Net - Casting

June 5^th

If our efforts this summer could be summed up in a single word it would be net-casting. Let me tell you, net-casting can be extremely uncomfortable! It can also be surprisingly rewarding! What I may like about it most is that it is completely dependent and reliant on the power of God.

Today we set up a prayer station at a busy intersection of town (Fordham and Grand Concourse). We had no clue as to what we were doing and how we should best do it, but we were available, willing, and dependent on God. As weird as it sounds, this is a good formula for God showing up. So anyways, we set up our little prayer station that had a few flyers on it talking about a youth group type thing called CTA (call to arms led by George one of the gametime church members), free Bibles, Friendspeak/LST type material that we will be doing with people, and Camp Shiloh info (for low income kids). With these things we had a triangle white board that we set atop our little vendor table. On it simply read – “can we pray for you?” and “write your prayers”. As this was going on 3 of the 5 of us began to walk around the area praying, which is becoming a much beloved and frequent activity connected with everything we do that we simply refer to as prayer walking.

We found that using the slightly more creative means of accepting prayers on the white board a lot less threatening to people and over the course of an hour a good handful of people responded. This allowed us to lead in to ask follow-up questions like well what does that mean, or how are you related to that person you want us to pray for? In one case a woman asked for a free Bible and gave us her contact information. She even inquired about a Bible study and asked if it would be possible if we could come to her house! She also called the church number a few hours later. It seems as if God has been actively working in her life from the obvious receptiveness and hospitality we were shown today! It was extremely uplifting and energizing and we hope to continue to be a presence every so often on that piece of the street and using new and creative ideas to help people connect with God. (One way we thought of is to get a threefold board thing and put a map on it and have people take a push pin and place in the country/state/city they would like us to pray for – whether it be where some of their family lives, or their country of origin, or whatever the case may be). So if you have ideas of cool things you have seen or anything like that send them our way and you can be praying for this specific ministry!

We hope to creatively connect people lives and stories with God’s story and show them that he has been a part of their story all along (that may have been a little too many stories there). We hope to actively embrace all the culture and history and people around us and take what they know and make God relevant to those things. We hope to net-cast to an entire sea of hurting people, which can be frustrating, awkward, boring, exciting, and rewarding.

I will end by giving an undeveloped thought I just talked with Jordan Bunch (the other male intern) about. We were talking about how people who stepped aside to our booth already displayed great faith to step into the power of God and yield some dependence to him. Just like the lepers and blind and sick and hungry went to Jesus so too were those who came today saying I have faith that God can do something in my life and by taking a few steps in a direction they were not planning to go, they display a mountain of faith.

This was coupled with the discussion that posed the question – did Jesus approach people or did they always approach him? It seemed to us the answer was both. People always seemed to be approaching Jesus and so at first glance we thought that was the answer. However, that was only the case because he was constantly out among the people. So both Jesus and the people took steps towards each other and the power of God entered into the picture!