Bar Hopping

Rambling through my mind, I recalled a rather unique experience in evangelism many years ago. The Rev. Jack Miller invited a few of us new ministers to work with him in projects of evangelism. The one I am remembering was bar hopping evangelism. Jack was an up-front guy, so the first thing he did when we entered a neighborhood bar was to introduce himself to the bar tender, and explain that we were not here to cause trouble, but just to talk to anyone who wanted to share their problems. Most bar keeps are a bit weary of hearing the same problems from the same guys day by day anyway.

So when we had permission to be there, we ordered drinks and sat on bar stools at different places around the room. I ordered a ginger ale, and proceeded to nurse my drink for about an hour, wondering what in the world was I doing here. Next to me, at the corner of the bar, was a talkative young man, gulping down several beers, faster than I can drink water. My frustration was that he was talking to the guy on the other side of him, and I had no idea how I could wedge my way into the conversation in any fashion that seemed natural. More than once he needed to excuse himself to visit the men's room. What goes in must come out, and there was a lot of fluid going in.

Just about the time I thought this experiment was a failure, this guy turns to me and asks, "And what do you do?" (gulp) Okay here goes nothing. As soon as I tell him that I am a minister, I'm sure that will shut off the conversation--but it didn't! "I'm a minister of the gospel." "You are?" he responded with a genuine enthusiasm. "I've got a lot I wanted to ask a minister." That encouraged me to be a little bolder. "Yeah, we came in to talk to any guys who want to talk about their problems, but mostly to talk about how you can have eternal life."

I told him a few of my favorite gospel stories, and he listened with what I judged to be sincere attention. His big question was, "How can you be so sure?" I told him my story of conversion while watching Billy Graham on television, and my timid call to the ministry, and he still wanted to know how I can know. Well, of course, when anyone asks the epistemological question, we have to get them into the Bible. The evening ended with the guy weeping while we prayed for him and left him with the gospel of John. "Read this and pray, asking God to show Himself to you in this book." I never saw the man again. But I have often thought about trying that venue for evangelism again. I guess I am a coward because I have never tried it again--at least not yet.

Vacation addendum

So we thought our 2 hour wait on the I 40 was a hardship. We were glad to safely arrive home in sunny southern California. But we discovered that our homeland had been inundated by an uncharacteristically drenching downpour for a week before we arrived. It was probably that storm that formed snow where we had been in New Mexico. I grew up with the slogan of the Chamber of Commerce: "It never rains in California". Of course the footnote to the slogan is that this describes the Summer season only. But I have lived here for some fifty or more years of my life, and I can remember very few downpours like we experienced in the east.

As for the snow we had to tensely combat for miles before we descended the plateau of Arizona that houses Flagstaff, that too was a trifle compared to the inconvenient mini blizzard that closed the passes into the L.A. basin from the north. Today I heard of friends who were delayed by the snow to travel one mile in three hours. This was on another Southern California highway north of us.

So I want to publicly thank God for His good providence that has wonderfully overruled our stupidity several times to get us home safe and (reasonably) sound. Plan as we may, it is ultimately in His hands. And I wouldn't have it any other way. In Him we live and move and have our being. But even more than that, He has promised His own: "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)

Tomatoes in January

After slipping and sliding on the roads east of us, we quickly remembered that in the rest of the country it is winter. Back here in California we found tomatoes still growing in our garden. Okay, the vines are dying, and there is not a great abundance, but I needed to show you at least one.



Here it is. And there are more, but they are not as impressive. Next to the tomatoes are my jalapeno peppers.




There was a large watermelon also, but the vine had withered and died, so I picked it and stored it in the auxiliary refrigerator in the garage. I'm not about to boast of my farming abilities, but I can testify to the great growing season here in Lakewood, CA. As John Calvin would have said, I lucked out on the soil amendment I picked up at the local nursery. That is what made our fig tree so happy (old post: "The Happy Fig").

