The Must-Read Book on our Greatest Urban Challenge

While it’s not exactly a new release, the housing crisis has been the hot topic of conversation for this decade, and Kevin Nye has emerged as one of the foremost voices on this issue. I really wanted to read this, but on the day it arrived, I knew Ruth was better qualified reflect on its content…

Review Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness by Kevin Nye (Herald Press, 2022)

by Ruth Wilkinson

My personal experience of ministry among unhoused (see note below) people is different in scale from that of Kevin Nye, but identical in many respects. In his book Grace Can Lead Us Home I recognize friends and situations, along with societal and church dynamics that for some readers will be new, or even alien.

For example, in a smaller municipality unsheltered people tend to hide away on the far end of the rocky beach, in the forest along the river, or a friend’s backyard–very different from having a Skid Row neighbourhood, a tent city, or people sleeping on subway grates. But in both settings, these people are as ‘invisible’ as passers-by choose to make them. To be fair, street ministry is not something to which we are all called. I have sat in the sand alone with a friend who I found beaten unconscious, holding his hand and waving the flies away from the blood on his face until the emergency responders could find us. That’s part of my calling. It’s not part of everyone’s, and when people with good intentions dive in over their heads, it doesn’t end well.

But books like Grace Can Lead Us Home can open the eyes–broaden the horizons–of people who are not (maybe not yet) ready to step out into this milieu and to begin the learning of hard lessons that it entails. People who are not yet ready to have their hearts broken. Not yet ready to sit on a tree stump and receive a cup of food-bank instant coffee.

Nye’s overview of the correlation between homelessness and addiction, as well as issues like gender-based violence and discrimination, race, harm reduction, and housing-first models of assistance are informative and challenging. Some readers will dismiss his observations, but in my experience they ring true.

As a pastor and member of a local Christian community, I am sometimes asked by people how they can help when they see a tent in the woods, or when one of our unhoused neighbours comes to a church service on Sunday morning. I do my best to speak into each situation, and I’m deeply glad to hear the question asked. If you are a follower of Jesus, and you have ever asked yourself “how can I help?” this book is a good starting point for understanding the complexity of homelessness and how you might be called to support the people who experience it and/or those who walk alongside them.

**The language to describe this group of very diverse people is somewhat contentious. On one hand, a local service group this past year put on a Christmas dinner for (in one man’s words) “hoboes.” Other people get very upset at hearing the phrase “the homeless,” perceiving it as a slight. My friends who are themselves unhoused use the word “homeless” to describe themselves, but some prefer to be described as “roughing it.”

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Ruth Wilkinson is a pastor in Ontario, Canada who has often found that big-city urban ministry and life in small towns isn’t all that different. Her writing appears frequently on our sister blog, Christianity 201.

Thanks to Herald Press for a review copy of Grace Can Lead us Home.

Door to Door Evangelism: Marginal Groups Willing to Invest the Time

Several years ago I met with a man who was a somewhat lapsed Episcopalian (or Anglican as we say here) who had been meeting on a monthly basis with some Jehovah’s Witnesses. He had a lot of questions about various issues, and so he invited them into his home and they returned regularly, staying about an hour each time.

There was a time when Evangelicals were very big on the concept of door-to-door outreach and visitation. Many a Saturday morning in the 1950s and 1960s might be spent in twos or threes ringing doorbells in a local neighborhood.

But as time went by, people tended to associate the “two by two” approach with only two groups: Mormons (LDS) and Jehovah’s Witnesses. These two groups took ownership of this method of proselytizing, with the result that today it’s not widely used by others.

Before anyone starts dismissing these groups out of hand, I want to commend the approach for the following reasons:

1. It’s Biblical. The disciples were sent out in this manner. I’m not sure that by concluding that certain groups had taken over this approach and the simply giving up, Evangelical Christians did the right thing. What contact do we now make with our surrounding neighbors?
   
