Reaching out to my brothers, locally and far away

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

I’m tired. I got home from work at arbout 4:45 and immediately started writing up a study for Friday night. I had about an hour before I really needed to leave… Well, at 6:15, I mostly had the study written. I’m GenX to the bone.
The study went well. We split into two groups and I had one of my partners in crime, Jon Schmidt, take the other one. He muddled through my notes. Since the study could go in a lot of different directions (we talked about generational sins and demonic influence–yes, I am a sucker for controversy) I literally put together twice as much as we needed, so we’d be able to go either direction. I could tell from hearing Jon that he indeed went a very different direction than I did. But both went well.

I’d post the study, but I’m afraid it really wouldn’t translate well into this format. Group feedback was absolutely essential. Writing a study and writing an essay take completely different mindsets, at least for me.

Anyway, I’m exhausted, because it’s a painful topic for me, and it’s late. I’m glad I don’t have a church Board of Directors meeting to attend at 7 in the morning, like I usually do in the second Saturday of the month.


Charlie has a good piece on interpreting scripture. It’s a good read. It’ll make you think, so make sure you’ve had your cup of coffee first.

What else… I’m trying to wrap up the film I’ve been working on. That’s my big project for the weekend. Those of you who pray, if you’ll join me in asking for focus and productivity, I’d appreciate it. I really need to put this project away.

And I found out yesterday afternoon that there’s a group of about 15 people who’ve been wandering around the neighborhoods of Belle Glade where we wandered, talking to people and praying with them, and inviting them to a church service at the soup kitchen we worked and Sunday School in an adjacent apartment. That’s outstanding news. Nobody had been trying to reach the people we were talking to, and it pained me, just like not seeing any church really trying to reach GenX pained me a few years ago. I was trying to convince one of the pastors down there that God will bless their efforts (and lots of other things too) if someone reaches out to these people that no one seems to want. I guess he, or someone else, was listening.

It’ll take more than that to turn those neighborhoods around, but it’s a really good start. Things start to change when people have a place to belong and know that somebody cares about them.

But that means that a big part of the goal of this film (rallying support) has already started happening. Now I don’t need so much to convince people of the need to do it. Instead I need to show them how we were blessed. Which, of course, is very easy to do.

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