My sister gave me a calendar of religious pictures for Christmas and June happens to be a picture of Jesus sitting facing a woman, both sitting on the edge of a well, sheep surrounding the two on a hillside of green.  In the picture, the woman is a beautiful woman sitting in front of Jesus and smiling beautifully at him.  In my mind’s eye, I don’t see that story that way at all.   To me, it seems too perfect and she is far too beautiful.  The way I see the story is with a woman who is aging rather ungracefully, her dress slightly more seductive than it need be, her eyes worldly and guarded, but a strange man has suddenly captured her attention in a way that she could never have predicted.  We tend to like to pay attention to the pretty people of the world and we are often attracted to beauty, but we don’t know how to handle those who aren’t. 

I am currently reading “Save Me From Myself,” an autobiography by Brian “Head” Welch, former lead guitarist of Korn.  Brian isn’t what people would call pretty, and his life is far from it, but he tells a compelling story of coming from a life of sex, drugs, rock and roll to a life of faith in Christ.  It’s not a pretty story, but it’s a true story.

About a quarter into the book, I admittedly started getting a little annoyed.  Alright already, I thought, I get it…Sex, drugs, rock and roll, repeat.  Now I’m ready for the transformation!  It didn’t play out quite as neat and tidy as I expected it to play out.  His story is a messy story.  It’s a story of love, loss, drugs, addiction, and vices good and bad.  He even said the sinner’s prayer before diving into all his mess, so it doesn’t exactly play out the way most Christians think it should.  There should be a sudden and complete transformation, shouldn’t there? 

Yet, transformation often comes over time and a person’s journey to follow God’s call doesn’t always take a straight path.  The road less travelled is often littered with obstacles, mistakes, heartbreak, and stupidity before someone finally comes to a point of realization that perhaps they need to go to a power higher than themselves.  That’s why it’s not always pretty.  It wasn’t pretty when Jesus faced the woman at the well and told her the ugly truth about herself.   She seemed to have moved beyond pretense, but Jesus didn’t have any reason for pretense in the first place. 

 Jesus had the benefit of foreknowledge, but we often judge a book by its cover.  We look at a person and we start making assumptions about them, but we don’t really know where they are in their journey and we might just be one experience in a long line of experiences.  It took a string of Christians to move Brian Welch along his journey.  We often assume that we have to get someone to “pray the prayer” or that we have to “close the deal,” but God is the one in charge and he is the only one going along each step of the journey with that person.  It’s just as important for us to remember that God’s timing is better than ours and that anyone who comes to God’s altar and humbles themselves, does so, not because of you and me, but because of the One who saved us.

We usually like to focus on the destination, but the journey is where we are right now.  As Bette Davis said, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be bumpy night!”  We can expect difficulties, wrong turns, and ugliness in our lives, but if our journey brings us to a loving God, it’s a journey worth taking. We just need to remember that other people’s lives are riddled with their own bumps and it may take more or less for them to get to the same place we are.

My expectations were quite a bit lower by the time the third one rolled around, but we stepped forward as we always do. We had already considered cutting the message short, and ended up doing that. I started greeting seniors until it was time to start. I looked over the group of some thirty seniors and saw heads drooping to chests, eyelids sagging, and I wondered how we would make it through without any energy of our own to offer, but we finally pushed through the rough parts and worked our way to end.

I was singing a song this time called “His Life for Mine,” and we had put the song at the very end because it has a dramatic ending.

His heart was broken, mine was mended
He became sin, now I am clean.
The cross he carried bore my burden.
The nails that held him set me free.

His life for mine, his life for mine
How could it ever be?
That he would die, God’s son would die
To save a wretch like me
What love divine, He gave his life for mine.

Two sentences into the song, I heard weeping and I looked over to see one of the women on the front row crying. She reached for her tissue as tears flooded down her cheeks and she sobbed, literally sobbed. I felt my own tears creeping into my own throat, which is dangerous as I was still delivering the song. I pushed them back and continued on. I continued on even as the sobbing also continued on, and only as I reached the crescendo of the very end did the tears begin to subside and I finished the song with that long, dramatic ending note. It was the most touching experience. She was down to sniffles by the end, and so I stepped forward for the prayer, but then, my own tears were overtaking me and I croaked out the final prayer allowing myself to share in whatever had overtaken her.