2. They deliver. If the last few years of Missional Church has taught us anything, it’s taught us the importance of being sent. So much of what the church calls “outreach” is really “in-drag.” Millions of people are falling through the cracks of printed brochure distribution or mall campaigns or e-mail invites. But it’s harder — though not impossible — for them to ignore a knock at the door.
3. The people who this man met at his front door were willing to invest the time with him. On hearing that, I made sure that I took out as much time as he wanted. Fortunately, the phone at my workplace didn’t ring and no one else needed to see me. I would have given him all day.
4. They knew their subject matter cold. He was impressed with both their depth and their passion as they presented answers to his questions and introduced their beliefs, and also how their various doctrines fit together. It’s important that we are able to do the same. It has been said that of all the religions on earth, Christians are the least acquainted with their own sacred writings.
5. They are optimistic about the results. I asked one Mormon missionary what would constitute the ideal “at the door” contact. He replied, “Someone who hears the message, receives the message, and commits to be baptized.” I asked if he’d ever heard of that happening all in the very first visit, and he said, “Yes, for sure.”
6. They followed up. They returned to see him several times.

Hopefully through meeting with me he met someone with an equal passion for and knowledge of the true Christian faith. I encouraged him not to seek answers from the single source he has been using, and told him about a variety of resources available online. We continued meeting and while in recent years the contact has been somewhat fleeting, he always knows where to find me.

Wednesday Link List

From DailyEncouragement.net — “…It is a camp for displaced Christian refugees in Iraq (Click to enlarge). Note the English writing on the center tent proclaiming in a very dark place, ‘Jesus Is The Light Of The World’.”

This week we celebrate the ellipsis, its utility as connective device, and its overuse. In other words, many of this week’s links were related.

• In the wake of Robin Williams’ death, enumerating various suicide-related issues that clergy will face.
• From either a conservative or orthodox perspective, Gungor keeps digging the hole deeper.
• Essay of the Week: Honestly, I wondered when someone would do a comparison between Mars Hill Grand Rapids and Mars Hill Seattle…
• …Another I’d like to read would be a comparison of two men who were upfront about their faith while selling fried chicken, KFC’s Colonel Harland Sanders and Truett Cathy. The latter, founder of Chick-fil-A passed away on Monday at age 93.
• Persecution: It took a New York Times columnist to say this.
• Perspective: Your weekend worship environment may not be a physical building in Ethiopia; it might involve having a service under a tree…
• …But perhaps many of us put too much emphasis on having a church building.
• I’m surprised we don’t hear more about this August story about 1,400 children being raped and trafficked.
• Just as I have to pick and choose what gets in this list, a popular Christian news site defends their story choices.
• Preaching: “There has been a natural disaster of extraordinary proportions in a nation whose sinfulness is well known. Do you stand up Sunday morning and declare that God has divinely judged that nation?”
• Youth Ministry: Five ways to make sure they hear your message…
• … which was written by a recently displaced Mars Hill pastor whose work visa is now voided, which means leaving the country…
• …while at GoFundMe, people are donating to three other displaced MH staffers.
• Time Travel (1): A 1,500 year-old document that was holed up in a university library references the Last Supper and manna from heaven…
• Time Travel (2): Imagine attending a Puritan worship service. “…the shuffling of the congregation as they settle down to listen comfortably to a lengthy sermon, while the minister adjusted the hour-glass.”
• Sabbath on Steroids: Every seven weeks this Prince Edward Island church basically shuts down all programming…
• …Meanwhile, on Canada’s opposite coast, a church’s annual report includes a page at the end for you to write your own story. (Opens a 40-page .pdf file)
• Two high-profile U.S. missionaries survived Ebola, but the disease has taken four national pastors in the Assemblies of God denomination alone.
• Ann Voskamp tells the kids why they should wait: “Your naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.” …
• …On the other hand, when the wedding date is set, should a Christian sign a prenup? Sample: “…a prenup is a bad indicator that not everything is being relinquished for the sake of this marriage.” …
• …Or a girl’s father could just start early on in the relationship asking the guy these twelve questions.
• Tomorrow (9/11) night, Trinity Broadcasting Network unveils its new Chicago studio with an open house…
• …Also in the windy city, a local church’s use of social media has caught some mainstream media attention.
• Last week’s Happy Rant Podcast got our family talking about chewing tobacco to the glory of God.
• A Lutheran mobile ministry is half church, half food truck.
• Sadly, there’s no such thing as “a good divorce.”
• A second Essay of the Week: Save those church bulletins. They might end up in a museum somewhere as artifacts of 20th Century church culture.
• Worship Leaders’ Corner: Five tips for those times you’re working without the band.
• Victoria Osteen stands by her words. Well, sort of. Sample: “Every Lakewood member knows what I was talking about…”  Membership has its privileges…
• …to which the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr. replies, “America deserves the Osteens…”
• …Meanwhile, hubby Joel announces Joel Osteen Radio, broadcasting 24/7 on SiriusXM.
• Gladys Knight (sans Pips) released a gospel album yesterday. (Be sure to click through to hear the song.)
• Jamie the Very Worst Email Responder recently deleted her inbox, and thinks you should, too.
• A well known Jewish charity is nominating Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a Nobel Peace Prize for his support of Israel.
• A video link for the tweens and teens at your house.
• Finally, across the pond, a man who volunteers his services to umpire an interdenominational cricket match is disqualified because he is not “theologically neutral.“

