For two nights I drove out to a church in a suburb near Stellenbosch and set up my table with the other tables (two of them - Open Doors and SIM...hardy campaigners, both of them!)
I was campaigning for Discipling Nations, this time
Anyway, this was the anual missions jamboree of the denomination in question, and we had been invited, so we pitched up.
It was quite fun, really. Setting up the stall, seeing a wonderful missions drama-spectacular with dancing, flag waving and massed choir effects, and then sitting through a rather inchoate oration loosely themed on the idea of mission as church planting. And then the grand finale, the dismissal (ite, missa est, only not in Latin), and ... the doors of the display room were flung open and the crowds streamed in!
Well, five people streamed in. Water always streams, I say, even when it drips. The display hall felt cavernous as the five interested visitors awkwardly browsed under the gaze of three awkward stallholders...
But I had really good conversations with a few of them, actually. But then that was it for our fist evening. Quiet, but nil desperandum. Not my lowest turnout ever.
Our second evening was similar, but less. My co-stall-holders (for the other organisations - we few, we happy few) did not turn up, I noticed, so there was only one of me. I spoke to two people about my passion for training people for cross-cultural mission. Not, as these things go, a bad outcome, even for 2x100km rond trips.
Then my spirits lifted. A crowd of people started filling up the hall - a serious crowd! About forty people?!
...but, my hopes were short-lived. They were the crew to set up the hall for breakfast the next day, and I was asked politely to get out of their way...
No comments:
Post a Comment