Ivy has recently learned that red means stop and green means go. So in the car she will announce what we should do. “Go daddy, it’s green!” Of course here in Augusta the colors do not always matter. Yellow means speed up and red means you have couple more seconds…

Mark 4:26-29

It seems Facebook is taking over the world and they even have a clever map to outline the conquest… If it was red arrows we would be thinking World War, but yellow on blue – that is comforting…

At a recent meeting of the After Party leadership team, we decided a mechanical bull would be good (literally this was what made us all, myself included, confident the event would succeed… we are the ones in charge… “Wow, that was powerful! Did you spend a lot of time in prayer?” “No, we just got a bull.” … YEEHAW!). But we also got some depressing news that a church who participated last time was not going to help with this event. The minister was still on board, but it seems some of the parents were upset we did not have a gospel presentation…

Joe Poz, world greatest sports writer (or at least the world’s only sportswriter who is smart enough to also be a Royal’s fan), recently wrote a blog about the first time one of his writings recieved praise. Click here for the entire article, but as a summary, in college he was given the assignment to write as though he was a fly on the wall. For reasons unknown, he had never heard this phrase and so he took it literally. He wrote about an intense desire to eat the family’s hotdog dinner. He mentioned their conversation, but it was garbbled (I guess the fly could only understand food words). So it was a death defying tale of one fly’s mission to get dinner. Of the fly did not defy for long and it ended with the swat of a newspaper… the fly was smashed, so the story could no longer be told.

Somethings that appear natural, as common sense, can become easily confused. Joe took the assigment literally, but the phrase really did not involve a house fly’s life. In the same way the gospel is not encompased by a sermon. Some random guy getting up and telling us about Jesus is great. But the proof of the gospel is not in words, but in lives changed. The most effective gospel presentation may not even use a single word, but be lived in relationships of submission to the way of Christ!

Coming back to Facebook, they have not ever advertised. Instead with one guy and began to spread. Not with big productions, but with people talking. In just a few short years it has grow to ridiculous size.

This is the model for After Party. We do not have a message from the pulpit. Instead we set out to create an environment for relationship. A place for the students to bring friends. A time for the Christians to demonstrate the way of Christ, in real life.  A chance for the students to lay the seeds of the kingdom. To present the gospel message (while they ride the mechanical bull).