Me and The Boss

by Brett Younger, Senior Pastor, Broadway Baptist Church

I was fourteen years old when Bruce Springsteen released the Born to Run album—though for me it was the Born to Run 8-track. The player in my 1969 Chevy Impala eventually required a Popsicle stick to adjust the tracking, because I wore it out listening to those eight songs over and over. I sang duets with the Boss in the car and never in the house, because I knew that the requisite volume as well as the lyrics would not go over big. I couldn’t see my mother singing along to: Someday girl I don't know when we're gonna’ get to that place were we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun, but till then tramps like us baby we were born to run.

When Bruce and the E Street Band came to Cleveland a friend said, "A bunch of us are going to hear Springsteen. Do you want to go?"

Most aficionados would have immediately, enthusiastically shouted, "Yes!" but most aficionados weren’t conservative-leaning-to-fundamentalist-Southern-Baptists. I ended up saying "No," because I was secretly afraid of the people who would be there. The friend who invited me wasn’t one of my church friends. I pictured a crowd drinking beer and smoking dope. My religious upbringing made it clear that I shouldn’t be part of a mob of criminals, reprobates, and good for nothings. (I was also taught to stay away from black people, poor people, and loose women.) But I’ve kept listening and singing along. The lullaby to which I put my children to sleep began In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream and ended Baby we were born to run.

On Sunday night when Bruce came to Dallas I decided with some trepidation to join the mob.

When we got in line, I started scribbling a few ideas.

A grandmother in a bandana asked, "What are your writing?"

I answered, "I’m a pastor taking notes for a church newsletter column."

She insightfully replied, "You have a very cool church."

When we got to our seats—which were "backstage" but not in a good way—the balding man to my right, who ended up knowing more of the words than I did, looked at me and said, "Some of this crowd would fit right in at a Perry Como concert."

The could-have-been-a-vice-principal woman next to Carol asked, "Do you think we’ll have to stand through this?"

A quick glance at the gray hair around us made Carol confident in saying, "I’m sure we’ll get to sit."
Some stood for the whole two and half hours. Some danced in the aisles. We clapped and raised our hands. We shouted and sang as a congregation. It felt like a Pentecostal revival.

Bruce led us in a hymn about people who might not make it to church, but keep believing.

In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away
Take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray
Lord won’t you tell us, tell us what does it mean
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.

The Boss thinks we’re all in this together—criminals, reprobates and church people:

Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don’t make no difference what nobody says
Ain’t nobody like to be alone.
Everybody’s got a hungry heart.

I looked at the people who were singing with such joy and was embarrassed for myself and for the part of the church that keeps pushing people away. The choir included drinkers and teetotalers, the promiscuous and the chaste, black and white, old and young, bikers and Baptists preachers. Where in the Gospels do any of us get the idea that church people should feel superior to anyone else in the crowd?

One of the reasons I love Broadway is that our church works so much harder than most not to be afraid of outsiders. I was 33 years late to the concert, but I’m beginning to understand that God loves us all—even the tramps like us that were born to run.

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