I don’t know what broke inside her today, but afterward, I prayed along with her and I helped dry her tears with the tissue she was clinging to. Everyone in the room seemed somehow different after that. I suddenly had forgotten my weariness, my sore muscles, and my mistakes. God had reached into someone’s heart and wrenched it open before all of us and we were in awe. We were humbled at the glimpse of what we witnessed. We knew we had been given a peek of something holy. A revelation of what it means to be human, to be created in the image of God, to witness the presence of the joy and pain that makes up a person’s life and faith.

I’ve been reading a book called “Love is an Orientation” by Andrew Marin.  It is about building a bridge from the Christian community to the Gay community.  I’ve been struck by how similar Marin’s suggestions for building these bridges are to those we use in Doable Evangelism (DE).  Often with the gay and lesbian community, Christian’s feel that they have to push an agenda (i.e. stop being gay/change your behavior etc.). This is obviously a huge turn off to gays!

Most of us know what it feels like to be approached by someone with an agenda. Perhaps you were accosted by someone with an “evangelistic” agenda,” or my least favorite, the “I’d love to tell you about a small business opportunity” agenda.  It feels yucky, slimy and bad.  We don’t like being approached by someone with an agenda, so why do we think gay people would like it any more than we would? Why can’t we practice the doable evangelism skills when interacting with our gay friends?  Just notice, or pray; or ask how they’re doing and listen!

Marin encourages the use of open-ended questions to build bridges.   He says,

“Open-ended questions, by contrast, require not only thought but responsiveness.  A great open-ended question is, “What’s it like to be you?”  Such a question owns the reality that heterosexual people can never fully identify with the life experience of gay people.  We take the position of the eager audience.  This automatically puts us in a humbled state of listening and learning.  The know-it-all perception is shot out the window, and there is no better place to be in order to start building a bridge with the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community.” (pg. 163)

This is advice that Christian’s can use in all of their friendships, but especially when meeting people that we may perceive as very different than us (ie, Mormon’s, Muslim’s, Atheists, Gays). Instead of allowing our fur to go up, and entering a defensive posture as we mentally rehearse all the arguments about “why I’m right and you’re wrong,” how about we come to people as humble learners?  If we would assume that all people are loved by God, and created in His image (even if they disagree with us), perhaps we can learn to listen to their stories…and find that we are not that different after all.

Right before Christmas, we got a letter from a lady who attends one of our services because her mother is one of our seniors. She wanted to tell us about how our messages and music had helped her through a couple of personal losses that she had been going through. She’d lost some longtime friends of the family, and even more recently, had lost a cousin who was a deputy sheriff killed in the line of duty. In remembrance, she decided to do something positive to help her through the loss of her cousin, and she bought one thousand pocket angels.

After our service one day, we decided to invite her to have lunch with us and she described how she would hand them out. Whenever she met someone new that she thought might like or need one, she would produce one. Sometimes she told her cousin’s story, and sometimes she didn’t. What astounded me was that she had already given more than one thousand and was nearly up to fifteen hundred.

It’s an amazing amount of people we meet over a number of months, if we think about it and she was able to put a number on her connections because she had her pocket angels to give. Imagine a beautiful, white, glass angel sitting in the palm of your hand and then imagine giving one to ever person that you meet and connect with. When I think about it, it kind of puts a picture in my head about the part we play in this world.

I grew up in a family that valued individuality, and individuality is good, but if it becomes a catalyst for isolation then it’s a substandard surrogate for what I would call the universal truth that God has created us to be people who need each other. Our new friend is the opposite of isolation, and the little angels that she distributed are a symbol of her reaching out to others. Sometimes, we just forget the impact that we have on the lives of others. We think of ourselves as insignificant, but there is something special in all of us that gives us the strength and the courage to break out of our cocoon and see the world.

There is always some measure of risk involved when we stretch out our hand. We risk rejection and that never feels good, nor does it make us want to reach out again. Many people that I work with and know personally think that I am an incredibly outgoing person, and yet, simply opening a line of conversation with someone I don’t know makes my heart flutter and my hands tremble. It feels almost like stage fright, but I have also learned that God’s plan for me is a wonderfully exciting adventure where I meet wonderful characters of all shapes, sizes, and interests. I enjoy looking into their depths, and I imagine that God must delight in the uniqueness of each of his children in much the same way. When He sees one of His children begin to peel back the layers of their fears, hopes, and dreams, He sees a beautiful multi-faceted gemstone begin to sparkle and dazzle in its own way.

