this is very translatable the way we talk to people. You know, someone tells you something that maybe even offends you.
Taylor:And trust me, I can get offended with the best of them, and I get my feelings hurt easy. But I always do better if I take some time and process and think and pray and come back to it. And I find my responses are usually far more level headed, far more kingdom building than they will be if I go off my gut reaction to something.
T.J.:I wonder if those who have experienced trauma are able to, in a unconscious way, find others who have also experienced trauma and develop a bond or a comfort in a shared or similar experience. And for some, maybe even take a risk and seek out understanding and empathy to aid in their healing.
Taylor:No I mean I hear you, I mean we talk about like ideas like religious trauma is kind of a popular ideal ideology these days and sometimes I see people's first responses. We need to defend the faith against the religiously traumatized. Right? Like, so the church is bad to them. They're saying something bad about the church.
Taylor:Let's defend the church. I'm a believer that god doesn't need defending. And I think if someone shares something like that, it's worth listening to. I'll say even just going through different types of pain. You know?
Taylor:Going through a a divorce around 29, 30 years of age, in my experience was one of the most painful things I've been through, emotionally. You know, I thank god for people like Dusty Luthy who, without I mean, I don't think she would mind me saying she's been through a divorce. She was a good friend to me through that time and really helped me because she had walked that road before me. And now when I encounter people who say they're going through a divorce, I hear that so differently than I ever heard that before I had gone through that experience, and it has really informed the way I hear a lot of pain differently now. I don't wish that I went through it.
Taylor:It was awful, but, I do think it has helped to build this sense of compassion. And I do think there is sort of this mentality with a lot of people where it's like, if I've been through this and you've been through this too, we can help each other. I think that's where we get our probably our groups like AA, NA, you know, PTSD type groups for soldiers. But sometimes just going through a trauma and just understanding how hard that is can help us with some other type of trauma. You know?
Taylor:I don't know what it's like to go through extreme mental illness. I know what it's like to have anxiety. I know what it's like to have something in my mind going on that I can't control. So while I can't fully understand what you're going through, I can sort of understand how your brain not being in your control can be a scary thing.
T.J.:And it can remove feelings of isolation.
Taylor:I agree.
T.J.:You mentioned a calling into youth ministry.
Taylor:Mhmm.
T.J.:Now you are serving as a senior minister at the Saint Luke Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Nashville. Did you have thoughts while doing youth ministry of expanding to ministering to all generations?
Taylor:Well, so ordination was always on the docket for me. My main reason for wanting to be ordained is I wanted to be able to baptize, feed communion, and, do weddings for youth. It was always centered around youth. I I was convinced I was gonna do that forever. But I went ahead and got the MDiv because I said, you know, what if?
Taylor:Life's big, so I thought m the the masters of divinity is useful for both areas. I did not picture going into pastoral ministry, And now that I have done it for I think we're coming up on 5 years coming up on 4 years no. 4 years. Excuse me. In so many ways, they're they're different, but very similar.
Taylor:It's just a new way of doing the work I was already doing.
T.J.:So the focus has changed a little bit. So maybe instead of preparing a weekly sermon, you were preparing a youth
Taylor:lesson. Youth lesson. Yeah. Well, and this is kind of a tongue in cheek thing I I tell people, but, you know, I talk to young people and they're like, oh, there's so much drama now. And I said, buddy, let me tell you, people don't get less dramatic as they get older.
Taylor:They just get cars and money. I mean, it's it it it is sort of tongue in cheek, but, I mean, I can promise you. I can I for every dramatic 14, 15 year old you can find, I can find you a dramatic 65 year old? I mean, it's and and they're wonderful. I love them both.
Taylor:But there's not what's the word? There there's not as much difference between those groups as people might think. You know, the music taste, the movie difference, the the restaurants they go to might be different. But when it comes to, like, processing life, we're all carrying around our own junk.
T.J.:Processing and how will we react to engaging life? Maybe you're right. Maybe there are smaller differences than we give credit to between a 17 year old and a 77 year old.
Taylor:And someone may be screaming if they're listening to this, screaming at the phone, be like, absolutely. He's wrong. I'm like, that's okay. That's you can disagree with me. That's fine.
T.J.:While you were a student in seminary, were you engaged in any type of ministry or just a full time student?
Taylor:Yeah. So I served on paper, it said 27 hours a week. I have no idea how to calculate what that actually was. But, yeah, so I served at Clarksville, Cumberland Presbyterian, through my entire, seminary career and then a few years after it. My role got expanded to be associate pastor over children and young adults after I graduated, but during seminary, it was solely just youth ministry.
Taylor:So it it was really it was really wonderful, because I got to, you know, on the job experience. I did I did work for 2 years prior to that at a Methodist church. I went through the Center For Youth Ministry Training. Unfortunately I mean, there there was a lot of good experiences, but it was it was not going well overall there. So, I mean, it was just after 2 years, it was time to go.
