What If???

I'm Talking with Shawn who's out in San Francisco. He's been so blessed to run across Francis Chan. Mr. Chan is systematically changing the world for the better. The project they're involved in can be found at  sfcityimpact.org . I imagine what we could do if all of us had the heart to reach out and grab hold of the lost and hurting, the broken and needy. What would our world look like? What if we made the effort to change it?


I was talking with Ralph Maser my mentor and coming up with really good ideas for how to impact this community. I know that God has great things in store for me and that I can and will do something big. That starts, however, with making the right decisions all the time - even in those moments when no one is looking. 


Beki and I were joined by my future mother in-law Pam for church this morning with about 3-500 others. It was one of those mega churches. I'm not a big fan of those. To top it all off they were hooping and hollering for God and I'm more of your conventional worshiper: hands held high, deep in prayer. I looked around and saw all these bodies having what seemed like a Holy Ghost, Pentecostal-esque experience. Now to avoid making an unwarranted claim to this churches outreach ministries - because I'm not privy to their activities in the community - I want to make a general statement. 


What if those same people who show up to get crazy on Sunday got out this afternoon and hit the streets with shovels, rakes, extra food, clothes, coats, hugs, genuine concern? What if they, instead of getting all excited in Sunday service got excited on a Tuesday afternoon skipping their lunch break to hand out hot dogs on a city street corner? What if? What if we actually started to see that Christianity is not about Sunday morning? Christianity is about Thursday night. Christianity is about Friday morning. Jesus, I'm pretty sure, never wanted Sunday to be the only day for service.


What if, as another example, we took the men who sat around all day on Saturday and Sunday in this halfway house and put a bag in each hand and had them walk around the blocks in the area picking up trash? What if they used us to paint buildings, trim trees, paint curbs, cut grass, rake leaves? Yet here we sat wasting away watching a Saturday Night Fever Marathon, to include the sequel Staying Alive. Talk about a waste of time!! 
These are ideas I have. They may be grand but I think a business minded man like Ralph could find a way to get it all done and spend as little money as possible. We have to do something - anything!


It needs to happen, it has to happen or we'll all be sitting back watching the evening news asking ourselves, "What went wrong with the world?" when really we should be asking, "What if...?"