eWell September 2, 2009

"Radio Bible Story Time" by Paul Peavy

Amazing! I just heard the story of the woman at the well on HOT104.9! Yep, I just heard the story of the woman at the well on the hippest radio station in town and my church got it there! If you haven't heard it The Well has a radio ad that has the sound of a woman having some kind of a good time we'll say and then it says something like, "We don't care what you did last night you are welcome at The Well."

Jesus had this same conversation with the woman at the well in John 4:7-30. Jesus asked her for a drink from the well. She was astounded that he would even talk to her because she was a Samaritan (wrong side of the tracks type person). Then he told her that of course she was single, had five previous husbands and, by the way the dude she slept with last night was not her husband. But, that doesn't matter! Jesus offered her a drink of water that would give her "a well of water springing up to eternal life."
How cool is that? We got one of the most popular bible stories played on the radio station that rocks Tallahassee!

To reach those that nobody is reaching you have to do what no one else is doing.

You know one thing I love about The Well is that I know without one single doubt it is not about me. It is about reaching the single most important thing in life: reaching people who do not know Jesus as their personal savior. Reaching people who might have been to church but got bored. People who have never opened up to the possibility of Christ because they felt judged by Christians. People who never thought they could drink from the well of eternal life because they were not good enough.

If the day comes when I want to get in shape for a bible verse rapping contest, the day I want to to get into an "I know more biblical sounding words than you do" contest, the day I want to get into a Christian bastian of bubble bath brotherhood where we scrub each others back week after week with the plastic scrunchy of soapy piousness I will probably find another church. But for right now I am excited to not be like the older brother in the story of the prodigal's son. The son who got mad, who may have been embarrassed in front of his pious friends that his little brother who had been rolling in pig slop finally came home.

On the contrary, when someone has the opportunity to hear who God truly is because someone took the risk to present him in a way that was honest, non-churchy, and non-religious I get really excited. Because Jesus showed us the way by rolling through the fishing villages, leper colonies, the shepherd's fields and meeting people where they were in their ever-changing culture. Ever notice that not much in the Gospels happens at or near a church? The one thing I do know was that He kicked some major money changer tail at the temple and that's about it that Jesus saw happening at the church.

So I think my church got it right when it said that it wanted to put on a different kind of ad on a different kind of radio station.

To reach people no one is reaching you've got to do what no one else is doing. Live it.