Have you ever woke up with one of those awful neck pains and can’t turn your head in one direction? Remember how difficult it was to manage the smallest of tasks and get through the day without being exhausted? Now, imagine that this pain has been there for months or even years and you keep going to your doctor without getting any relief. Finally, you return to the doctor for the third time, and he tells you, “You are a better person with that pain in your neck.”

I woke up with that type of neck pain this morning and it brought to mind the apostle Paul’s difficulty with the pain that he called the “thorn in his side.” Three times he asked God to remove this problem and finally the answer came back, “My Grace is sufficient for you. In your weakness, you are perfected.” Whoa.

It seems that God seems to think that we make better people when we aren’t all high-powered and puffed up. He seems to think that we are greater when we are relying on Him and so weakness to God isn’t such a bad thing. He can work with the weak, but the strong—well, that’s a whole different story.

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It’s Sunday morning and I’m feeling hungover again…in a good way.  After completing a day-long Doable Evangelism Seminar at the University of Nevada in Reno (which was the first beta test for the new delivery model our team has been working on for months), and then having to set my clocks AHEAD an hour, well, I’m feeling pretty spent.  In a good way.  An afterglow daze of sorts.

As usual, we had no idea if anyone would even show up.  The new model we were testing meant that WE (meaning Doable Evangelism) were the primary “host” for the event (usually we have a single church host the event and pay for it).  We went after six large churches in town to “partner” with us for $500 each (they would get 30 tickets, face priced at $25 each, which they could sell or give away).  That didn’t go so well.  Only had two paying partners.  Turns out this new model was far more attractive to the small church than the big ones…the first of MANY valuable lessons we learned from this experiment.  Our team will meet next week to process all we’ve learned and we’ll be using this experience to shape the new ‘small church’ model for the future.  Very exciting.

We had a little over 80 people actually show up, from an incredibly wide array of churches and traditions and geographic locations.  Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Anglicans, and a large assortment of non-denominational churches were all present.   We had one church from Fresno, CA (a five hour drive) and one guy who flew in from Philadelphia, PA.  The diversity was really amazing and rich.  People of color, people IN colors (The Soldiers for Jesus Motorcycle Club showed up), the young, the not so young, cowboys and rappers.  It was really quite beautiful to see from where I stood.

Our “lost” panel (a 30 minute interview we do at each Seminar) ended up being just two people, but they were priceless.  Brian and Kellie did a fantastic job of letting us see how it feels to be the object of our (Christian) affection.

Brian is a 25 year old Burning Man devotee (he even got married there) who wears Utili-kilts regularly (I gotta get me one of those).  He’s been “saved” several times, he says, but is drawn to the community, acceptance and freedom he finds at Burning Man (which he hasn’t really experienced in churches he’s been to).  My favorite quote from Brian:  “Every Christian is a non-Christian to some other Christian.”  That got our attention.

Kellie is a 42 year old single mom who talked about how the birth of her children and the horrors of her divorce were both very spiritual experiences for her.  She said she was forced by the pain of the divorce to lean into forgiveness, which she found to be a very healing, spiritual experience.  She also said that Jesus was her favorite spiritual leader, and that she believes in Jesus, but is not a Christian (and would not want to be).  She defined what believing in Jesus meant to her as believing that Jesus’ teaching and moral code was worth following.  This was a great insight into how our insider language has many different meanings in the outside culture.

There were a lot of powerful moments during the day.  At the end of the day I had person after person come up to me and say virtually the same thing, with tears in their eyes.  “I have felt like a total failure in my relationship with Christ when it came to evangelism until today.  I cannot tell you how thankful I am to have been here to hear that I have been doing evangelism all along.  I just didn’t know it counted to God.”

This is why we’re doing all this, folks.

If you were at the Seminar, please tell YOUR story here under the comments.  ALL of us who were there would LOVE to hear from SAM (our new Philly friend)!  And send us your OA stories so we can post them here and cyber-applaud you!  One or two paragraphs.  I’ll edit it…just send them to me!

Thanks, Reno.  I’m proud to be one of you.

To see pictures click HERE

When most Americans think of pilgrims, it conjures up images of large hats, big buckles, a feast, and turkeys. I guess that’s fairly logical, since most Americans were raised in the public school system which taught us about the Mayflower pilgrims who journeyed over to the new world because of their faith.

Personally, I have a sort of a Johnny Appleseed idea of what the word pilgrim means to me. Most of us know the story of the man who traveled across the country with a pot on his head, throwing down apple seeds, and building the nation one apple tree at a time. I have always liked the idea of being that kind of pilgrim.

The first definition in the dictionary says that a pilgrim is “a person who journeys, especially a long distance, to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion.” That idea seems compelling, but most of us can’t wander long distances like missionaries do. I remember reading a short booklet once about a woman who named herself Peace Pilgrim and she walked across the country to talk to others about peace. She talked about peace among nations, families, and friends. She meant for peace to be obtained nationally, regionally, locally, and personally. She talked about a spiritual peace because she was a modern day pilgrim, spreading her seeds of peace among all who would listen.

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