Super Walmart Evangelism

So Wednesday night we had a speaker at church who is a missionary in Morocco. For those of you who don't know about this country... it is an islamic state. That means that there are no more than 1000 Christians there total. That and missionary work is illegal and could get you killed.

So basically he gave us the "be all that you can be" speech. I mean some of the thing he said were harsh. But you know what? Sometimes we need that kind of encouragement and Brandon and I seemed to think it worked. One of the things he mentioned was Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones and how he sees the Moroccan city where he lives as a valley of dry bones. But then he kind of brought it to our world view and said "isn't that how you feel sometimes when you're walking through Walmart?"

-- Laugh --

But then it struck me that Walmart is today's marketplace... the place where evangelism should start. So I began to brainstorm a simple way to spread the love of Christ to others. Here's the plan in simple bullets...

Go to Walmart, probably at night
Ask people if you can pray for them for a need they have
Pray for the person
Give the person a card stating you prayed for them and for what
The card has a URL to "theyprayedforme.org" or something.
People can blog about being part of this community.

That's about it. Simple eh? Easy to do? Technically...

Prepare Ourselves For Worship

So my great uncle Mark is an amazing guy. I'm not quite sure of his age, but I would guess he is about 90 years old, but to meet him you would not think so. He and his wife Betty are constantly moving about, visiting, and keeping in touch with the family... and when I say family I mean extended. They showed us pictures and its quite clear the breadth of the Moyer influence.

One of the things Uncle Mark does is send out a daily e-mail "newsletter". This newsletter contains the happenings of the family, prayer requests, etc. I tried to turn him on to blogging, but I think he may be plenty happy with the e-mail newsletter. Either way I enjoy just passively reading what's happening in their lives. Making strawberry pies from the strawberry harvest, visiting with Tim who has cancer, talking to family on the phone. But the one thing that strikes me the most is there is a consistent thread throughout some of these e-mail and the the following words are typed...

"Prepare Ourselves For Worship"

This phrase touched me in a way because it reveals how we should approach worship. I'm on the church worship team and I know that for worship to occur, it requires preparation. And I don't just mean practice. I mean getting in tune with God. I have played drums on Sundays when practice went great and we had everything down. Then Sunday comes and we musically fall on our face. There are even times when you play all the songs perfectly, but no worship occurs.

But there are other times when we hardly practice at all or things seem impossible. Just the other Wednesday we were practicing before Wednesday night church and Brandon said to me "Dude, this is not going to be good". He was struggling to even sing. We were having sound problems. Everyone was just rusty. But I had faith, not shallow faith, but faith in knowing. I told Brandon "God's grace will pull this off".

The fact is that you need to till up the hardened soil in your heart. You need to cry out to God. You need to be hungry. You need to seek after God like we seek after our car after a grueling hike. If your heart and mind are not in it like that... then you are not prepared for worship. In fact I believe that in some sense, you don't even need to practice your skills, you can worship God with none of that. God is sufficient for you and that lets you worship.

So Uncle Mark, I hope we can all grasp with seriousness what it means to prepare for worship. Prehaps we need to start on Saturday morning and get our heart and mind right with God. But true worship is like a good meal... it takes time, talent and attention to detail to be great.

Bloglull

OK. So its an official term and I made it up. So years from now when people ask where the term "bloglull" originated... its right here, right now. What does it mean? Well, ask any German about compound words and you figure it out.

So really, I've been busy and doing quite a bit of thinking. Let me illustrate happenings in my life in a bulleted list...

• Brandon moved in with Jaime and I (yes the Brandon that is on the left side of this blog)
• My dad an I built a pseudo-biodiesel plant based on the dieselsecret.com system.
• I have been busy at work but doing a lot of cool stuff and things are getting pretty organized.
• I have been trying to learn Swedish and bought a Swedish bible... such a beautiful language.
• I just ate salad with a dirty fork.
• I have been thinking more about cyberevangelism.