Vacation Adventures, part 2

"It's freezing in here!" I wish I had a nickel for every time my wife has said this. During our treacherous trek across New Mexico, she said it again. We were trying to get to Havasu, NV in time to celebrate Donna's birthday (Dec 31), but the weather turned on us. The driving was tension filled (see blog below) and slow. When it was no longer safe for me to try to drive any further because of the weather and because of the tension fatigue in my back and arms from fighting the steering wheel, we stopped in Acoma at a casino/hotel we had visited on our way east.

The room looked very nice, and we settled in, and Barbara recited her famous line. It wasn't exactly 32 degrees, but it was rather chilly. In order to accommodate her needs, I walked over to the unit which was spilling out tepid air into our room for the purpose of setting the heat a bit higher. The unit was built with dials to regulate the AC and the heater. But the knobs for these dials had been removed! I reached into the empty hole in the casing to see if I was able to grasp the stem on which the missing knob had been affixed. My efforts were vain, however.

As I lay recuperating on my bunk, I noticed that prior to the blower on this tepid unit there came a distinct electronic "click" from the opposite wall. Sure enough there was a thermostat located there. I struggled to my feet to report to Barbara that the number in it's window recorded a "72" degrees. She said, "I don't care what it says, it is NOT 72 in here." I agreed with her. There were buttons on the thermostat, so I attempted to adjust it. I found that the only change it would let me make was whether or not to show the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit. At least this proved that the "72" it kept reporting was not a decal.

Then I decided that if I cannot adjust the temperature setting, then I was going to fool it into thinking the temperature was less than it actually was. I went down the hall to gather ice cubes at the machine. I tied them in a plastic bag, and affixed it to the thermostat with a rubber band. Surely this would give us an extra blast of heat. But alas, this unit kept throwing tepid air into the room, and turning off periodically, pretending it had responded to our need for heat.

At this frustrating turn of events, it occurred to me that this was a casino. My experience is consistent with the casino philosophy. We all know "the house never loses." Barbara had earlier observed a woman feed $20 into the penny machine, only to come away in a few minutes with 11 cents. Right after her, another woman came to the same machine and threw away another $20. You see, they are rigged to give the player the allusion that she is in control, when she is not. Okay, that describes my frustrating experience with the thermostat. The whole place must be rigged!

We both cuddled together in one of the two queen beds and shivered through the night. When we decided to try the road again the next morning, we opened the outside door only to be blasted in the face with the coldest air these Californians have felt for a long time. Now THAT was freezing! We found out the next day that the temp was only 4 degrees. We were glad to have a nice car that threw good, hot air into our faces in rather short order. We picked up our water bottles only to find they were frozen. They were not even slush, but solid bricks.

The I 40 parking lot

We planned this auto excursion to Tennessee and back, thinking "surely snow crews would keep the interstate clean" and thought we would be safe and unhindered along our trek.

Well, we weren't quite that gullible. We did reserve in mind the possibility that we would have to take an unscheduled extra day in motel culture. But that would have spoiled our itinerary, which was intended to place us at our daughter's doorstep on her birthday, Dec 31.

So when we left Memphis, we did some serious marathon driving (700 miles one day, 400 the next and 500 for the third). You may have guessed that I am just a tad weary of driving. But I have learned that all driving is not the same. It is not the number of miles alone that make for a tedious driving day. Packed snow and streaks of glare ice which make driving a series of brief bobsled races interspersed with pavement recovery sections to keep us on the roadway--that is what I call tedious.



Somewhere east of Gallup, New Mexico, we took part in a social phenomenon which I will call, "parking lot pageantry". You've heard of the "flash mob" Christmas caroling presentations at various shopping malls. The first one I was aware of happened in Macy's of Philadelphia, and they called it "a random act of culture" when there was a "spontaneous" outbreak of the Hallelujah Chorus. What we experienced was similar inasmuch as unexpected activities took place in a public location that was originally created for a different purpose. The Interstate 40 was created for high speed travel. On this occasion, however, we involuntarily participated in massive parking lot pageantry.

