Thursday, December 15, 2011

News from the edge: Evangelism Story #5

This story of getting out into the community as church comes from Cameron, Texas.  My friend Ray Bagby wrote to me and told me how one of their parishioners, Phyllis Davis and her creative challenge. 

He said, [she] rallied our folks to have a float in the Cameron Christmas Parade on December 3rd. In front of a painted backdrop of our church (the small white church with the red doors) was a live manger scene. To my knowledge it was the first time, or at least the first in many years, that we have had a presence there and we were the only float that proclaimed the real reason for Christmas. In addition to the banners identifying the church, there was one on each side which read: “Celebrate! Our Savior is Born!”, then below that, “He is Christ the King.”

He closed his short note to me with these words, "After the parade, the participants had dinner together and began to share their stories, which we had already planned to do in the Christian formation hour during Advent. I believe that this sharing will strengthen the church and make it even more open to evangelism in the future."

What a great way to have fun, get out there, and share the good news! Thank you for sharing the story with us.
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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball