Update #8.2 - What Goes On In Our Minds (In Case You Were Wondering...)

After pouring a few spoonfuls of honey into my o-so-delicious chamomile tea, I found a chair on the bar between two 20-sommat young ladies. It's always a bit odd striking up conversations with women only a few years older than yourself...to them and to any outsider looking on, it must seem like you're hitting on them. I don't like it one bit.

Nonetheless, I knew it needed to be done. So I sipped away at my tea for a few minutes building up the courage to speak to the first one. Just start saying something, Alan - it doesn't have to be perfect. If you wait till something good comes, you'll never do it. "Hey!" I said. Smooth. "Is that one of the new Macs?" She turned and looked at me. "Yeah. I think so."

"Well, how do you like it?" This was still a bit awkward.

"It's nice." "Yeah, mine's treated me well" and I pointed to my own. We talked for about half a minute more, but when she stopped making eye contact all together, I realized the conversation was over. Hmm - you can't win 'em all.

Five minutes passed as I sipped my tea, walked around the coffeeshop to find a newspaper, added more honey, and finally worked up the courage to try lady number two.

"Hi." I said. At this point I had to follow up. When your courage is sapped, sometimes you just have to start saying something and force yourself to keep talking. "Are you from around here?"

"I am," she said, almost happily - as if she was glad to have someone to talk to. This was encouraging.

"Well, I'm on a road trip and was wondering what sort of things there were to do in St. Louis."

"Oh!" she nodded. "Well, let's see....there's the Zoo, which is free, and Forest Park is just down the road from here. How long are you here?" Just today, I told her.

"Is it just you on the road trip?" At this point, I decided to ramp up the spiritual side of the conversation. Once you've chit-chatted a while, you can work up your courage a little more. And maybe she was a Christian already anyways. So I took the plunge.

"Well, it's just me and a friend, and we're doing something of an evangelistic road trip from Birmingham to Chicago - trying to initiate conversations with people about spiritual things along the way and such. The other day, we were in Cincinnati with the homeless all day. And yesterday we were in Chicago. The reason I was asking you about things to do in St. Louis is because we're trying to find something that can be unique to this city." She seemed somewhat intrigued, but didn't reveal whether or not she was a Christian. I took this as a sign to keep talking about what we'd done and seen.

I told her the story of the Louisville Slugger approach ('we said thus and such, and he said thus and such'), the different conversations we've had over chess games, and the like - hoping these stories would draw out where she was coming from. Also, they were an easy means of sharing the gospel with her.

"What denomination are you with?" she asked.

"Well, we're both Presbyterians - but we're more interested in the teaching of the Bible and Christ, and not in our denomination. If it ever departs from Biblical teaching, I'm not just going to blindly follow it. What about you...are you with a denomination or anything?"

She seemed surprised that I asked this. "Well, funny, actually. My mother was a nun. So I grew up Catholic, and I don't suppose you ever really stop being Catholic."

This would have been a good time for me to ask her what she meant by that, but instead I just said, "Hm. Interesting." I paused a moment and then said, "So did you grow up in a Nunnery, or how did that work? I don't think I've ever met the daughter of a nun..."

"You probably haven't," she said. "There's not too many of us."

I was thoroughly confused, but didn't really want to ask her how this daughter-of-a-nun business had come about. Eventually, I thanked her for her tips on where to go, and got up to add some more honey to my tea. By now, it had become very lukewarm and very sweet. I stopped by the table where Shannon and Denny were playing checkers. "She's the daughter of a nun," I told them.

"What??" "I'm gonna see if I can talk to her again...I didn't really know where to go in that conversation." So I went back and thought for a minute before re-engaging her.

"One more question for you." "Sure," she replied, and turned my way. "You said you were a history major. Has your study of history led you away from Catholicism? Because you said you 'never really stop being a Catholic' but sound like you don't really agree with it all."

"I wouldn't say history as much, because I didn't study much from that time period. And I still believe a lot of the central ideas about justice and such, but the church has become so stringent and political." She had an issue with women not being allowed to preach. "I think they should just change with the times. I mean I understand holding your values, but they turn away so many people because they want to be so conservative."

There were all sorts of way I could go now, and I'm still not sure I chose the best route, but I went ahead and told her that a lot of the people we had come into contact with over the last few days had had similar sentiments. Since the emphasis on the personal worked so well with Camille, I figured I'd give it a shot again.