Both lanes ahead of us rather suddenly came to a halt. Neither lane moved. We waited, but nothing was moving. People began to come out of their cars, looking ahead along the highway to see what might explain this. When I took to the road on foot I could not find an answer either. The snow was coming down, beautifully and dramatically in huge flakes that floated down like large white platters under water. It was piling up rapidly, and we began to wonder if the highway was closed, or at least restricted to vehicles equipped with chains. I took out my cell phone and tapped my yellow pages app for the New Mexico state police. When I called, I heard only a recording that said some areas experienced slowing because of road work. No reports of road closures, nothing.

We saw a lady jump from her car, form a snowball and throw it back into the car to pelt her trapped passengers. An elderly gentleman pulled along side of me, driving along the shoulder of the road, and asked me if I knew what was the matter. After my disclosure of ignorance, he asked if he could pull his car into the space ahead of us. (There was only about half car space which remained after someone else had vacated his place in the pageantry to cross the median strip and head the other direction.) His car only partially left the shoulder of the highway by pulling the nose of his car ahead of us. We were parked there for a full hour, enjoying the show, when there came a horn blast over my left shoulder. It was a huge wrecker (tow truck) which stopped to swear at the guy ahead of us whose car was still partially blocking the shoulder of the road. After humiliating the old gent (look whose calling him "old"!) the tow drove, straddling the shoulder and the median to creep on ahead to tackle the problem. At this time we had confirmed our suspicion that there had been an accident.




It was a good 90 minutes before we began to move--slowly--west along this high speed road. When we got about two miles along the road, there was little evidence of the accident. Disturbed areas of snow in about three or four spots that seemed to indicate it had been a multiple car incident.

White Christmas no dream

On the very day! If you ever notice, the song, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" takes place in Beverly Hills, LA. The verse lead into the familiar part of the song specifically says that. Well I am no longer dreaming because we experienced the storybook reality here in Chattanooga, TN. It was almost as dramatic as the timing of the snowfall in the movie. About six in the morning the flakes began to fall, and they kept falling gently and steadily until we had four inches. It was gentle enough to make piles of snow on posts and branches. Our time with the family was idyllic.

Why do you need Jesus?

My friend and fellow OPC minister, Tom Champness, preceded me in the pulpit of Grace Church, Modesto. One of the members there told me how Tom once asked the congregation, "By show of hands, how many of you consider yourself to be a sinner?" The response was unanimous. They knew the scripture that says "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." But Tom was not satisfied. He then asked, "Who considers himself to be a dirty, filthy, rotten sinner?" Only a few people were willing to raise the hand at this. Not all of them realized that in God's eyes these questions are identical.

And it is precisely that reason that I need Jesus. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. His death on the cross is designed to cleanse the filth of sin. His atonement paid the price of sin in our stead. Jesus said that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

But just how can we invite dignified people to join our church if we are calling them filthy sinners? We can't win people over by insulting them. The great temptation we have learned from the salesman model is to modify the packaging of the appeal to outsiders, so that coming to Christ will be more attractive. Repentance is just too negative a package.

Here in Memphis there must be a dozen mega churches that have a more or less reformed affiliation. It's a cultural phenomenon that I have not experienced any other place on the face of the earth. The tragic disappointment for me is when I find one or more of these churches have slipped on the temptation to dress the gospel in a more saleable package. I attended one of these churches only to find that the message was that we need to come to Christ because of our problems. It was almost said that we need him because of our sin, but the message fell short. Not only was the word "repent" not heard, but the concept was not clear at all. I came away with the impression that people were invited to come to Christ because he makes it easier to live life here below. He helps us face difficulties. He comes to us personally and never leaves his own. God with us is a wonderful experience.

All these things are true and wonderful. I suppose the appeal is legitimate, but not without the mention of repentance. John came to prepare for the Messiah, and his message was to "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." Jesus' first recorded message was identical. Was the gospel actually preached? I am hard pressed to say that it was. Am I being too picky? Is it not possible to invite people to come to Christ without belaboring the point of being a sinner?