My Rant

What follows is a stream of consciousness. Basically, that's where I type whatever I'm thinking without editing. The word choices are not always the best and the feelings are raw. It rambles and makes little sense at times. Read on at your own risk (but the risk may be worth it)

How to put this into words...let's see...I guess I'll start at the beginning. The very best place to start. I went to a missionary connection conference put on by my denomination Thursday through today. I usually don't look forward to going to these things because there's lots of people that expect me to have great stories of how my ministry has saved countless souls and changed the world for the better. While I would love to go and tell those stories, I really don't have them. I have great stories of how I've made something think about a situation differently, but I haven't seen a single person get saved this year. I think I would freak out, in a good way, if that ever actually happened.
Anyway, back to the conference. I went on Thursday night to the hotel that the conference was being held at. Thanks to my organization and the people that support it I get put up in fairly nice hotel rooms for free when one of these things happens. Thursday was a rough night that involved not talking to many people and running over a chair on the highway. Funny story. I'll tell it some other time. Friday and Saturday were much better.
Okay. Get to the point Lindsay...the point...as much as I dread going to these things ahead of time, I always walk away wishing that I had just a little more time with the people around me. Being in Seattle all the time, in an environment that is very hard to make an impact in, I forget that God is doing great things in America (and around the world, but that's not really my area of focus at this point.) Being around other missionaries from the Northwest has given me a vision for God's work. I made really good friends with a couple from Wyoming that is working with the people from the oil and natural gas industry. They are the only Christian presence in the middle of nowhere. Lives are being changed. I met people from Alaska that work above the Arctic Circle so that the people in the farthest reaches of North America can hear about Jesus. There are the truck stop evangelists, apartment ministry people, and church planters. So many stories and so little time. I go into these things wondering what I'm doing there and I leave understanding that I'm not the center of the world and God is at work in major ways.
As much as a I give my denomination grief for certain things, I don't think I've seen more committed people than those that I was around this weekend. For all the politics on the national level and bad press, we actually do a lot of things right. In the Northwest, the younger generation (and a few of the older) are into relationship evangelism and loving someone to Jesus as part of a slow process. While I personally ascribe to this philosophy most of the time, I cannot look down my emerging church nose at those that do things differently. God is changing lives through methods that I would probably flat out reject using in Seattle. It takes all kinds.
So, I don't know exactly where I was going with this. It wasn't a glorification of my denomination. There's lots of great ones out there. I think it was more me spewing on about how there is so much great work going on out there and so few people. Every missionary in that room today has some level of frustration because they see their mission field and then they look at their resources and manpower. It's low. Very low. Even with record numbers of missionaries in our organization, the numbers are low. Send more workers, send money, pray more. Get down on your knees, pace in your room, walk a labyrinth...whatever you have to do to really plead with God for America and the area that you live in.
End of rant. Have a great night.