After we talked for a bit, she seemed ready to end the conversation, so I finished with this: "Well, thanks for talking with me - I want to just stress that Christianity isn't about the institution, but about a personal relationship with God, and you seem to grasp that." I'm not sure she really did grasp that, but if she didn't it would at least encourage her to think about it.

"Yeah," she said, "maybe I've given you more information than you asked for, but that's just what I think about the church."

----

Not a milestone conversation by any stretch of the imagination. Really, I was somewhat disappointed, and even more-so now that I look back on how many different ways it could have gone. Still, I am reminded that we don't always get to be harvesters - sometimes we're the seed planters. I shared the gospel with her, and that, I know, has power that is greater than man.

~Alan Halbrooks

Update #8.1 - In the Shadow of the Arch

I have nothing great or profound to say after my previous post, which was slightly longer than I meant it to be simply because I also included some of today's activities in that post; they matched my theme. But, I do want to say that Alan, Shannon, and I went to the St. Louis arch today armed with a few Fixed Point resources and began handing them out to interested individuals. It was a highly successful venture (far more so than it was in Chicago), where we left resources in the hands of a few skeptics, helped give an intellectual foundation to a couple of Christians who felt beaten down, helped encourage a couple of Christians to be bolder with their beliefs, and armed a local pastor with some of the tools he might need to properly aid some of his congregates who were really seriously facing these issues.

We found ourselves empty handed in a matter of thirty minutes, which was a completely different response than we had expected after Chicago. It simply shows that just because a particular methodology fails in one circumstance, that doesn't mean it will fail elsewhere. We must constantly be looking for new and innovative ways to approach every situation, and that takes tremendous creativity since no two situations are identical. But God has been gracious, and he certainly was today.

Tomorrow, it's off to Memphis for the last leg of our trip!

--Michael Taunton

Update #7.2 - A Reflection on Bravery

As I comfortably sit in St. Louis after an exhilarating game of nerts with some friends from Samford, it seems that the heaviest part of the trip is over, and now we are in a sort of "falling action;" we have not stopped our evangelistic efforts by any means, but we have hit something close to a routine and have taken it a little easier the past couple of days. On the seventh day, God rested, and we have tried to follow in kind. The two of us are simply worn out - happy in our work, but worn out. I must say that after this trip (which will only be nine days long, in the end), I have a far greater admiration for Paul and his missionary journeys than I did before; how did the man keep going? Truly, he was spurred on by the Holy Spirit, because the emotional and mental drain of this trip has been incredible, and I've been on missions trips before.

All of this said, we have still managed to accomplish great things in the past couple of days, and that is largely due to the fresh blood that joined us - Will Dahl and Shannon Dille. Will is an old high school friend of ours who goes to school here and is working here for the summer; Shannon is a friend from Samford and the one whom we happen to be staying with, and both of them have proved invaluable.

We met Will for pizza on our way into the city (St. Louis style pizza, which Will accurate described as tasting like Easy Cheez on cardboard; I don't really recommend it, but we truly appreciated the gesture), and then we asked him if he wanted to come with us to do some "Louisville Slugging" late in the evening. He agreed and told us that he had some NIV New Testaments, and that certainly beat our KJVs, even if it was only the NT.

After this, we went to Shannon's house where we were settled in and then told her about our evening plans of "drive by evangelism" and asked her if she wanted to participate.

"I've never really done anything like that before."

"Well neither had we until a few days ago, and we're certainly not old hands at it now."

"But that's not really my kind of personality, you know?"

"Well, the funny thing is, I thought it was my kind of personality, but have become so intensely frustrated at how many opportunities I just watch go past because I'm too afraid to stick my neck out; if we have three good conversations in a day, we've done pretty well, and that's just sad when I consider in retrospect how many we might have," I offered; I cannot stress enough how true this statement is, either.

"Yeah, but you see, that's just the thing. You talk about 'three conversations in a day' like that's not very many, and I've probably only had three conversations like that in my whole life!"

"Not only that," Shannon's mother offered, "but it's probably easier to do it when you're not at home, too."

"Oh that's very true," Alan responded. "You can see that just from us! We had to leave the city before we felt at all brave enough to try something like this."

"But the point remains," I said to Shannon, "that you shouldn't think we're some super brave and courageous people for doing this; if anything, I've realized how cowardly I am on this trip, and I think Alan feels the same way. I'm angry at myself all the time for letting conversations slip by and for not making myself as useful to God as I could. You could do this, I'm confident, and the offer is there."

