Things at home were tumultuous, to put it nicely.  He lived with his little brother and his father, who was often gone overnight for work, and sometimes gone much longer for other reasons.  They made it work somehow, though looking back he often wonders how he made it through those times.  Who paid the bills when dad was in rehab?  Did we ever go to the dentist in those years?  Who drove us places?

Solace came through sketching pictures deep into the night, watching way too many hours of MTV, and attending a karate class a few times a week.  It was there, one night after a pretty exhausting workout as he remembers it, that a kind man from the class approached him out in the parking lot in the dark.

“Here.  From the little bit of your life you’ve shared with me, I thought you would enjoy this book.”

He handed me my first Bible.  He was a man named Bill who had become a fast friend, and I was the distraught teenage kid on the receiving end.  Having grown up in a home where we never once attended church, nor ever talked about God (unless the word was used as an exclamation), nor had any religion at all, it was a bit of a shock.  But Bill was a good guy and I trusted him so I took it.

I remember it vividly – a brown study Bible, big and thick like an encyclopedia.  It was special; I needed something pretty badly so I took it home and read it for a few weeks.  And it made sense.

And not long after that it happened.  One day after school in my bedroom I knelt on the carpet, invited Jesus Christ into my life, and wept for a very long time.

Then I got up, changed my college major, finished school, and started a church.  It’s 25 years later and I’m still telling people how God can forgive their sins and make something amazing out of whatever big mess they find themselves in.

I tell my story to illustrate a simple truth:  The meat is in the streets.

John Wimber, one of the most influential church leaders of the 20^th century, said that.  It was his burden to push the people of the church out of the building and into the streets to invite others in.  It was his conviction that the real ‘meat’ of the faith as it were (that is, the deeper and more true stuff) was not found on Sunday morning during a nice service, nor even in a seminary class, but rather in neighborhoods, in alleyways, and in Wal-mart when we’re shopping for the week.

Much of first world Christianity seems to limit the actualization of our faith to being experienced in a church service, or maybe on a mission field if we’re really serious about God.  But the reality as we look at the Scripture is that the vast majority of all ministry happened not in a church or synagogue, but in all the other places outside of it.

I re-read the four gospels recently and simply noted every time Jesus encountered someone and did the works of God, and where it happened.  The results were pretty convicting; nine out of ten of Jesus’ encounters with people happened outside an organized religious meeting.  Nine out of ten!!!

If you know the Bible at all, think of the more famous stories of Jesus.  The woman at the well…healing the blind man…. multiplying food…raising the dead…. all of these happened not in a church service, but on a road or in a house somewhere.

And it was in this scenario that I myself came to meet Him as well.

I wonder if the place to meet Jesus and to experience the true work of God is different than we think.  As I see it, church services are the appetizer, but the real work of God happens as we show his love to those in our neighborhoods, in our office, while we’re shopping, and in the parking lot after our karate class.

Let’s get out into the streets and do the stuff Jesus does.