Review :: Start Here :: Alex Harris & Brett Harris

I was twenty-one once. It seems like a long time ago, but it was only a handful (or two) of years ago. When I was twenty-one, I felt bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, befuddled by the responsibility of adulthood, that immense weight of making one's way in the world.

Alex and Brett Harris are twenty-one. (They are also, in fact, twin brothers and the younger siblings of Josh Harris--yes, that Josh Harris.) At twenty-one, they stand as my spiritual mentors of the moment. I find Start Here, their book, a challenge, the straight talk and the practical how-to suggestions to follow Jesus doing hard things in a big and often-overwhelming world.

Admittedly, I'm not their target audience. The Rebelution is about "a teenage rebellion against low expectations," not about guys pushing thirty finally owning up to Jesus' call to real world discipleship. Alex and Brett started TheRebelution.com when they were sixteen to inspire fellow teenagers to Do Hard Things (incidentally the title of their first book, published when they were nineteen).

In Start Here, Alex and Brett speak often of the "myth of adolescence," the lie that "the teen years are a time to goof off and have fun before 'real life' starts." It's this critical edge that catches me. They pick up on the insidious lies so big and institutionalized that most of us spend our teens and our twenties wandering around within their borders without even knowing these lies stretch out around us. Alex and Brett have seen something else, of Jesus and the kingdom life he brings, and up against it they can name the cardboard cutout substitutions we cling to.

Start Here takes up the practical and pastoral fall out of teens trying to Do Hard Things (a book I haven't read but hope to soon). Alex and Brett weave easygoing advice around stories, emails, and forum posts (from TheRebelution.com) by real live teens doing hard things. They walk through the challenges of where to start, what to do when things get hard, what to do with success, and how to maintain healthy relationships (with friends, family, and God) while doing hard things. These are, in honesty, questions I ask a lot. Where do I even start? Okay, so what now? How can I keep up this pace without having my marriage [friendships, spiritual life, fill in the blank] fall apart? Alex and Brett offer good advice, advice that I'm personally taking to heart.


Start Here also tugs at the youth pastor parts of my heart (I generally try to keep those heart parts segregated off from the rest of my heart because jr. highers are rambunctious and tend to make a mess). Start Here is written for teenagers, and it's a book they would read. Plus, it has good group discussion questions in an appendix. I plan to use this (along with Do Hard Things) as youth curriculum in the coming years.

Alex and Brett write a practical, pastoral, spiritual, challenging book. But they do right from a particular cultural vantage point. They are keenly socially attuned, relating stories of teens crocheting hundreds of hats for orphans or raising money to drill wells for villages in Africa. But some of the stories bear a particular political and cultural bent (starting a petition to censor sexual art on display at a high school; holding an anti-abortion event; etc.; many of the stories take place in Texas). All in all, though, their cultural interpretations of what God wants done in the world does not overwhelm or even taint the strong and clear challenge they offer to those of us stuck in adolescence.

I.

Last night C. and I went downtown for a birthday celebration--dinner at a chic café, a free concert concluding in Beethoven's 3rd, and a birthday brownie purchased at Starbucks that we nibbled on the train back uptown. (NB: We're still holding out. No peppermint mochas until after Thanksgiving!) An all together good way to turn twenty-seven.

The train was crowded--droves of people stepped on board with us as the theatre district let out for the night. C. found a seat, and I started out standing next to her. But four or five stops later, a seat opened up, so I scooped it up and set to sipping my decaf and ignoring the bustle of people around me.

Specifically, I was attempting to ignore the man sitting next to me, but this took some work. He was fiddling with the headphones of his personal radio, and this was quite the task because he had only one arm. I wasn't exactly sure how to respond. Do I offer a helping hand?--I could already see that could be in bad taste. But wouldn't I want someone to help me untangle my headphones.

He broke the silence first. "I'm not getting off; I'm just switching radios. This one gets bad reception. My cell phone radio is better up here." I asked him about his cell phone, about pre-pay cell phones in general, and I eventually helped him untangle his earbuds.

We compared cell phones. I pulled out my beat-up freebie-with-sign-up model. He asked if I was a student. I told him I'm going to seminary. He asked how I'd decided to do that.

And the conversation seized up. How do I answer that on the train? I stumbled about a bit, gestured that it would be a long story, and spluttered something about wanting to tell people about Jesus. The guy nodded with a knowing look.

It was the kind of moment where you might think God is testing you. What do you really believe, Josh? Will you confess my name? Will you speak the good news even when it could get awkward?

We talked a bit more. He'd grown up in a ministry family in a very repressive Holiness church. Now he's an artist, a photographer--though he chose his words very carefully in telling me what he did. He'd walked away from church and found it hard to relate to the people at the church where he'd grown up. A lot of his friends had died.

He was headed further north than me. As we rolled into my stop, I gritted my teeth, my muscles tightened, and I told him why I'm in ministry. "Things look so hopeless right now. I want to tell people that there's hope, that when Jesus came back to life after dying on a cross it proved that God is with us and wants to bring us into his good life."

I stood to walk out into the night. "My name's I.," he said. "It's been good talking with you." He grasped my hand. I said I hoped to see him around sometime, and I walked out onto the platform.