When a missionary goes into uncharted territory, they do not prop up their video screens and the powerpoint and start singing Tommy Walker songs. (That would be a great video. End with the Metrosexual worship leader falling on his face with a back full of poison darts and a child of the tribe coming across a Bible propping up the projector…)

I know of three people, specifically, that will not go to a church that has over 100 people in it because they have anxiety about large crowds. BUT they love to sit around with a few friends, play cards, and talk deep things about life. One of them, I know for certain, has a deep respect, love, and appreciation for Jesus. What if it were culturally acceptable for them to NOT “go” to church but were encouraged to draw near to God while they were playing poker?

I just started reading Organic Church, by Neil Cole (for the second time, never got through 1st time) and I’m intrigued at what church Jesus might build in Evansville from this sort of book. From what I gather so far, it’s a lot like what would happen if somebody took Perspectives and then applied it to their local neighborhood.

If you don’t know about Perspectives, you can check it out here¬†http://www.perspectives.org/site/pp.aspx?c=eqLLI0OFKrF&b=2806295

and you can check out Organic Church here http://bit.ly/biJXwq

or listen to them talk about this stuff here http://www.cmaresources.org/audio/missional-movements-2010-mfrost-1

more to come.

I’m not sure I’m ready for Him to answer me, honestly.

Are you too proud to associate with homeless people? What about African-americans or Latinos or Whites or Chinese? What about crazy people? If you find that you’d rather not be around those kinds of people, then don’t pray and ask God to put you in community somewhere. Just find people you like to be around; people that will mirror your ideas, thoughts, and beliefs.

Go find them and die.

It’s been quite a week in our neighborhood.

Tuesday night we had about 50 Jr. High kids come down and help out on our street. They picked up tons of sticks and bundled them all up and raked a lot of grass and leaves into bags. It was good to walk down the street and see them all working so hard, and then talk to my neighbors some that had come out to see what was going on.

Last night we had a prayer night and some friends from church and our whole family went to two nearby schools and prayed for the surrounding neighborhoods. I was especially glad to take the kids along so they could participate and witness what we’re doing.

Tonight seemed normal enough. We called it our “night off” since we didn’t have any events planned. I was out in the back yard getting the grill going when one of my neighbors came out to his back yard and we both met in the alley and started talking. He said that the house behind us and over one has been empty for 6 years, and was a crack house before that.

I think in a few days another crew from church will come and clean it up. I told him I would like a corner of it for a garden. He said he’s already done that! He grew corn and tomatoes in somebody’s abandoned yard!

He went back into his house and there I was trying to cook my burgers medium well and figure out where I’m going to put a fence between my yard and the alley. I heard a bike approach and it startled me.

I told the person on the bike it startled me and they just laughed. They asked me what I was doing. I commented about the fence and our wall, etc. THINKING that I was talking to a teenage boy.

Well I was wrong.

It was a woman.

After my comments about the fence, I repeated her question back, “What are you doing?” (looking back, I realize that I speak with a different level of respect to a woman than to a teenage boy)

She said, “I’m just needing some food. I’m homeless-I sleep down by the river-and pregnant and I have diabetes and I just need $5 to get something to eat.”

That is a tough call. In the past I haven’t been able to mix relief w/ the gospel. At the same time I’ve seen that relief w/o the gospel just helps wicked men in their wicked deeds. But here was a beggar, humiliated I could tell, begging.

I gave her two McDonald’s gift cards and she said she smoked too. “I’m not going to help you with that, that’ll kill you. Of course, that McDonald’s might too.” I said. I know it’s hard to be thankful when you’re desperate. She also darted off about as fast as she could after I gave it to her, looking embarrassed.

It’s really embarrassing being poor. It’s humiliating to ask and it’s humiliating to take a handout. I know about all kinds of long-term plans to help people out of poverty, but I also know what it’s like to be hungry and not have enough money to buy the food you need.

I think I would rather give $500 away to 100 con men tricking me into giving them drug money, than say no to a single mom trying to figure out how to get dinner.

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?
1 Corinthians 6.7 ESV

There is a fine line between being foolish and generous. Risk it.

In case you are far away or are reading this months from now, some context. This past weekend Hurricane Ike hit a front and sent major major winds into our town. I put up a gallery of tree damage on my smugmug (http://dansullivan.smugmug.com click events, then Sept. something windstorm) All of my neighbors were without power for at least 24 hours, and the park was pitch black. We, however, had all kinds of power.

So I stood there for a minute. Was he videoing the trees that came down…or how dark the park was??? the media had been around all day…no, he was running away!

So anyway, who knows what he was doing, but he certainly destroyed a lot of our peace. All day today we’ve been wondering if he was sizing up our belongings so he could come back another day or if he was filming our daughter as she sat on the floor watching Madagascar or what.

Needless to say, he wasn’t doing anything fruitful.

So tonight I was cleaning up from my evening housework and I started thinking about how Jesus talked about theives coming in the night. If you don’t like theives, it wasn’t very reassuring. If you don’t like Jesus, the thing He said wasn’t very reassuring either.

Matthew 24:42-44

Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Whenever Jesus returns, be it before some trib or after or after all of the people disappear and Kirk Cameron videos pop up everywhere, all of that is arguable, this is clear, whenever Jesus returns, it will be a surprise.

