The Tampa Pirate Festival, Gasparilla is a two-weekend extravaganza.  Last weekend was the "kids' parade."  My wife and I both wrote about our horrific experience with that one.  My point was less about being stranded for hours in the cold rain and more about my frustration with our effort of servant evangelism on the day.  We handed out candy necklaces attached to cards... if you missed it, you can read my thoughts on the day here.

This past Saturday was the real deal.  I thought of it as a little local thing that gave people an excuse to get wildly drunk and carouse around for the afternoon.  Apparently, it is a bit more of an event than that.  It is Mardi Gras-esque, with people coming from all around for the privilege of having "been there."  We were there, attempting to bring God's kingdom to the party goers.  I was sans wife and kids this time.  Partially because I could never beg, bribe or beat my kids into going to another Gasparilla parade, but also because we knew this one was not intended to be family friendly.  The plan was to meet at Raymond James Stadium and pass out free bottles of water to the literally thousands of people who would park there and ride the shuttles to the parade route.  For some reason, the subtle differences between this project and the last one made this past Saturday's attempts very enjoyable and rewarding for me.

The concept is basically the same - approaching strangers and giving them something they really don't need and might not even want, in an attempt to point them to the no-strings-attached love of God.  I had a blast with the water though.  We had the canvas bags like the paper boy carries stuffed with about 25 bottles of water.  It's always a bit out of my comfort zone to approach strangers, especially with hopes of talking to them about Jesus.  But when I make myself do it, I always see God "show up."  First let me list some of the more humorous items that put this event in the "good" category.

1. I was told by one group of already-drunk-girls that I am quote, "the sh%@"  To which I replied, "I am indeed."
2. Another couple drunk girls, after taking the water bottles, asked if I wanted them to lift up their shirts for me.  That's what they do to get free stuff along the parade route.  "Uh... no thanks.  The water comes no-strings-attached."
3. I delivered free water and cards from our church to a bunch of guys in their car, hitting from a huge red, acrylic bong (if you don't know what that is, you're all the better for it).

I like doing events like this because they allow me to actually talk to people.  One thing that made this one so much different was that I did not automatically give out the cards with the water.  I personally handed out just more than 500 bottles and I would guess about 100 connect cards.  I only gave the cards to people when the specifically asked me what I was up to.  I did a few things hoping to provoke such questions, but if they didn't ask, I didn't tell.  I left it at the free water and in the hands of God to "give the increase."  I'll write later about some of the fantastic responses and conversations I had throughout the day.  But what do you think of my "keep the cards till they ask" approach?  Spirit-led or cop-out?

...At least it did this year.  It was cancelled early because of a tornado warning.  We got stranded outside, in the torrential rain, with our three kids for 2 hours, with 8,000 of our closest friends, all waiting for the same 3 shuttle buses.  Should have been home by 5:30 but rolled in at 8:30 instead, and that's only part of the story...

Tampa's annual Pirate Festival kicked off this weekend with the kids' parade.  All that really means is that the drunken bash is next weekend - this one was supposed to safe for your family.  Our purpose in being there was not pure recreation.  Had it been, I would be even more salty about the outcome.  We were there with a team from our just-getting-started church, giving away candy necklaces attached to connect cards.  This kind of idea is classic servant evangelism but the experience has left me questioning quite a bit.

Here's the scene:  Me, my 7-months-pregnant wife, and all three of our boys riding along on one stroller.  Forget the pirates, we were a parade of our own!  To get to the festival we parked on the street in downtown Tampa and all rode together on a shuttle bus to the parade route.  We hit the streets with about 4,000 cards and candies.  My family had about 400 to give away as our part.  Most of the people were already settling into their spots along the route, waiting for the parade to begin.  That means the vast majority of folks had their backs turned to us.  That wasn't a problem for the people flying solo - they just mingled into the crowd and gave away their candies super-fast.  But us... we were stuck trying to find a spot along the street and get the attention of the foot traffic.  There were already people out there handing out worthless crap like flyers and ads for cell phones (no kidding!) so that's who we looked like when approaching people with "free stuff."  We decided that we looked a little more "official" by staying in one place and reaching out to people as they came past.  It worked, I guess.  I went through about 250 pieces in a couple minutes, but I was kind of bummed about the whole thing.

The guy that organized it did a great job and the candy necklaces were a great choice for the occasion.  The people that took them seemed to enjoy it.  I saw a lot of people eating the candy and saw literally only one of our connect cards being trampled under foot.  Maybe everyone was just very conscientious with their trash, I don't know.  My problem with it was that it didn't ever feel like evangelism.  I'm pretty experienced with servant evangelism by now.  I've done a lot of it and I've been there to lead others who are doing it for the first time.  There is always an "is this making any difference...?" element to it, but on every prior occasion, when we got together afterwards, at least one person had a story that made us all feel like we were about our Father's business.  This time, speaking only for myself, I never felt it.  This felt like a pretty good marketing idea.  I'm not even objecting to the notion of a church out marketing itself (although some people certainly will).  I just don't care about marketing anymore.

All evangelism is good evangelism.  While at the parade a very somber looking group of people wearing "God HATES sin!" T-Shirts came up to me and, without a word, handed me a Gospel tract called "The Little Red Book."  In it, I learned through religious clipart that I was dying of a terrible disease called sin and only Jesus... Thank God for those people!  I'm glad I wasn't one of them, but I really am thankful for them.  I smiled and gave the girl candy.  I know what we did was "good," but I'm questioning my own dissatisfaction with it all.  What would I have rather done to be in on this event and "let my light so shine before men that they see my good deeds and praise my Father in Heaven?"