Taylor:And then Clarksville just fell into my lap, and it was a it was a really beautiful experience that I'll I'll cherish forever. Those kids there, man, they're I got to see a couple of them the other day, and, like, I don't think they know how much. I just get so proud and just smile when I see them just exist in a room.
T.J.:Any memorable stories in the history of your youth ministry? A youth event, a youth trip, a lesson that you led that has stuck with you through the years and you recall back fondly.
Taylor:Yeah. I'm just trying to think, should it be funny, negative, or positive? Because I got probably one for all of them. I'll say this. It's kinda generalized statement, but, and this will also boost up my my good friend, reverend Lisa Cook.
Taylor:We started getting involved with Sacred Sparks while we did 30 Hour Famine, which if you're not familiar with 30 Hour Famine, is a fundraising event where the kids will go and not eat for 30 hours and do service work. And so we started, getting involved with Sacred Sparks. And yeah, thank you. Good idea. Sacred Sparks is at the time, the the way it operated, Lisa Cook, were still works for these people, but worked with, homeless and extreme poverty groups of people, helping with different needs that they have.
Taylor:So she would go into camps, like homeless camps around Nashville to help with people with things that they needed, which could be so various. I mean, her she does now and probably back then was laundry, but she would also help, you know, organize people to clean up certain areas if they needed it, try to get furniture, try to get propane tanks. Like, I think Lisa would tell you her her ministry is holy chaos, and it's evolved a lot since those days. But at the time, yes, she she was, she would arrange something for when our kids would come into town, we would typically do something like clean up, around a homeless camp, or or people were camping because there's there's no legal spot to camp, but some of the landowners would turn a blind eye to it if the camp was kept tidy and everything like that. And sometimes things get trashed, so they would come pick it up.
Taylor:They would but she would always focus on building having a time where the kids could build relationships with the people she served. And the compassion the kids had so naturally towards everyone was, I think, a a a glimpse into heaven. You know? It was there was no no judgment in the eyes of the young people. There was no, questioning what choices they made.
Taylor:What are they doing with in their free time? There was just this general want to understand and to love. And so those are the moments I hold on to with a lot of pride when working with kids. Had a lot of wild things to talk about, but I don't wanna embarrass any of my former kids so I think I think their their dignity deserves to be preserved.
T.J.:Taylor, it could be said that youth group is a safe training space to prepare young people to engage more in the world. I wonder though if we hold that belief upside down and it is the youth who are clear eyed about the world. From your experience, what has the youth taught you about faith, life and the world?
Taylor:There's probably more things than I can name but there's just I have this really really, this moment where someone a kid kinda threw something back in my face in the most in the most appropriate way. We were closing our, youth group meeting time, and we just did prayer requests at the end of it. And, at the time, my my my then wife had a car accident, and it was a hit and run sort of scenario. Someone had hit her and drove off. And this, this this young guy looks up at me.
Taylor:He goes, hey, Tyler. Didn't you always tell us we should pray for people who do wrong to us? Shouldn't we be praying for that whoever it was that hit hit your wife? And I was like you know, I had to pause for a second. I'm like, yes.
Taylor:Yes. You were right. That is exactly right. And that was not going to be on my mind that night. At the time, it was very fresh.
Taylor:So kind of that moment of realizing they're always listening and putting that back into your head and teaching you at times to follow God's word was there. And then I think, I like people watching. I loved watching some of my kids find ways to be passionate to each other or to other people, and I would do no justice in trying to name that in specifics right now. But I, you know, I I always learned a lot just from the way they kinda navigated their situations, and I could just be a fly on the wall at times.
T.J.:Taylor, serving the church as a youth leader first and now as a minister, what are your hopes and aspirations for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in the years to come?
Taylor:That's a hard question or a hard thought. I'm sorry. I I I gotta own that. I've been been I don't I don't know if the word pessimistic is right. And sort of having a pity party about the division, the fragmentation, separation from each other.
Taylor:That that part is distressing, and it's left me with the question of where will there be a CP church 5 to 10 years from now? I I don't know the answer to that. You know? I hope so, but I know my hope for the church in general is that we just don't give up on trying new ways to share possible. I think one of the things that has haunted us beyond our current arguments that we have over theology is we can be dogmatically loyal to our traditions.
Taylor:And some of those traditions are just things like our instrumentation, our order of worship, and we will do it to our own detriment sometimes. And so my hopes for the CP church is that we're willing to kinda let go of some of what has always been to try to really do a better job of understanding how we can share the gospel to the world in front of us right now. My current ministry in Saint Luke, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which is a it's a small church filled with just wonderful people, people who are are are loving, compassionate. They like to throw around the word nonjudgmental. And to their credit, I think they embody it fairly well.
