My Friend Shane Raynor, and the wild streak that is www.wesleyreport.com

One of my best friends is Shane Raynor, the writer and commentator behind the new website/news/conversation page www.wesleyreport.com. Some may remember Shane from the now-defunct "Wesley Blog," which was for a couple of years the unifying spark for a quite-interesting community of Methodist (and other) bloggers inside a relatively huge circle of readers. A few know him as the devoted volunteer youth minister of a small urban congregation, Parker Lane United Methodist Church, in Austin, Texas. I'm just blessed to be his friend.

Since Shane is back writing regularly, and I know I'm not the only one celebrating that, I've decided to write about him this week.

Where Does Shane Come From?

Shane grew up in a small town off of I-95 in rural North Carolina, and his upbringing had its challenges, though none of them are unique or even rare. It is clear that church was important in his community in such a way that the gospel, lived out in a small Methodist Church next to the cemetery where his mother is buried, captured his imagination. For Shane, Church is all about stories, which are often funny and always enthusiastically told. This preacher did this. The next preacher did that. At Grandpa's funeral this happened. In Shane's life, having religious opinions is not a trait that developed as an adult. He tells the story that, before he was a teenager, he confidently informed one of the string of pastors at his church that the he should stop preaching from a manuscript.

How did Shane get saved? He found a comic book in a Christian bookstore that told him how. He later worked for that same bookstore as a teenager. After attending NC State University, Shane took a job with a Christian bookstore in Austin, Texas, and drove cross country with everything he owned to get here. He has continued working in various managerial capacities for Christian bookstores, and has become what he calls (with a smile) a K-Mart Bible Scholar. There's a lot of truth to that description, but it risks making a joke at the cost of being too self-effacing. During a stint working at a seminary bookstore, professors and students were frequently surprised to learn that Shane was not himself a student.

If Shane Spends So Much Time in Christian Bookstores, How On Earth Did He Become An Urban Youth Minister?

Shane joined Parker Lane UMC in Austin after he'd been working here for a couple of years. He got sucked into urban youth ministry by the glorious accident that he became friends with the brand-new and resolutely clueless 21-year-old youth minister (yours truly) who was badly in need of help. But it is equally true to say that we became friends because we were trying to figure out urban youth ministry together. Youth pastors come and go, but Shane did not, and after assisting three youth ministers, Shane began running the youth ministry on a volunteer basis. Without exaggerating, I can say that he has been God's tool of grace to a group of guys for whom God's incarnate grace has been the difference between life and death. Like Paul and many of the saints, Shane is unmarried but the spiritual father of many. The journey has not been easy, but it has been an inspiring witness. Differences of race and culture are no impediment to the God we serve, but are taken up into God's salvation as beauty. During my years in seminary, Shane's stories of what the Holy Spirit was up to at Parker Lane kept me going.

Why is Shane Such an Entertaining Writer?

Shane Raynor will wade into controversies and talk about issues in ways that UMC-paid journalists have a hard time doing. He's still the opinionated boy from rural North Carolina who cares about the Church, even as he's grown up "smart" and, dare I say, urban. His life teaches me that there's unexpectedly less distance between 'rural' and 'urban' than there is between 'urban' and 'suburban.' And because Shane is saying something, people want to respond in kind.

But Shane also builds bridges unexpectedly and brilliantly. People who disagree with him frequently like him. That's why Wesley Blog worked, and why I hope Wesley Report will work. One of the greatest tragedies of Welsey Blog's demise is that it's no longer easy to find Shane's amazing interview with Beth Stroud on the web. (Beth Stroud is the United Methodist pastor who was defrocked for being a "self-avowed practicing homosexual" a few years ago.) In seminary (and in books by "emergent" authors), we'd hear a lot about the importance of liberals and conservatives really talking to each other, and not just talking past each other. Shane's interview was the rarely-seen (especially online) genuine engagement in which two people on opposite sides of a divisive issue were able to really talk Christian stuff straightforwardly, preserving both personal integrity and respect for each other. It was a gift from Shane and Beth to the UMC, and I can't help remembering it as a hope-filled engagement. I think it personalized Beth Stroud as a human and a Christian in a way that cut past the controversy surrounding her.

A Decidedly Early Discussion About Canonization

Shane often chides me for liking "Saints" and "Catholic stuff." But I really realized in a whole new way that Shane's life is in the throes of God's grace when he decided to kill Wesley Blog at the height of its popularity. Here's how I remember it. He was writing/researching a post when a couple of the teenage guys from his church knocked on the door, and he was impatient at the interruption. That bothered him deeply, and he prayed a lot over the next couple of days. He became convinced that God was leading him to pull the plug on Wesley Blog, and for him to give his time to hanging out and ministering to the guys from Parker Lane's youth ministry. I probably encouraged him not to be rash, but then, St. Francis was rash. Shane even learned to play basketball. In the midst of video games or basketball or riding around in the church van, a truly appalling amount of God-talk goes on with Shane and the guys. How glorious.

So: is the God who warmed John Wesley's heart busy making Shane Raynor a saint? Undoubtedly. Will I be the biographing Bonaventure to Shane's St. Francis? Unlikely. Rather, this post is, to borrow my teacher Amy Laura Hall's Shakespearean phrasing, an early installment on the debt I owe Shane for his friendship--a debt in which I wish definitely to remain.

www.wesleyreport.com

Be thou interested.