Whoa! What? Cyberevangelism? Yes, that's right... a new term originating at this amazing blog too! My past pastor (is that prepastor?) has been putting bugs in my ear about the emergent church and just rethinking church in general... Maybe he knows I am a compact thinktank or something, but I have been thinking about it. One of the things Greg mentioned was how do we reach the people that don't go to church? The people that don't like church because it is so institutional? So this got me thinking and being that I'm so involved in technology I naturally started solving the problem that way... and that's when it hit me...

There is a growing mission field that no airplane can travel to.

I suddenly realized that cyberspace is growing at an exponential rate and social networking technologies are proliferating. Unfortunately just like the internet, this landscape is being flooded by the darkness of this world as fast as this grows. There are a number of ways we as Christians can respond, and turn back the flooding darkness that fills the void behind this cybergrowth.

Blogs
I read blogs (introducing term "blogsurfing") and find an inordinate amount of loneliness, stress, lack of direction. The one thing I have found is that even though most people in modern societies have a great facade and ability to look like we have it together, we still have a deep need for interaction and are at heart lonely. We find it difficult to share this with people in our fast paced world. We simply put on the front, a smile, and never ask for help. The funny thing is that many people use blogs as a form of therapy. It gives us the ability to release what we really feel, sort of like a carnal form of prayer.

This is a wonderful way to reachout to others without ever needing to leave your house. I have read many blogs and even prayed for some people I never met... and sometimes I even wrote words of encouragement. The great thing is these people can link and read your blog and find out more about what makes your tick.

And many times I have heard my current pastor Pete mention how important testimony is in our lives and how we declare what God is doing. In fact, the Bible is actually a series of testimonies in a pseudo-chronologic fashion. Blogs are just that, put at a personal level. You can share who you are, what you enjoy and how God interacts in your life. What better way to share with this world, to be a beacon of light in a new city that is growing by the second?

In short, I encourage all to start a blog, write about yourself, and what God is doing in your life. I don't care if you write a weekly bible study, share what's in your life, what you are learning in life, responses to questions people ask, etc. In this way we can begin to fill the void and reach out to others in cyberspace.

Podcasts
This is another way to share what's happening in your life in a more advanced medium. While almost anyone can write, others may have the gift of speaking and encouragement. Consider Podcasting. This is a new way to basically make your own radio broadcast. This is well within reach of anyone that has access to a computer and a microphone. Churches, consider recording church services and making them available as weekly or bi-weekly podcasts. Worship teams, record your music and make them available with these radio sets. Work together in collaborative networks with other churches to write content and music. But before you do any of this, may be I should explain what a podcast is...

So, first you need an Apple iPod... then you need the internet. This lets you download music on to your iPod and listen to it. Now a podcast is like subscribing to a radio broadcast. When you plug in your iPod, the software downloads any updates to the podcast and copies it to your iPod, making it basically a self updating audio broadcast that can be listened to forever.

So what kind of podcasts can you subscribe to today? Well, a brief survey of the landscape revealed that about half of them are about being homosexual, about a quarter include crude humor, and some have meaningful content about technology.

Now I haven't even mentioned a new feature on new iPods call video podcasting. This is the same as regular podcasts except with videos. It remains to be seen how this will be embraced but I am certain this WILL be embraced by the porn industry. Need I say more? How can Christ be glorified in this?

Well, that's your choice... you can either turn your back and proclaim the internet as evil, or you can begin to take action to take over this virtual land for God. Your choice... talk to me if you need help in the mission field.

Rock of Gibralter

Here's the rock that got the car. Its hard to see in the picture, but the rock really is on the road, although the asphalt is covered by dirt. Jaime had to get over to avoid a bike and another car to the opposite direction. 

Ouch!

Jaime kinda hit a nice little rock that was sticking out of the side of the road. It did a little bit of damage to an otherwise new car, which really sucks.