As I was talking to Bill, a gentleman at Gold's Gym, yesterday, he made the above statement.  I hear this statement a lot and I always assure the person I'm talking to that I'm not necessarily trying to increase a church roll as much as I'm trying to increase God's roll - the Book of Names. While I don't believe that church attendance is a dogma for salvation, I do believe it is essential for each believer's spiritual growth and maturity. More...

This morning as I was praying, God laid on my heart to go to the mall this afternoon to share the Gospel.  I had the opportunity to talk with three different individuals. The greatest thing about it was you could tell the conversations were Spirit led and hearts were completely open to discussion.  Each of the three conversations were vastly different and each message was tailored to the individual.  I mean, no 12-step Gospel presentation here.  It is such a blessing to serve in your area of giftedness and just watch God use you - I totally enjoy using my gift of evangelism to serve to kingdom and reach people.

As I was talking to the third young lady, a security guard approached me.  He was led to my table by an onlooker who didn't appreciate what I was doing.  The security guard asks me if I was soliciting religion.  I answered, "Well, me and the young lady here are talking about spiritual stuff.  I'm not sure if that's what you call soliciting religion."  He told me that I wasn't allowed to do that.  I told him that I asked the girl if she minded and she said that she didn't.  I invited the guard to ask the girl if she wanted me to leave of if I could stay.  So the security guard asked her and she said that I was okay and wasn't bothering her.  The guard told me that I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone else after her and if he saw me, then he would escort me out personally.  I told him that when I got through talking to her, I would leave.

When the conversation with the girl was finished, I thanked her for talking and started making my way out of the food court. On the outskirts of the atrium, I saw the guard again.  I decided to go talk to him.  I figure the worse thing that could happen was that he would escort me out of the mall. Either way I was leaving, so asking him would still be a 'winning' situation. More...

 Another conversation that I had at the ultimate tournament was with a student who argued that governments in third-world countries should freely distribute contraceptives. His reasoning was, by distributing contraceptives, the total amount of abortions would decrease thus eliminating the sin of murdering innocent children.  He argued that conservatives should support the distribution of contraceptives if we felt that it was wrong to have abortions (he also tried to discuss politics with me, but that was one avenue I wouldn't follow him down).  I asked him, "Don't you think you're missing the point?"  More...

During the second week of the ultimate frisbee tournament, I had a few interesting conversations that are worth mentioning.

One of the conversations was with a non-practicing Jewish guy.  The student had a lot of rabbits that he threw at me to chase. He basically argued that he was a good person and generally people are good.  Sometimes people don't do good things, but they attempt to do good and therefore they are good in essence.  He argued that as long as everything turns out okay, then even if your methods were less than ethical or moral then the methods were justified by the outcome. This is nothing more than an attempt to camouflage the argument, "Do evil so that good may result." This was an argument that Paul was confronted with throughout the New Testament. More...

Last Thursday, while I was lifting, there were a few guys off to the side joking around and talking about girls and relationships.  One of the guys eventually said something along the lines of, "You know, most girls just date you, take your money and leave. Girls say they want the nice, sweet guy, but that's not true." The other guys agreed. More...