Each week we scour the web for stories of interest to Leadership Journal readers, however several of our “usual suspects” have put up pay-walls or added pop-ups that can only be described as obnoxious. The goal is to deliver news and opinion pieces with a minimum of interruption and solicitation. Suggestions are always welcomed, you can contact me on Twitter, or at Thinking Out Loud before 6 PM EST Mondays.

Paul Wilkinson is considered Canada’s foremost authority on writing a Wednesday Link List, and he doesn’t just say that because he writes his own footer for this weekly piece.

From theologygrams.wordpress.com, a site I suspect we’ll be visiting many times in the future

Guest Post: Carlo Raponi — Sudden Urgency

Carlo Raponi is Evangelism Outreach Director with Kawartha Youth Unlimited, a Youth for Christ chapter in Peterborough, a city about 75 minutes northeast of Toronto, Canada. This is his second time at Thinking Out Loud.

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There is not a day that I can remember where I’ve woken up alone in the world. Literally. I have no memory of any day of my life where I spent a whole day without ever encountering a single person. I think that if this ever happened it would carry with it a strange unfamiliar feeling that only gets seen in post-apocalyptic horror films. Instead, I, like all of us, am surrounded by people every day.

Most of the people we see are people we don’t know, many are people that we do; and some we only get to see on occasion. However they are all people that come into our spheres of influence. They are people with whom we have a chance to share the message of Jesus. Some of these encounters afford us time to develop His narrative slowly; other encounters require a faster and more succinct explanation of His hope. Either way, they all pass before us with a ‘best before’ date invisibly stamped upon them.

Last weekend one of the youth that attends The Bridge Youth Center told me that she’s moved to Toronto. She was only in town to deal with some court issues and then she would be returning back to the city. She is a girl that I have known for a few years now. When she first began coming in to the youth center she was a walking terror. Loud, boisterous and with a stubbornness that seemed incorrigible…she reminded me a little of myself. Perhaps that’s why we connected so well. But now she would be leaving, possibly for good. And so I apologized to her.

She asked me why I needed to apologize and I told her that in the years we have known each other I have approached the subject of our need for Jesus and who He is, but I never sat her down and REALLY challenged her. The ‘time’ never seemed right or the ’occasion’ didn’t present itself. There always seemed to be a reason that trumped the moment. Now she was leaving and I felt that I had done her wrong by not introducing her to the greatest thing she could ever possess – a relationship with the one who could change everything she knew about everything she knows.

I told her about a friend who’s younger brother had asked him the awkward question. He asked if he thought that the young brother would go to hell for not believing in Jesus. When the awkward reply came out as a ‘yes’ the younger brother’s response was, “…then if you love me, why haven’t you sat me down to tell me about Jesus?”

I told her that I owed her an apology because I wasn’t intentional enough to prove that I care by sharing this truth with her. The conversation that ensued was beautiful and honest, on both our behalves. It ended with her making a promise to find a church that she likes and to attend it 3 times. After that she could do as she pleases. With a smile she made me a pinky-promised that turned into a weird handshake of sorts (then I took this picture of it for proof).

Now I must entrust her faith into the hands of God and the actions of others who I hope will do a better and more proactive job than I did. But I won’t forget this lesson. People pass in front of us every day. We’re surrounded by people all the time. There is a reason for this.

 ~ Carlo Raponi

 

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Previously at Thinking out Loud: Three Conversations and a Wedding (March 2012)

Wednesday Link List

I’m a success at blogging but a failure at Twitter. Please follow me… please?

