He always called it his community. Not his church. So forgive me for wondering whether or not I was walking into a Kool-Aid cult that night as I accepted Brian Busto’s invitation to the Kansas City Boiler Room. Kansas City Boiler Room? Odd moniker. Every church name I’ve ever heard contains some biblical reference about a river or a rock or a vineyard. Or some of the older ones name themselves after their location. Something Creek or First Church of this road. But the Boiler Room? To this day, it sounds more like an S&M club than a church to me. Dirty and antiquated and tiny and not very well ventilated. Like I said, forgive me for wondering whether or not I was walking into a Kool-Aid cult.
I was half-right. While definitely not a Kool-Aid cult, the Kansas City Boiler Room was definitely not a church. And it was dirty and antiquated and tiny and not very well ventilated, and the smell was a little funny as I moved up to the second floor of the midtown loft the Boiler Room called home. No stain glass or robes greeted me as I pushed back the six-inch thick metal door and sheepishly peered in. No crosses, baptismals or pews. No chairs even. Only about fifty twenty-somethings scattered across the loft, talking and drinking and laughing like best friends. I don’t know what the guys hanging out by the stove were cooking, but it smelled, I’m pretty sure, a lot like heaven. Earthy, organic food heaven, but heaven none-the-less. Abstract art canvassed the walls (I would later find out it was produced in house- Linnea keeps her studio in the Boiler Room). The floors were bare, cold concrete (it was where we’d sit for the teaching). Lighting for the whole gathering area, consisting of a kitchen, a living room, and a foyer, was left up to three $18.95 Wal-Mart floor lamps and the setting sun softly coloring the whole loft through one panel of windows. It’s hard to express how I felt, taking this all in. The bloated, dying suburban church I had just left was nothing but Berber carpet, expensive electronics, and khaki-panted weekend warriors. After one peer past that giant metal door, I feared and hated that I was walking into something real. It was almost too much for my eyes, simultaneously broken and haughty. More reality in five seconds than in five years at the mega-church. I cringed as I stepped in. Like I was C.S. Lewis’s pilgrims to heaven in The Great Divorce. So immaterial that blades of grass felt like razors marring their feet. So proud that they had the nerve to be offended by it. And if I were being honest, I’d have to say that I almost turned around and left right then.
Just my luck though, that didn’t happen. I hadn’t even had a chance to find Bustos before I was being greeted by a smiley little brunette, being a little too nice for my taste. After all, I was trying to find a reason to never come back. The conversation would have been easy enough to duck out on until I realized that this smiley little brunette was smiley little Julie, a member of my Physical Science study group way back in my first semester at UMKC. So there I was, stuck in a perfectly decent conversation, fighting and digging to find something disingenuous in her words, her tone, her body language, her anything. Anything to ease my dissonance when I never came back again. And I study communications. I know every non-verbal sign for disinterest or discomfort. I knew that if I just studied hard enough and long enough, I could get myself offended. But just my luck, that didn’t happen either. Soon I was flanked by Julie’s nicest-guy-in-the-world husband, Justin, and being introduced to all fifty of those twenty-somethings. I hated every second of it. I could already feel my icy exterior melting, chipped away with every handshake, every smile, every genuine question about my life, my history, my self. Everyone knew each other. Everyone cared. Soon, I was too impressed to even feign insecurity. I’d read Acts more times than I could count. I’d never seen it being lived out.
By the time Bustos had found me and was giving me the tour, my only hope for a safe exit was that, as great as they all were, they could still be a Kool-Aid cult. I mean, no one can actually live this way, can they? No one’s that communal, that concerned with others, that intentional and simple in how they live out the faith, are they? But just my luck, turns out they are. The tour was revealing as much. The Kansas City Boiler Room started when three ragamuffin seminary students developed a relationship with the ragamuffin leader of the international 24-7 Prayer movement. The international leader, a Brit named Pete Greig, had apparently been organizing weeks of unbroken, 24-7 prayer across denominations throughout the UK. 24-7’s internal churches were called Boiler Rooms- the dirty, sweaty places where the work gets done (I still think it sounds like an S&M club)- and they were really only called churches by outsiders. To Boiler Room members they were communities, half monastery, half rec center. At the heart of every Boiler Room community was not a building (faith and life, both inextricable, happened everywhere), but a commitment to justice, worship, service, creativity, and prayer. The 24-7 movement was growing throughout the UK and Europe, and by the time it was ready to hop the pond, those ragamuffin seminary students were given the grace to take the helm.
Next Page: A prayer room makes all the difference.