Fear is really what is keeping us from handing out our own pocket angels. Maybe they aren’t actual angels that sit in our pockets. Maybe the pocket angels are just the excuses we need to make a connection with someone we don’t know. Whatever gets us to move past our fear of rejection, is most precious indeed.

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,” 1 Peter 3:15 (NIV)

Be prepared, says Peter. It’s the Boy Scout motto, and in modern decades a primary motivational verse for much of the evangelistic training we’ve all endured. Being prepared in recent evangelical history has meant to be ready to give the right answer to any question our seeking friends may come up with. It means to study the common objections to the faith and memorize the proper responses to counter them. Memorize the Four Spiritual Laws (and their corresponding Bible verses, if you’re really serious). Practice drawing the “Bridge Illustration” so you can diagram the Gospel for the visual learners. Memorize clever little phrases that you can use to steer any conversation to something “spiritual” (where you can present your carefully memorized pitch). You can add your own stuff to this list, I’m sure (I’ve done them all, believe me). It’s pretty endless.

So what has been the result of all this preparation? Do we have a growing army of prepared Christians going out to explain the Gospel to their friends? Is the bulk of the Body of Christ stepping up to the Great Commission, having had the benefit of billions of dollars and countless hours worth of training and preparation?

You know the answer to that one, don’t you? It’s sad, but charitable estimates indicate that less than 10% of Christians participate in evangelism at all. Something is terribly wrong here. Are the other 90% just slackers? Are they chicken? Lukewarm? Or are they simply overwhelmed by the amount of information they seem to need to be armed with to do this well? I’ve heard this question countless times from serious Jesus followers regarding evangelism: “What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?” (“I don’t know” is the universally acceptable answer to that question, for what it’s worth)

People are literally paralyzed by preparation.

What is Peter really trying to say to us in this frequently (mis)quoted verse? Is he warning us to become smarter, more clever and better prepared than those we are to present the Gospel to? I don’t think so. What is it that Peter is asking us to be prepared to do? To give an answer. To what question? “Why do you have hope?”. Has that ever happened to you…someone you’ve been hanging out with, listening to, caring about, asks you why you seem to have hope in your life? Peter seems to assume this question will arise often enough that we should be ready for it.

And what is the correct answer to this probing question? What list do we need to present, what clever response should we be ready to offer? Well, how about this one? “Jesus, I guess.” They’d likely want more information about that, like how Jesus has brought hope to your life, and how following him has affected your inner life and outer relationships with others. Are you prepared to answer those kind of questions?

The beauty of this clear intent of 1Peter 3:15 is that you cannot get the answer wrong. It’s YOUR STORY, your experience with Jesus, your personal transformation that is the answer to this question. You might not express it eloquently, but it’s your story. Nobody can say, “That’s not true.” And they won’t…they’ve noticed hope in you that has intrigued them.

Still, some folks are afraid to tell their story because it isn’t very dramatic or laced with titillating incidents. They didn’t do drugs or kill people. They had a happy, normal, Christian upbringing with pretty decent parents who didn’t abuse them or abandon them. Some people actually believe they don’t have a story because it’s so…ordinary. But I can assure you, if someone asks you to offer a reason for the hope they see in your life, you have a story to tell. Tell it however you want to, but tell them the truth. They’re interested, and they’re inviting you to tell it.

This all presumes you actually HAVE hope in your life. You can’t fake it for the sake of doing evangelism. If Christ hasn’t made this kind of difference in your life, you won’t get this question from anyone. It also presumes you’ll be in close enough proximity to people without hope that they will become curious about your life. This also can’t be faked.

Being prepared isn’t so much about giving the right answer as it is about expecting people to be asking about that hope you have. That means that you’ll have to actually be engaged with those who are without the hope you have in Christ in some significant ways. You’ll have to pay attention to people all around you and listen to their stories. You’ll have to be in proximity to those who are far from Christ. That may sound daunting, but the reality is you already ARE in proximity. Just start paying attention to people all around you.

Oh, and when they actually ask you for a reason for the hope you have, the only rule that should guide your response is also given by Peter in the last part of this verse:

“But do this with gentleness and respect.”

If you want to memorize something, memorize that.