Any one of this week’s links could have been its own feature article.  By the way, I’m organizing a travel opportunity that begins in a Wesleyan college in western New York and ends in Jerusalem. I call it the Israel Houghton Tour.

• Apostles, Pastors and Teachers, etc., oh my! But maybe the early church didn’t regard this model the way we do.
• Hey, why can’t we all just get along? Can Christians disagree without things getting nasty? 
• Related: Controversy is not a virtue.
  
• Here’s a point for campus recruiters to mention: You can pack heat (concealed carry) at Liberty University.
• Getting to know our neighbors is important. Here’s 15 characteristics of today’s non-churched person. 
• A great modern parable teaching you why a burnt offering is of no utility or value to anyone.  
• Depression is becoming more prevalent. Here’s a lengthy article on the role churches can play in healing.
• Bono unleashes his inner-nerd at TED 2013 with an avalanche of stats on the world poverty situation.
  
• Longtime street apologist Tony Miano is confronted by a man who hates God, who he claims does not exist.
  
• There’s a massive difference between inviting someone to your church and bringing someone to your church.
• Just married, or married a long time? Here’s 5 reasons why your marriage needs church.
  
• From Brant at AIR1: You’re not raising kids to develop their skill set; you’re raising them to develop their character. 
• A discernment blog expresses concern over Holman Publishing’s decision to insert an article by Calvin Miller into their KJV editions.
  
• No specific page link here, just an entire blog for men, especially those confronting purity issues. Check out Iron Strikes – Men Forging Men.
  
• What’s causing church attendance to take a hit? Some say it’s children’s sports.
  
• Going deeper into the story: A suggestion as to why post-resurrection  Jesus ate fish with his disciples. 
• Dealing with mental spam: Are our filters biased? 
• Finally the question all of you keep writing and asking, Where are Rob Bell’s glasses?   (We stole this last link from Challies, but decided not to also steal this one.)
  

Frontline Ministry

I was going to just casually include this in one of the Wednesday link lists here, but I realized it needed a longer setup.

Tony Miano has a blog, The Lawman Chronicles, which gets its name from the years Tony spent in law enforcement, which I’ve been reading for a long time.   He does a lot of street preaching, and seems to strongly subscribe to the Ray Comfort school of evangelism, sometimes referred to as “The Law and The Gospel” approach to what is termed “soul winning.”

Now right away, I know there are people reading this who I have immediately alienated because that whole methodology is about 180-degrees different from what you believe in.   But you know, I think you need to give the dozen or so minutes it takes to watch the related video because I think we all need to see ministry on the frontlines.

I’m not doing this blog post today because I necessarily agree that this is the best approach, or that everybody should be called to evangelism, or that other methodologies are not as good.   Nor do I do this solely so that we can sit on the sidelines and critique the process like Statler and Waldorf, the two guys in the upper balcony on The Muppet Show.

I admire guys like Tony.   They are doing something, something they believe in with great passion, while other people are doing nothing.   In fact, I would want to disqualify anyone from commenting on this unless they have shared a verbal witness with at least one person in the past fortnight.

Of course, where we might differ is what constitutes “sharing a verbal witness.”    For some, like William Booth, that meant putting a uniform to distinguish himself from the surrounding culture; to take his turf with him so that everyone was meeting him on his turf.    Then, a step or two down from that type of identification there are contemporary street preachers like Tony.   And then there’s people who prefer “witness lite.”

The trouble with “witness lite” is that it’s often neither Biblio-centric or Christo-centric.    It neither draws directly on the source (the Word) nor the object (the Savior) of its intent.

I don’t necessarily agree with “The Law and the Gospel” approach as an all-purpose template.   It seems very formulaic.   Eric, the guy in the video in this link, is coming from a Roman Catholic background, and I think there are ways of identifying and connecting with that personal history and ‘tweaking’ the approach accordingly.

But again, if you’re reading this and you’re not doing anything, you’ve got to have something to fall back on.   The “Roman Road;” the “Four Spiritual Laws;” the “Bridge Illustration;” etc., are all examples of materials you want to always have, at least figuratively, in your back pocket.  Scripture tells us to always be prepared to give a response for the hope that we have.