Our experience generated a few ideas:

1. Give away ponchos / umbrellas.   The weather was predicted.  We knew it was coming enough to bring 4 ponchos for ourselves and an umbrella, why not plan ahead a little further and have ponchos to give away to everyone?  Expensive, I know but not so much more than candy and professionally printed cards that it couldn't be done.  When the heavy rain started we had two ponchos on our two bigger boys and noticed a family in front of us with two kids and no protection from the elements.  We gave them our other two ponchos and just shielded our little guy with our bodies.  How would we have felt if we were watching our kids shiver, soaked to the bone and a stranger came up and offered us free protection from the rain?  Blessed!
   
2. Pick up trash.  There was garbage everywhere and I know someone was going to have clean all that up.  What a blessing it would have been to see a little army of people out there helping you out.  I saw an entire bag of garbage just left in the street as we were leaving.  I picked it up and dropped it into the trash can (a mere 3 paces away).  After I did, I noticed a guy notice me.  A few yards further, he picked up a couple cans on the ground and carried them to the next trash bin.
   
3. Go around saying "Thank you," to all the police and vendors that came out to help / put on the event.  My wife mentioned how good her funnel cake was to the vendor and was told, "We never get compliments.  We get a lot of complaints, but never any compliments."  I thanked a Policeman for standing in the storm and helping to maintain order at the 8,000-man bus stop and he looked genuinely shocked that someone had noticed his service instead of just expecting it.

I truly do not mention these things in order to inflate myself as a "real Christian."  I only mention our deeds so as to illustrate the fact that I don't think "everyone else" should do this stuff, as if I had the idea and am therefore exempt from having to carry it out.  We can all do it without being asked or organized!  It just felt to me like we were all there trying to get people to look into our church, rather than illustrating to people that we get our orders from a King and live out our lives as servants of His Kingdom.  Does that make any sense or am I over-thinking this?

"Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name... and they're always glad you came."  This line from the theme song of "Cheers," fittingly defines the idea of The Third Place.  This very moment, I sit in the place most closely associated with the "real life" equivalent of Cheers - I'm at Starbucks.  We go to work and we have our homes, but what is The Third Place that we would call our own?

Since I'm in the midst of a church plant, we talk about this idea a lot.  The church wants to be that Third Place for people.  But will it ever?  I recognize that I'm not the one to measure things like this against, but I don't want church to fill that spot in my life.  Put a "cafe" in it if you want to; I'm still going to want to get the heck out of there as soon as my "business" is done for the day.  Maybe that's strange coming from a "professional churchman," I'm not sure.  So, basically I'm saying that I am not sure if I believe church can be The Third Place and I'm still sorting out whether I think it should be.

If church was going to be your Third Place, what would it need to do differently?  What do you think about this idea of church as a Third Place anyway?  Is that a reasonable goal for churches to pursue?  Is it a biblical one?  I'm still searching and would love to get your thoughts.

I've been called a "Type A," a "High D," a "Choleric," a "Triangle," and a few other things that I don't want to admit to.  You probably recognize at least one of the above as results from the many forms of personality testing.  My big confession is that even though I've taken all of these and kept a smile on my face about it, I have always hated these things.  A few months ago, I was at a church planters' conference in Kansas City and one of the big-timeys of the whole thing was going on and on about what he was on the Myers-Briggs test.  It was late at night, after a very long day.  This trip was in a stretch of 10 flights in 8 days for me too, so keep that in mind when you read how rude I was to this guy.

After telling all about his score he asked me, "What are you?"  I unleashed all my years of angst against personality tests and said, "I've never taken it.  I think those tests are mostly just a way for unintelligent people to pigeon whole me instead of doing any of the real human work of having a relationship."  I think that gave him plenty of reason to write me off as an arrogant, obnoxious little punk, but instead he laughed his head off.  "Well then you're an INFJ!" he crowed.  "All INFJs hate the tests."

Recently I took the Myers-Briggs assessment and guess what - I'm an INFJ (click the link to read about me).  The letters stand for "Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging."  The test takes my answers to questions and uses them to decide between:

• Extraversion - Introversion
• Sensing - Intuition
• Thinking - Feeling
• Judging - Perceiving

What amazed me even more than the fact that this guy totally nailed my results on the test was that the test results really nailed me.  My biggest objection to these kinds of tests has always been how vague they are.  They are usually accurate to a degree or two, but stay so general that you can't really doing anything with the results.  So I'm a "High D," so what?  But when I read the profile of my type (INFJ), I was stunned at the detail and accuracy.  Of course, as my brother says, you'll never get the ugly truth about yourself from one of these personality profiles, but after reading the profile of my type I came away saying, "If you know what an INFJ is then you have a great start on knowing me."  To me, that's valuable.

So I was wrong.  The tests can be more than a tool for dumb people to define their dumb little, single dimensional world.  If you've taken this test, I'm really interested to know your score.  If you haven't, you can take it right here: Take The Test.  The questions will take you a few minutes and then you'll get your score back immediately.  Once you get your score, put the 4-letter result into Google and you'll get some good sites that define and analize the results.  The one I used will even tell you what career paths a person of your type might enjoy, what to look for in relationships and what to do to improve upon some of the weaknesses of your type.