Only about an hour later, Alan and I were in the car with her on the way to ice cream as our own gesture of gratitude (it's about all we can afford). She knew what the plan was for afterwards, and had been reluctant to come along, but she wanted to make sure we stayed out of East St. Louis (high crime rate, we're told), and we told her that she wouldn't be required to do anything that made her uncomfortable unless she wanted to (because, of course, none of this is very comfortable). So we had a group for our evening activities. We picked up Will Dahl around 9:30 and were off to downtown St. Louis.

Now before I move on, I do feel the need to note that Will is absolutely perfect for this sort of role; if anyone in that car was completely comfortable with the situation, it was definitely him. Though his being oblivious to social expectations (he truly is oblivious) might irritate some people or even get him into trouble from time to time, in a context like this, it was exactly what was needed. I say this only to point out that there are probably some, Will being among them, who truly do not fear this sort of work, but the other three of us do not fall into this category. The trick is simply to be able to work beyond that fear.

But, coming back to our posse, we ended up in downtown St. Louis for probably an hour and a half, driving around without any luck for the first thirty minutes of this outing. Alan and Shannon were in the back busily dog-earing John 3 and circling verses 16-18 while Will and I navigated the city and looked for people who were by themselves and looked like they might be interested. After searching hopelessly for quite awhile, we hit on a flurry of activity, giving out six Bibles within about ten minutes! In the next hour, we probably talked to about eight different people, receiving positive reactions from some (very positive from a couple of people who were clearly looking for hope), and negative from others, especially from well-educated, white males - that demographic we still seem completely unable to crack. We felt surprise, encouragement, discouragement, joy, and all range in between during that next hour, and not just Alan and I, but our new companions as well.

It was truly fascinating to see how little of an advantage Alan and I (who had done this several times now) had over our friends. In spite of her earlier worries of being fearful, Shannon proved to be one of the boldest of the lot, very willingly asking questions, conversing with others, and handing out Bibles as if she were the old hand! We went on rotation, and Shannon never once showed any unwillingness to participate when her turn came around, though we would have thought none the worse of her if she had. Mustering the courage to do these things is very difficult, and I could well imagine some of the thoughts and fears that might be running through her head as they were also running through mine, but in the end, she was able to overcome all of them and never looked back.

"Shannon and Will were terrific!" I told Alan as we prepared for bed.

"Yeah, they really were."

"I mean, they really showed us up! Think about it: it took us four days of this kind of thing to get comfortable with an idea like that, and they did it right out of the gate. And in their home city, of all places! We still haven't done that! I mean, how can people look at us and think that what we're doing is really special when those two came along and did everything we did in one evening!" This was one of the few times where I considered being beaten a good thing.

The next morning, Shannon also wanted to accompany us to Kayak's coffee shop where we were going to try engaging people in conversation just casually or over chess. Alan succeeded in engaging a very interesting young lady casually while Shannon and I tried to attract people to our checkers game and were given some time to talk:

"You're really natural at this, Shannon. In spite of all your worrying that you couldn't do it, you really did well last night. You and Will showed the two of us up considering you had never done anything like that at all and we had a week's practice already." She responded very modestly and then made an interesting observation.

"It's really cool that you and Alan are doing this now because I've just been struggling lately with what you were talking about - seeing all kinds of opportunities show up in front of me, but then just watching them go by because I'm too afraid to say anything. It really frustrates me and I've wanted to change it, so maybe you've helped get me past some of that and just do it anyway, even if it does make me uncomfortable. I don't think there's any way that either me or Will would have been driving around St. Louis last night handing out Bibles if the two of you hadn't come here to do it with us. I think you kind of pushed us out."

We were interrupted right about here, which was unfortunate because the conversation was a very good one, but she had given me something to think about. Now this I could swallow; I do not think that Alan or I are really any more intrinsically brave or special than tons of other people, but maybe God has spurred us on to press just a tiny bit further, and the best thing that can happen with that is for it to push others just a little bit further too. We had done nothing for the two of them but show them a way, and then the actions were all theirs.

Maybe it's just strength in numbers, maybe it's just being shown a method, but whatever the case may be, I think the greatest thing we've done in the past two days has not (probably) been the things we've done for non-believers so much as it is the things we've helped Will and Shannon do. Alan and I have already discussed that we won't be able to go into a coffee shop without trying to strike up a spiritual conversation with the barista anymore, and if we can help bring that kind of clarity to other Christians simply by involving them in some of what we've done, and then if they go and do their own thing and involve even more people in it, then a drop could just become a ripple and maybe even a wave.

--Michael Taunton