I also realize that someone will want to note that the video linked here documents a somewhat artificial example of one-to-one street ministry, since Eric was fully aware of the camera; fully aware that he was being filmed.   I thought about that in the first three or four minutes, but I’m not sure it really distorted or affected his responses.   I do question the presence of cameras on this type of outing, though I suppose if this serves as a model for others, it has some validity.

It doesn’t always though.   Some of the other videos of this ilk include some rather tense exchanges involving street preaching to larger crowds.   Occasionally, someone versed in less confrontational approaches will question whether or not this more traditional approach conveys Christian love and compassion.    Sadly, it’s at that point some polarization takes place with the street preachers suggesting the post-modern Christians are “false converts.”

Knowing many genuinely-converted, Spirit-indwelled Christ-followers on both sides of this divide, I can say honestly that at this point it becomes a battle that nobody will win.    The “Law and Gospel” people feel that more modern approaches neither produce an acknowledgment of sin nor do they convey the essence of the hope of the gospel.    The new “Missional” believers are committed to outreach, but know too many statistics proving that guilt and fear produce short-term decisions but not long-term disciples; and showing that many a hasty conversion just doesn’t ‘stick’ over time.

What is the solution?

I don’t believe in formulas or templates.   I believe you should know a basic plan for conveying the essence of the following: (a) that we are sinners in need of forgiveness; (b) that such forgiveness is offered in Christ’s work on Calvary; and (c) how a person avails themselves of this forgiveness and moves, as the older Bibles put it, “from death to life.”   But it should be unique to your personality and flexible to the situation you’re in.   Jesus healed one blind man in an instant, but with another, it was a more tentative, two-step process.

But not everybody has the gift of “closing the sale.”   You may be a major influence in someone’s life, but it may be God’s choice that someone else is the chosen instrument to help that person “cross the line of faith.”   Bill Hybels devotes a chapter — and a moving example — to this in Just Walk Across The Room; and Mark Mittelberg and Lee Strobel bring no less than 42 different examples of varying forms of witness in The Unexpected Adventure.

My bias is a little toward Hybels, Strobel and Mittelberg; but I raise this whole topic today because I think you’ve really got to watch the video and look at the other things people are doing; not to armchair quarterback their approach or critique them, but to allow it to inspire you to do more.

Here is the link to the video, and also embedded in the comments section of this very post.   But if you link to Tony’s blog, take some time to click over to other posts and get a feel for what he is doing, because the major take-away from all this is that he is, in fact, doing.

You can also click through from the video itself (see comments) or from this direct video link to more than two dozen other videos the group that filmed this have posted at YouTube.

Related post on this blog:  Considering Deborah Drapper (May 15, 2009)

Wednesday Link List

Seems like only about seven days since we did the last Wednesday Link List.   Funny that…   But just think, if you read all these linked items you will be as wise as I…

• Lots of family-related stuff this week, like this one:  Jason Salamun contrasts the American Dream with what could be called the Missional Dream in a piece titled, Don’t Focus on Your Family.  (Great Donald Miller story at the end, too.)
• Krista Bremer gives her 10-year daughter a choice between the Western clothing she grew up with, and the Islamic costume that is part of her husband’s culture.   The girl chooses to wear a headscarf.  This is a long article, but one I think parents — especially moms — will want to read; as well as anyone in a ‘mixed’ marriage who has or is planning to have children.
• Jason Wert can’t watch World Cup Soccer without thinking of hundreds of women being raped.   Yes you read that right.   But his short article also shows this isn’t just something happening half a world away; it’s true of the Superbowl as well.   Check this out.
• If you’re a parent, you might also want to check out this 5-minute video about the commercialization of our kids over at Vitamin Z.
• But if you want to take the spirit of that video and really get into this topic in depth, you need to check out an article from the June issue of Catholic World Report, 10 Ways the Media Has Failed to Protect Kids.
• The 17-year old daughter of Naked Pastor David Hayward is going to have a different take on church, right?   Check out this excellent guest post by Casile.
• One more parenting link, which you’ll relate to if your kids are worriers; a short article at Canada’s Christian Week.
• Michael Spencer’s widow, Denise, gets brutally honest about her own suffering and pain in dealing with Michael’s physical decay and death at Internet Monk.
• Here’s something you might relate to — the blogger at Upwrite encounters some people doing coffee shop evangelism, and realizes that perhaps God sometimes sends these people to minister to the saved as well as the unsaved.
• If your taste in Christian music is toward the heavier sounding bands, you might want to get the free 15-song “Summer Soundtrack” from Tooth and Nail Records, which includes Children 18:3, The Almost, The Letter Black, Sent By Ravens, Write This Down, and more.
• Speaking of music, here’s an indie artist from Canada:  To Tell (aka Zach Havens in the tradition of Owl City, though I think Zach was there first!)  Give a listen to the song “The Problem” from his new album at this MySpace page.
• Thomas Nelson, the (somewhat) Christian publisher, has done a book about beer.   Seriously.    Tim Challies reviews the brew book so you don’t have to read it.   Better him than me.
• USAToday Religion doesn’t think this is a very good job market for pastors.
• Meanwhile, Thom Rainer writes a First Person piece about seven mistakes he made in ministry.  (Number four is about failing to “love the community where I live.”   I know some pastors who see their present assignment as a short stop on the way to somewhere else.)
  
