Last night, I was unable to go home and needed to grab something quick before my night moved forward.  The place wasn’t busy, and I ordered my food, noticing that the young man taking my order, while youthful, had some interesting art on his arms and large holes in his lobes from gauges.

We started talking.  He just moved to town.  While I waited on my order to come through, he told me he had lived a lot for his age.  At 24, he was already once married, once divorced, fathered two children and lost a good job for the one he had there.

As I listened to him, I had to ask, “So how did that go for you?  All that living?”

“It’s been painful,” he threw in.

I told him I was the pastor of a church not far from his place of employment.  I invited him to church, saying, “There are plenty of people there with stories like yours.”

After letting me know he was last at church half his life ago, at age 12, he volunteered, “Oh, well, I am open to that;  my mind is really open to a lot of things because of my experiences.”  His words seemed to betray the sense that he’d decided he didn’t want to decide too strongly about what he believed or didn’t believe.

Today, I’m thinking about what I can do to more effectively reach out to people like that young man.  Is the way I am engaged in bringing the gospel to my community working and connecting?  What shape does the church need to take not to make the gospel palatable for people, but impacting, relevant and meaningful?

Give some feedback through the comment section below if you have a moment….