“Maybe the best thing that you can do for him is just to be his friend and be there.”

Those were the words from the movie “The Soloist” that we saw this afternoon. After trying to save Nathaniel Ayers from a life on the streets and mental illness, Steve Lopez finally comes to realization that he is unable to save his friend and unable fix him. I reflect upon those words today because before the movie, we ran into a friend who was the very lady who brought together my husband and I nearly fourteen years ago under the guise of playing cards. Her invitation resulted in our marriage less than a year later and although I live within a mile of her home, I haven’t seen her in years. You could say that we haven’t exactly “been there.” We caught up over dinner this evening after the movie, but I felt a pang of guilt at my own absence.

On Saturday, we went to the funeral of my husband’s coworker. She and my husband had worked together for nearly twenty years. In fact, she and her husband cooked the tri tip for our wedding feast. There’s nothing like a funeral to remind us how precious our time is on earth. After the funeral, we sat at the table of a lovely lady named Diane. The meat of our conversation with Diane started when I asked her where she was from, and she told me that she was from Canada. This led to my asking if she had any family in this area, and she told me that she had no family left at all. I empathized with her that this is when church family becomes most important, and she agreed. Then, she shared with me her experience that she has learned over her lifetime that people aren’t always meant to be part of our lives forever. People come and go within the framework of our lives sometimes for a time, sometimes for a day, sometimes for a moment, and sometimes for a lifetime.

I realized the real wisdom in what Diane had to say, but lately I have been struggling with my own absenteeism and yet, I know that I likely could not stay engaged and active in every relationship that I have allowed in my life. So, where do I draw my line? What do I owe those people who have stretched out the hand of friendship to me and I to them?

I think that we are transients to our relationships. We are wanderers, nomads who migrate through life and bring to others what we have at the time that they are present. For me, there is only one relationship that goes with me everywhere, but that relationship has made me feel more responsible for those who enter into my territory. That relationship has made me intensely aware of who is entering my airspace and how I should treat them while they are moving through. That relationship has been telling me to “be there” and so I keep stretching in hope that I could do a better job at that.

I wandered into line number seven of my local grocery store with two hundred and thirty six dollars worth of groceries. Going into a shopping spree that large, you tend not to be in a hurry, but I was taken back when the lady in the line immediately asked me for my savings card. “Oh, sorry, I’ll get it, but I don’t have my regular helper today,” I explained hastily, while I started to try to remove the contents from my cart even faster since my purse was trapped under half a dozen items.

The cashier was an excessively cheerful lady with several studded crosses pinned to her name tag and apron along with a few employee awards and a smiley face or two. She asked me if I would like help emptying the cart. Misunderstanding her original question, I politely declined, but she took no notice and insisted that Jake the bagger boy start emptying my cart for me. I didn’t argue, but wasn’t sure why she seemed in such a hurry to get rid of me. Even so, I started to put in my cards and got to the business at hand.

Halfway through the process, she asked me if I needed help out to the car. I usually decline if I have only one cart because I always figure that there are plenty of people who actually need help, and so I declined, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She made an off-hand comment about Jake needing to get some air, and that was the moment when I suddenly became cognizant of my role in some situation in which I clearly knew nothing about. She said something about Jaking getting a red card, and then she followed up that comment with a joke about people who need to laugh more often. I laughed and said that I had plenty of that action and could probably deliver on that. It’s something that I am usually known for, but admittedly I had come into this line in the frame of mind to do business and get home, so I wasn’t really in that mode until the cross-bearing, employee-of-the-month cashier started to insist that I get Jake the bagger boy’s assistance and give him some air.

Jake seemed like a shy eighteen year old and he indicated that he was fine and so I guess I was being a little dense and also I didn’t want to embarrass the young man any further. Finally, the bagging was done and I went for my cart, but cashier number seven told me one more time that I needed assistance. Even though I tried to decline again, she silently mouthed, “You need Jake’s help,” and gave me a knowing look with raised eyebrows and widened eyes. I dared not miss this cue.

More than a little perplexed, I commissioned Jake the bagger boy to take my cart. At that point, I turned my attention to him and said, “Well, okay, Jake. Let’s get some air.” Jake seemed to feel like he should explain and said that he’d had a bad customer earlier.

“Some people are like that,” I sympathized, but I didn’t stop there. “So, what did you do to push this customer over the edge, Jake?” I said it laughingly with a smile that told Jake he needn’t worry about me judging.