• On my other blog, Christianity 201, I pay a second visit to an online church service — that’s a different animal from a podcast or sermon download — at North Point.
  
• In case you missed it, David Quinn at Passion Australia has that “trinity diagram” that does the best job of wrapping up a tough concept into a small space.   Click on the image to see it full size, and then save and send it to your friends.
• Staying with the church theme, David Fitch at Reclaiming the Mission has embedded a video with Fr. Robert Barron on the state of empty churches in Europe and beyond.
• If you live in the Northeast and have done the drive to Florida down I-75, you’ve seen the giant King of Kings statue at Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio; between Dayton and Cincinnati.   Well, this week the statue was struck by lightning and it’s no longer there.  (The statue, had just received a makeover back in March.)
• Pete Wilson guests at Michael Hyatt’s leadership blog with Four Leadership Lessons he learned from Nashville’s “1,000 Year Flood.”
  
• Note to other bloggers:  If you get a comment that begins, “If I had a penny…” or ends “you’ve done it again.  Incredible article;” don’t bother approving it.   The comments all link back to a number of Blogspot blogs containing only one post — always March, 2010 — with a rather rambling article.
  
• Our upper cartoon is from ASBO Jesus by Jon Birch in England, where this sort of road sign warns of hazards up ahead.   Jon’s place was recently burglarized and he lost all his cartoons, animations and music.  Thanks to cloud computing, at least the blog survives, but it sounds like that was a very small part of the whole.
• Our lower cartoon is from Preacher’s Kid by David Ayers at Baptist Press.

Homeless Teens: Life on the Street

I stood beside her coffin.  She looked she was sleeping.  I suppressed the urge to reach out and touch her.  I wanted to talk to her just once more. But she was dead — found in a construction site, in suspicious circumstances, of unknown causes.  She was poor; she was aboriginal; she was a street kid; there would be no further police investigation. I looked at her young face and remember the times we had share, times when I had hugged her, telling her I loved her.  She had come from a troubled and violent home.  Incest was a way of life for her.  Three months ago, she had given birth to a baby girl. Once she came to Evergreen particularly distressed.  She cleared a table with a sweep of her arm and grabbed a pen.  Then, with deliberate strokes, she put her heart on paper:  a striking scene of two friends sitting together on a bench.  When she left, she smiled and said, ‘This is the best time I’ve had in a long time.’ She had come to Evergreen the day she died.  Now she was gone forever. How very hard and short life is for some; how essential is the need to minister the Kingdom of God every moment, because that moment could be the last. I looked at her once more and through my tears, I said, ‘Good-bye.’ She was only 14 years old. ~from Prayer for the City, a quarterly publication of Yonge Street Mission and the Evergreen Centre in downtown Toronto, Canada.   Pray for the young people at Evergreen for whom life is hard and sometimes very short.  To learn more about YSM, click here.

The Word on the Street

I originally blogged this back in April of 2008, when this blog was hosted at e4God.com, but after speaking with someone today about Rob Lacey’s Street Bible and The Liberator, I thought I’d take one more run at this topic while you can still buy copies of both in remainder bins at Christian bookstores.

