The Everyday Club

11/30/10    Ron, Jimmy, Don    all about 50
Today I met Marcus after work, a fairly new believer at our church who has lived on the streets for almost 40 years. We headed to a nearby McDonalds in Bronzeville, an African American neighborhood near our church where Marcus hung out years ago. I told some older men at a table that I'm from a nearby church and asked if they'd answer a few questions. Ron claimed to be a member of a well-respected church and said he absolutely didn't want to talk about it. Jimmy said he is an atheist. Don joined the conversation later, claiming to be a Christian. All of them had much more in common than it seemed at first - they all believe God is "supposed" to forgive our sins - as often as we ask Him to - "unless you have done something really bad, like murder". Don seemed to have the most biblical background of the three - yet stated "ït doesn't matter what you have faith in - it could be Jesus, Allah, Buddha, or that building or that fence over there - as long as you believe." These three were all very streetwise and their beliefs seemed to be a mixed bag of various opinions they had picked up around the neighborhood. For almost an hour I just presented the gospel, putting out "brushfires" - various unbiblical beliefs - as the conversation progressed. At the end they started to get caught up in discussing politics and various conspiracy theories, but I summed up all we had discussed and we left. Marcus agreed - "If you had stayed to talk about other things, they'd forget what you had told them about the Lord, but you planted seeds of truth and then left. They won't forget that."