Exasperated, he replied, “I put my hand in the handle part of his soda case, just like this.” He demonstrated how he had popped open the built-in handle by showing me on one of my packs of canned soda, “The guy just went nuts, and so I had to go get him a fresh one out of the warehouse.”

I laughed and joked, “Silly me, I thought that was what they were for.” Jake went on about it for a moment longer in frustration and I listened, but finally I gave him a smile and told him not to worry about it that some people just don’t get it. By that time, though, he had already started to smile, so I told him to have a nice evening and to try to finish off his evening in a better mood.

As I drove off, I laughed to myself at the knowledge that my assistance to Jake had little to do with anything that I did, but that it was largely due to the cashier on lane seven. She must’ve sensed something in me that told her that Jake might find a cheerful word that might somehow counteract the harshness of his most recent experience and she wasn’t about to let me slink off without joining her in helping him out. I thank her for that and, you know, I would imagine, Jake does, too.

There was a lady whom I spent time with a year or so ago. I made a vow to myself never to bring up the topic of religion with her. She knew I was a Christian and had openly told me of her antipathy to Christianity and being preached at. She made it clear that she enjoyed my conversation but did not want to talk about religion. So why is it that it came up in every conversation? I didn’t bring it up. I mostly listened. And when I did talk, I just told stories from my life with no commentary. It was very difficult for me not to respond to the many ‘openings’ in the conversation, to all the provocative things she said that almost demanded I speak up for God, but I was determined to keep my vow. But once she knew she was going to be listened to, then she apparently felt safe and she really did want to talk about God.

In fact, she told me every time we got together that she just loved talking to me, that it opened her mind to new ideas, that I was so intelligent and thoughtful, that it was a surprising thing to her to find this in a Christian.

ROFL! Evangelism can be so easy! Just don’t talk and suddenly you’re wise and insightful. That’s a joke that will never get old.

I just saw your website on The Shack website. I read some of the posts and I decided to post my own thoughts.

First and foremost I am an Agnostic. I don’t believe in the church. I was brought up Catholic and take the bible with a grain of salt.  I do believe in God…not the old white man figure with the white beard, but in a spiritual being. I believe in the 10 commandments, because these make sense.

My only daughter passed away seven years ago. I did not blame God, the doctors or anybody else. I did not ask why, because I figured it would be answered, “Why not?” I have a hard time explaining my life now. It has changed in ways I never imagined. Let me try to explain anyway.

My daughter was sick for a long time. I lost my job, because I needed to take care of her. I lost all my money, because some of her medications were not covered by her insurance and after she was gone, I had a hard time finding a new job. She passed away in February of 2002. I was trying to get myself together. In December of 2002 (I will never forget…it is burned into my mind) my boyfriend asked me if I would like to go to Cape Cod. We live on the south shore near Boston. He said there would be some festivities and it would be good to get out of the house. so we drove to the cape. When we arrived at the Cape Cod canal and started to cross on one of the bridges, the sun went down and it was so absolutely beautiful, it took my breath away.

I knew then, in a way I can’t really explain, that everything would be ok. I could feel the hand of God.

That month I started my life all over. I lost weight, got a new job and appreciated everything around me. This was my present from God. Oh, I talk to him all the time. I complain, I am thankful, and I get mad at him. My daughter is always with me, and so is God. I am still not going to churches, and I still do not listen to preachers or priests, and I am still an agnostic.

I was eating lunch with a friend during the break at the Doable Evangelism seminar in San Jose when I noticed a young family at a nearby table. The mom looked like she was Native American. The dad was dressed in camouflage fatigues and their son was a toddler.

I kept eating as I prayed (behind their backs!) that God would bless the young family with abundant love, and protect them. After I finished eating I looked at their table again and noticed that only the mom was sitting there. I assumed that dad and son had gone to the restroom. When I walked outside I was surprised to see dad and son stretching their legs. Dad was chatting with another guy in his age group. I overheard dad say, “…to Afghanistan.” Just then I saw the son start running toward the parking lot. I was closer to him than dad was, so I stepped between him and his destination and said, “Your dad needs you,” as I pointed him back toward his dad.

A day later I heard on the news that one of our National Guard groups was going to Afghanistan. Somehow I feel a bit connected to them.