Week 3

Time and time again, I am reminded how little I have to give to God in order for Him to do something with it that is completely beyond all my expectations (and usually just plain ridiculous). More on that in later blog posts, but for now, I do want to give one small example of the unintended consequences caused by this Gospel project: Laura Hairgrove's willingness to preach the Gospel on the streets of CWRU.

Laura is one of the founding members and Executive Director of The Halo Ensemble, an internationally acclaimed Christian conductorless chamber orchestra of which I am also a member (So technically I just preached the Gospel with my boss. How's that for an employee/employer relationship?). While she loves Jesus and clearly wants to spread the Good News, she's never been the kind of person to accost people in the streets. A few weeks ago she started to read my blog, and after considering it, she decided that this form of evangelism wasn't so bad after all. But I figured she still might need some convincing, so here is the lengthy texting conversation that followed:

Me: Want to preach the gospel from 3:45-4:45?
Laura: Haha! Sure. You're on. :)

That was easy enough.


WEEK 3: Preaching the Gospel with Laura

Let me go in reverse order today, because I can't stop thinking about the last person with whom we conversed. His name is Kayden (spelling is approximate). He came into the conversation thinking that the primary reason Jesus came to Earth was to help people understand and cope with life. When asked about the prospect of eternal life, his understanding of it only included "living on in others' memories". Inspired by the video in my last blog post, I took him through John 3:16, and while he wasn't necessarily ready to give his life to the Lord, he was willing to pray with us (by that I mean I prayed and he listened). Basically the prayer went something to the effect of "God, make You and Your love unmistakable".

I couldn't see his face, but Laura said afterwards that something was definitely going on inside Kayden during the prayer. For those of you who are prayer warriors out there, this might be a good time to pray for him. He could use it.

There's more to the story that I might mention in a later blog post, but for now, let me take you through the rest of the afternoon. Laura and I met near Qdoba (good, slightly overpriced burritos- after 1000 points aka 10 burritos, you get one free. Sundays are triple point days, so it works out to a good deal.) and prayed a bit before talking to anyone. I don't know why I was such a wimp to start out; we passed probably 15 people before talking to this first lady in her late 20s to mid 30s. I'm glad she was the first person we met- I would hate for Laura's first experience with street-preaching to be with someone more hostile, someone who hates Christians for doing exactly what we were doing (driving those kinds of people further from Jesus was her main fear in street-preaching), and we did have such an encounter later. But this lady was quite friendly and very happy to meet us. She told us that she was a Christian, and that she had just been to a Bible study the night before. After pressing further, she admitted that she had not been very good about making time for Jesus lately (struggling to balance work and other things) but that she sincerely wanted to be better about it. In retrospect, we probably should have asked if she wanted to pray with us, but it didn't occur to me until much later. I whiffed on those kinds of things all afternoon. Thankfully, Jesus' strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The next guy we met, Hawwah, was a native Clevelander in his 40s who seemed one step away from your classic Cleveland religious zealot, mentally disabled due to heavy drug use over the past few decades. They typically hold bizarre views on the Old Testament- others have Revelation memorized but have no knowledge of the rest of the Bible. Nowadays I try to avoid these conversations at all costs (even though I know I shouldn't)- logic just has no place in these conversations. It's incredibly easy to get sucked into a half hour cyclical argument. I still love these guys, but I just don't know how to relate to them  in the slightest.

After talking to him for a while, though, I do not think that Hawwah is quite one of those people. Despite a heavy religious barrier, he did seem to respond to some logic, and our conversation was almost coherent. When asked who he thought Jesus is, he responded that Jesus was a prophet. He then went on a rant about Abraham being African. I agreed with him that humankind probably did start on the African continent, but despite the common ground, he still thought this point critical to the understanding of why Jesus was just a prophet. Before we could completely dissect the matter, a car arrived to pick him up, so I took his phone number. If I have any free time in my schedule between now and May, I will meet him at a coffee shop somewhere and discuss further.

Laura was quick to initiate conversation yesterday. The first time I ever went out, I had a crutch of handing out church fliers, so I hardly talked to anyone. Even when that crutch was removed, I was the wimpiest street preacher ever. I had to work myself up into a spiritual frenzy before I would even consider going out, and then I would poop out 15 minutes in. I think the turning point was that time my friend Charles had me singing an obscure hymn at the top of my lungs in the middle of Coventry while he talked to confused passers by. That was pretty great. Anyway, Laura did a good job. Anytime I had no words to say, she stepped right in without hesitation. She really knows how to wield the sword of the Spirit- any time she prays, God's spirit inside of me just goes, "AMEN!"

There was one guy in Thwing who was less than happy to talk to us, though I didn't realize it until after the conversation ended. We asked him what parts of Jesus' teachings he didn't like, and he mentioned the part about hating your father and mother, wife and child in order to be Jesus' disciple (Luke 14:25). I said I didn't know exactly what it meant but suggested that it was a comparison, and I brought in my own testimony about how my love for Jesus completely dwarfs my love for other people or other things. He still wasn't convinced that's what the Bible meant, so he moved on to a teaching he said he really liked- the part where the Bible says you should parade around your faith. I had no idea what verse he was referencing, and he split before I could figure it out. I had no idea that his last comment was meant as a passive-aggressive attack on our actions until Laura mentioned it later. I am amazed at my potential to be oblivious. The scene made her a little bitter, and it inspired a good conversation about unforgiveness later, so I guess some good came out of the conversation.

There were other conversations that I can't remember, simply because they happened yesterday and because the conversation with Kayden overshadows most of those memories. BTW, Thanks everybody for the prayer support.

One other thing: I can't believe how much I'm loving preaching the Gospel. Both yesterday and last week I went into the afternoon feeling spiritually drained. Spending time in prayer and/or in the Bible always helps, but there is a kind of spiritual revival you get from preaching the Gospel that you don't always get by reading the Bible. There's a joy in preaching the Gospel that you don't always get in a prayer meeting. It's true that one guy was upset that we were talking about Jesus, but his attitude hardly compares to the joy of sharing the Good News to all those other people and seeing lives affected by Jesus.

Go Jesus!