Ever since my parents gave me a copy of Get Smart, a youth edition of Living Proverbs (forerunner to The Living Bible) and the related Reach Out New Testament, I’ve been a huge fan of Bible paraphrases that arrest you in your tracks, bring the story to life, and say old things in new ways. (Note: Technically The Message is not a paraphrase, but a loose translation, since Peterson worked from original languages.  Not to mention that linguists don’t really buy in on the paraphrase terminology at all.)

My current favorites are the two works by Rob Lacey: The Liberator (synoptic gospels) and The Street Bible (highlights from all 66 books, published in the U.S. as The Word on the Street.)  Rob once said that if a regular Bible is “the movie,” his Street Bible is the “coming attractions trailer.”  Sadly, the world lost Rob to cancer several years ago.  He was only 43.

Books like these don’t pretend to be all things to all people. They usually are written for a specific culture living in a specific place at a specific time. I’m told that Rob had in mind inner city youth in major UK cities like London and Manchester. (Fortunately, living in Canada we get a lot of British Television, so many of the figures of speech were known to us. The U.S. edition — which someone at Zondervan actually consulted me about before publishing — has explanations printed sideways in the margins.)

More recently, a friend from New Zealand introduced us to Chris Grantham writer of The Kiwi Bible (gospel story) and the newer The Kiwi Bible: Some of the Early Stuff (brief sections from the Old Testament). While I’m not part of the NZ audience this is intended for, I’ve found things in these versions that I missed in the more traditional ones. I’ve also seen the Australian Bible Society’s The Aussie Bible. (If you’re one of our Canadian readers, you can get both Kiwi books at our book store. Elsewhere in the world check out www.kiwibible.co.nz )

Here’s a Kiwi rendering of Psalm 23. Enjoy.

My Best Mate
(by Dave)

God’s my best mate, I’ll do all right for sure.
He gives me a breather when I need it,
He knows just the best place for a cool, refreshing quiet one.
When I’m feeling really knackered, he picks me up.
He’s got me heading down the right track, he knows what’s best.
Even when life totally sucks, no worries — you’re right there with me. I reckon that’s real cool. You know just what it takes to keep me going.
You put on a fantastic feed for me, right in front of my enemies, complete with an awesome relax-making massage. I’m stoked!
I reckon all your love and good stuff will be my lot from now till when I cark it. I’ll sure be living in your outfit forever — and then some.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Willing to Invest Time

Today I met with a man who is a somewhat lapsed Episcopalian (or Anglican as we say here) who has been meeting on a monthly basis with some Jehovah’s Witnesses.     He has a lot of questions about various issues, and so he invited them into his home and they have been returning regularly, staying about an hour each time.

There was a time when Evangelicals were very big on the concept of door-to-door outreach and visitation.   Many a Saturday morning in the 1950s and 1960s might be spent in twos or threes ringing doorbells in a local neighborhood.

But as time went by, people tended to associate the “two by two” approach with only two groups:  Mormons (LDS) and Jehovah’s Witnesses.    These two groups took ownership of this method of proselytizing, with the result that it’s not widely used by others.

Before anyone starts dismissing these groups out of hand, I want to commend the approach for the following reasons:

1. It’s Biblical.   The disciples were sent out in this manner.
2. They deliver.   If the last few years of Missional Church has taught us anything, it’s taught us the importance of being sent.   So much of what the church calls “outreach” is really “in-drag.”   Millions of people are falling through the cracks of printed brochure distribution or mall campaigns or e-mail invites.   But it’s harder — though not impossible — for them to ignore a knock at the door.
3. The people who this man met at his front door were willing to invest the time with him.  On hearing that, I made sure that I took out as much time as he wanted.   Fortunately, the phone didn’t ring and no one else needed to see me.   I would have given him all day.
4. They knew their subject matter cold.  He was impressed with both their depth and their passion as they presented answers to his questions and introduced their beliefs, and also how their various doctrines fit together.    It’s important that we are able to do the same.   It has been said that of all the religions on earth, Christians are the least acquainted with their own sacred writings.
5. They followed up.   They have been back to see him several times.

Hopefully today he met someone with an equal passion for and knowledge of the true Christian faith.   I encouraged him not to seek answers from the single source he has been using, and told him about a variety of resources available to him if he wishes to meet again.