Taylor:But I think they we have also realized that we have been sorta stagnant in the way it was for a long time. You know, slow to change, slow to, slow to kinda modern updates that I can't say for sure, but might have helped some things along if they were gotten to a little bit earlier. Just things like having a website, a presence on the Internet, you know, having, I I don't know, because COVID was such a wild time. But even right now, we're we're kind of in the, we're in the phase of asking the question after we've had a building hit by tornado and rebuilding it. What what are we gonna do when we build back?
Taylor:Are we, you know, are we trying to go back with the same thing and keep doing the same old, same old? But I think, I think we're really pushing towards doing more. I mean, that's why we've started the house, You know, until the tornado hit, we were housing Sacred Sparks, Loads of Love Laundry Ministry, which provided laundry for folks who needed it 4 days a week. We've, started housing a joint worship service with, Lisa Cook, Lisa Oliver, Andrea Gutierrez, all all 3 are reverends. Excuse me.
Taylor:I should have addressed them as reverend, but all 3 of those reverends and myself helping out, that is ministering to a Hispanic population, which where we are is very large. And it wouldn't take you 5 seconds to walk into Saint Luke and realize there's not many Hispanic people in our church. You know, so I I think these are at least small efforts, and I gotta attribute a lot of it to Lisa Cook and Lisa Oliver, which I jokingly call them good Lisa and bad Lisa. I'll let you figure out which one's which. So their willingness to wanna start something.
Taylor:I'm just lucky enough to be on the receiving end in our building. But I think these are the the images of God, the the little glimmers of hope, the little little taste of the kingdom, things that are happening that give me some sense of hope because it's doing church in a nontraditional way. It's really outside the box, and I'm just, again, lucky enough that we can house it.
T.J.:We've been talking about the Saint Luke Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Taylor, do you mind giving some context to what has occurred in terms of a natural disaster to the facilities?
Taylor:Sure. So, on in December in Nashville, there were some tornadoes that had come through. We're in Madison, which is a a northern part of Nashville. When they had come through, they had come very close to our church, and our our church is kinda shaped like a giant u with the, like a sideways u. So the front end having kind of the old sanctuary, which is where the the kids' school is, a hallway that leads down to the sanctuary.
Taylor:And if you a hallway straight back from the sanctuary that goes into a building that we call the Family Life Center, which had all of our Sunday school classrooms, the laundry room, and our gym, and our fellowship hall. That backside of that u, the building there, was impacted by the tornado coming through. It actually created something called negative pressure, which I got to learn about, that actually, instead of blowing the wall in, sucked the exterior wall out and then also sucked the adjacent wall inside the gym out and basically ruined the entire building. So kind of the backside of our u, which was actually the the largest part of our building, has been destroyed. So when the when the structural engineers came through, basically said they had to tear, let's just say, 90% of the building out for the rebuild.
Taylor:We basically had to close off that part of the building, kinda like moving from a big house into a small apartment in some ways. Lisa Cook had to relocate her ministry over to Brush Hill. Temporarily. We're looking to have her back. It also displaced a narcotics anonymous meeting that we had here, hosted here.
Taylor:But so at this point, they've torn everything out. There's kind of a wall and a staircase and sort of a brick structure back there, but the roof is completely torn off. Most of the walls are torn off, and there's a big concrete slab in the back of our building. That took several months to get started, because it was hard to find the right contractor. And at this time, they have said they will start the rebuilding process come October, November 2024 this year.
Taylor:And from there, it could take another year to another 18 months to rebuild. So we're just kind of learning to operate in the front half of our building, which is cramped at times, but we're making it work.
T.J.:The Family Life Center there at Saint Luke would make a fantastic skateboarding park.
Taylor:Oh, it would. It would. But we we have some some ideas going forward. We wanna we we have one of those old carpeted gyms, which I'm sure plenty of our CEP churches still have. And I I if if there's anything I do wanna be judgmental about, it's whoever decided putting carpet in the gym was a good idea.
Taylor:I think that is a tool of the devil because they are awful. They hold every puke and food stain that's ever spilled on them, and they become disgusting over time. But, anyways, we're gonna go back with a with an nicer floor, and we're hoping to use it to serve the community, to host some some basketball leagues, or to host, different things for people to just come in and and have our facility not just exist here, but be a place that people can can use. And hopefully, we'll encounter some good folks who who, maybe wanna go on this faith journey with us.
T.J.:Alright. Thank you for the update. Taylor, I'm aware that you are a fan of music and movies and books. From each category, name one that has enriched your faith.
Taylor:So faith wise, I always go back to the rock band, Bryce. I have especially a a good relationship with an album they had called Beggars, and I actually wrote one of the songs off of Beggars into a curriculum for CPYC 1 year. It it was it's just such a beautiful album. Now if you're not into their type of music, so be it. But, the the lead singer, Dustin Kinsruh, he's not a, they are not a, quote, Christian band, but it's very obvious through their writings Dustin Kinseru is a Christian.
