We were short-handed this month in our ministry because all of our friends decided to go on vacation. So, we asked our neighbor from down the street to sing with us. We had learned that he had a great voice after a karoake night that our neighborhood had.

Lucky for us, our neighbor was delighted to help us even after he found out it was Father’s day. We were so grateful. After a couple of practices, we could tell that he had something to say, and one night we spent a couple of hours talking about his faith. He described himself as an agnostic, believing that there was something up there, but not being able to put words into it. Through the conversation, we were able to put his mind at ease and let him know that although it was a ministry, there were no requirements about the personal faith of anyone and that the whole purpose of the ministry was to give hope to the people we visited and in some way make the world a better place. It was evident that it was something that he could live with, so we moved forward.

I prayed that it would be a good experience for him because I know that God works through the heart in ways that we can’t always understand. So, when a sweet elderly lady came down and sat on a couch across from him toward the end of the service, it seemed heaven-sent. Both my husband and I were out greeting the seniors and shaking hands, and being preoccupied with others had missed the little lady who sat across from our neighbor. She looked across at him and he smiled at her. I turned just in time to see him cross the gap between the two couches and crouch his lanky figure down to speak to her. I saw the interaction between them, and I saw the little lady start to cry.

She was dressed so nicely, and he commented on her lovely outfit and asked her if she had any children. No children. No family. My heart quickened a little when I heard him say that she reminded him of his own mother, now long passed away. She said, “Maybe you could be my son when you’re here.” Tears started to come to my neighbor’s eyes then. All the while, I pretended not to be paying attention too much and I started working to put away the equipment that we used for the service. As we walked out of the facility, my neighbor’s eyes met mine and we exchanged a knowing glance.

“That’s why we keep coming back,” I said.

Even so, I couldn’t help but wonder at how God had coordinated that touching moment, clearly specifically meant for my nieghbor and for the lovely little lady in the peacock blue outfit. Two people coming together with different backstories, creating a new kind of family in a moment’s time.

An Interview with Dr Jon Sharpe
By Jim Henderson

Jon Sharpe is the Director of the Center for Global Urban Leadership. He and I have been friends and colleagues for over 30 years. He is planning a trip to Ireland this fall and I wanted to ask him a few questions about it. He will also be joined by Colonel John Michel, a board member of Off The Map

Where did we first meet? I was at Bellevue Community College near Seattle and had an org. we called Christian World Liberation Front ( we didn’t have any idea what it really meant other than it sounded radical to us) and we talked the college into giving us funds to have concerts. So, we looked for the wildest Christian band we could find to come play in the center of the campus. People told me about “the Justice”, a group that had recently gone Christian (sort of a U2 kind of deal) so we had them come play. They were wild and they were good! Jim Henderson led the group and we became friends… Our next group was Andre Crouch and the Disciples! It must have been about 1970.

You have been a pastor and led several ministries over the past 30 years plus. Tell us about a few of those experiences Well, my brother once said, “you can always tell the leader with spear front and rear.” Read the rest of this entry »

Benjamin Ady sent us this OA. Great example of what can happen when we intentionally listen to someone. Everybody has a story

So today I got to OA a fairly strange character named Brother Jed. He was sitting in a chair in red square on the UW campus, or standing near his chair, and in a well projected, well carrying voice he was … preaching, for lack of a better word. Some of the things he was saying sounded kind of nice, like maybe god cared about the smallish groups of students who would stop to listen a while. Other things he was saying were completely off, IMNSHO, like god is gonna send homosexuals and perverts and sinners to hell, and the point of sex within marriage must mainly be procreation, etc. etc.

I sat and listened to students mocking him, or haranguing him, or asking him pointed questions, and him responding in his loudish voice, often with what seemed to me rather outrageous responses. And I wrote him off fairly quickly. “What a quack,” I thought. But after I left, I thought to myself “That must get tiring, and he probably has lots of fascinating stories, and I wonder if he can speak at a normal volume level?” so I went back and sat down to take some notes for a little while with the idea of blogging about it and maybe connecting with him. And then he wrapped up.

So I said “Hey, can I buy you a drink?” and he said “sure”. so I got him a soft drink and we sat down and talked for 20 minutes, at normal volume levels. He preaches like that 5 hours a day on collge and university campuses all over the country all year round, and has been doing thus for 32 years. And he has a wife, and 5 daughters, and one is in the army as a chaplain’s assistant, but not in Iraq. And he used to be a history prof at a university, and then he left to go study under a guru in India, but along the way he got distracted into living in a hippie commune in Morroco.

And one day at the Hippie Commune in Morocco, in the evening, they were watching the sunset and chanting, and he looked behind him and saw the full moon rising as the sun was setting. And he thought “Wow! Someone must have created that”. Which led him to start reading the Bible, become a Christian, give up on India, return to the U.S., and start his 32 year old preaching career.

All that for a simple soft drink and a brief invitation. I was stoked. He seems like a fairly nice guy when he’s not doing the preaching thing.