It will be just like when you open your blinds and see that there was a thief there, that came in w/o you knowing it, but now he’s there.

Got a gun? No time to go get it. I have a friend 2 blocks over that walked into her house, thought that someone had been there and saw something sitting on the back porch. She walked back through the house, realized that YES, someone HAD been there, and went back to the porch and the something was gone. They were there at that moment and she didn’t realize it. The thing on the porch? The family shotgun.

Got an alarm system? It only works if you turn it on. Car alarms have become so common now that no-one responds to such an annoyance.

When a thief comes, you don’t know it until it’s too late. That is how it will be when Jesus returns. Never mind when it will be or how many nuclear wars we’ll have to if the Temple will be built.

Whenever he comes, it will be a surprise to us all.

It is so wild that Jesus compares himself to something like this. A thief is evil, hidden, tricky! Aha, but that’s where Jesus gets you.

Tricky, yes, because it’s too late.

Hidden, yes, because you didn’t see Him coming.

But evil, no. A thief is evil because he takes away something you want.

This Divine Thief won’t take what you want. If you try to save your life, you’ll lose it, He said. He is coming to take whoever would give themselves up for Him, and there is nothing evil about being joined with perfect perfection for eternity.

I‚Äôve been out in the front yard a lot the past two days. I‚Äôve been trimming bushes, cleaning up mulch, you know, good old fashioned yard work…the whole time burning a ton of sticks over which I later cooked some chicken for the weekly lunch supply. While I was cleaning out the van (cleaning vomit off the floor from my daughter‚Äôs concussion on Friday night, but that‚Äôs a story for another day!) I had a stroller out that is headed for Goodwill. I saw a young couple walking down the street, and the man was carrying a tiny tiny little baby.
“Hey, do you guys want a stroller? You need a stroller!” I shouted as I walked towards my TWO strollers. One double deluxe Cadillac stroller, and a single umbrella pinto stroller, that I was going to give them. I think the girl saw the Caddy and got excited, and the guy just kind of watched. They declined and said they were just walking a couple blocks. I said ok and they walked on. Then about 30 feet later the guy turned and shouted back “We need more people like you!” That’s a happy thing to yell.

Fast forward, or maybe first backward, about 2 months. Me and Andy G. were in the front yard and a guy with bloodshot eyes came up and said he needed gas money because his car was out of gas. He did the whole introduction thing for the first few minutes, about how his family has always lived in this neighborhood, yada yada yada. Then he said his car was out of gas. I told him that if he would take me to the car, I’d fill it up. He was a little offended and said he didn’t need that much, just a little gas to get to the gas station. I told him that there were a lot of liars in our neighborhood that would try to steal from people by telling them a story but then spending the money on drugs or liquor, and I didn’t want to pay for that, but if he could show me the car that needed gas, I’d fill it up. He got really mad at me and stormed off.

Ok, now fast forward to the day after my stroller offer. My family was unloading out of the van and into the house and a guy came running across the park. Sir! Sir!

It was the gas man.

We had a pleasant intro, and he said, “Didn’t I talk to you before?” I reminded him that he needed gas from me. “for my weedwacker?” he interrupted. “No, for your car, and I said if you showed me the car I’d fill it up, and you got real mad at me.” I said.

“Oh yeah, because I couldn’t do that.”

“What do you want today?” I asked.

“I need a four prong starter relay for my car. You can call Auto Zone and ask them.”

Typically I call the beggar’s bluff. One time in Asia a guy was begging me for money to bury his daughter that died. I said, “Wow. Take me to her.” I thought I was going to go raise her from the dead. The guy couldn’t come up with an answer.

After this whole event was over (it ended by me smelling pot on his breath and saying “I smell something on you that I don’t want to help you buy, so I’m not going to give you any money” and he walked off cussing me and making mad faces) I was talking to my wife and we came up with something to do next time.

As soon as the beggar starts w/ the story about their car out of gas (standard story in America) or their sick/dead daughter (standard story in Central Asia) I interrupt and tell them I have a story for them…that is true.

And then from there just follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and wait for something to happen.

I remember a turning point for me when I realized that the person coming up to me begging for money doesn’t really care about freaking me out by being weird, so I don’t have to worry about freaking them out by being weird. I had a Mullah come up and start praying incantations over me in the street. THAT’S NUTS! So what did I do? The time for politeness was over. He was speaking Persian that I couldn’t understand and didn’t care and didn’t understand English, so I just whipped out Isaiah 61 and started proclaiming it loudly in English.

That was as far as I made it, (which is probably good, because the next verse talks about Zion, and you don’t want an American talking to a Central Asian Muslim about Zion) and the guy walked off. I was expecting demons to come out or flashes of light, but that guy walking off was consolation prize enough.

All that said, I love the Gas Guy and I hope for him to be free of his addictions and to find life in Christ, I‚Äôm just still learning how to work with him…

Tags: beggars, urbia, charity, Holy Spirit

“Perhaps the greatest poverty of all is having nothing of value to offer the community. I want to believe that no one in my community is that poor.”
from Ch. 7, in the context of destroying people’s dignity by giving free handouts.

Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor, by Robert D. Lupton