Taylor:In fact, Dustin has gone on to be a song leader for, some church. I don't know which one. But as far as a faith forming album, I have always, always, always loved Thrice, which, you know, they've got they've got music that kinda ranges from sort of I hate to say punk rock because it's not really punk rock. I I'm a real snob about the way we label things, but I'm trying to think of what's going to actually communicate. Let's just say it's rock.
Taylor:Okay. We'll leave it at that. Movie world. Would it would it need to be a faith movie? So I'm a giant nerd.
Taylor:It's kinda like what's the movie I'm watching right now. I think I'm always gonna have a an attraction to Star Wars and to, like, the old nineties Batman movies and, Jurassic Park and all the stuff I grew up on. I'm a nostalgia junkie. But I think Star Wars, were were such complex stories. And I know Star Wars is such a broad category now, if you follow it at all, because, you know, there's cartoon series, live action series on Disney plus.
Taylor:There's movies. I mean, it it goes on and on. But if you just watch kind of the, we'll say, the baseline 9 movies, I think there's always been a lot of just great lessons to learn from there. And I'll and I'll I'll throw in one little extra thing. You say TV.
Taylor:I am a I am a pro wrestling nerd. I know you didn't really ask about it, but, I am even trying to I'm even sort of freelancing with a local pro wrestling company, not as a wrestler, I'm not athletic. Let's be very clear about that. But trying to do some ad space selling and stuff for them and selling shows, And I think as silly as it is and pro wrestling could be over the top, that's kind of its its baseline. It's, you know, it's storytelling.
Taylor:It's a theatrics show. But there's always a story of you know, there's always, like, a bad guy, what we would call a heel, and a good guy, which we call baby face, or a bad girl and, you know, good girl. But when a when storytelling's done really well in wrestling, even though it always kinda centers around a violent match, there is kind of this upward, up the hill, overcoming the odds battle that I think is always just so life giving to watch sometimes, and and I've just always enjoyed it. I'm trying to get some of our Sacred Sparks kids to a some of the kids that come in for laundry. I'm gonna get them to a a local show that's gonna have a few big name talent on it, but, I mean, the reality is people should watch pro wrestling, everyone should enjoy it, but I know they're not all gonna do it.
T.J.:Alright. Well I may have to stretch here just a little bit, but wrestling and Star Wars, each of those carry a redemptive arc.
Taylor:Yeah. Absolutely they do. Wrestling's just so episodic. There's so many stories going at once that there's always something new.
T.J.:Right. Right. And I believe it's human nature to be drawn to a good redemptive story.
Taylor:Absolutely.
T.J.:Alright. How about a book or a novel? Ugh. This is
Taylor:where I'm gonna get in trouble. I'm not a big reader, outside of when I have to, but I have always had an affinity for a good classic that I'm sure a lot of people have read, which is Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. If you ever just wanna hear some good thoughts about how someone came to the conclusion of faith, I think he's very good. I'll I'll do a little swerve on you. I'll go with the podcast.
Taylor:One that has been intriguing me, and I I can't say I agree with everything that comes out of it, but there's one called Data Over Dogma, by a scholar named Dan McClellan, who is oddly enough a Mormon. And I didn't think I would be sitting to you recommending a podcast from a Mormon theologian, but I I find his work to be very intriguing, and I think there's a lot of informative stuff there. And I think for my pastor friends and maybe maybe any church conscious person. There's a book we did, it's very short, called Autopsy of a Deceased Church. The author's name is alluding me at the moment, but, I think it's a very comprehensive way to, like, analyze your church.
T.J.:Do you think, anyone can pick up this book and be fed by it as well?
Taylor:Oh, yeah. We we we attempted to read through it with a person, and there's a sequel book to it called, I can't remember, it's like Anatomy of a Thriving Church or something like that. I may be way off in that title, but it's the same author. But there, I mean, you could sit down and read the whole book in less than an hour.
T.J.:Both a digestible and a quick read.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. It's, I I I prefer people to be short and sweet. We don't need to read, you know, Karl Barth on everything.
T.J.:Taylor, thank you very, very much for allowing me to hear your Faith's Journey and for being a guest on Cumberland Road.
Taylor:I really appreciate the time to be here.
T.J.:Thank you for listening to this episode of Cumberland Road. If you wanna hear other faith journeys, you can find Cumberland Road on its own website, on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting site. In closing, I'm gonna read from the author Marcus Borg and his book, Speaking Christian. These two visions of Christianity, one, emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there. The other, emphasizing god's passion for the transformation of this world. They are very different, yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood, whether within the framework of heaven and hell Christianity or within the framework of God's passion for transformation in this world. Thanks for listening.
