Franklin Graham "Festival"

It's probably fair to say that both Karen and I were looking forward to the Franklin Graham Festival when we first heard about it in, say, fall of 2006. I think both of us wondered whether we would still be living in this area when June of '07 rolled around (that's another story). I think I even remember Karen saying that that might be a decent reason to stick around until June. But somewhere along the line, we lost our enthusiasm. I think it started with the "mandatory" meetings at the church, but quickly digressed with the advent of emotional appeals about the upcoming event, the shirts to show your endorsement of the event, the CLW classes that were a frightening reminder of the legalistic background our church has been trying to break free from, to the Operation Andrew lists, to the actual event itself.

The event: To be fair, we only attended one event, the last one on Sunday, June 10th. Again to be fair, some of the wind was forcefully sucked from our sails when they shut down the remote venue where we were assigned to help. But then we made our way to where all the Harley bikers were, and hung out there for the remainder of the program. Without dragging this out. We were sorely dissappointed by a handful of things including the "churchy" atmosphere (with the choir and gospel singers), the rousing ovation that FG got (is this guy Jesus?), and the less than inspiring presentation of the message. Worse, for us, was how the "gospel" was actually explained. Does the term, "fire insurance" mean anything?

We left at the beginning of the invitation to come forward. I was glad there was nothing nearby on which to impale myself. The whole thing was pretty offensive. When did the "festival" happen?? Suffice it to say, we were actually relieved none of our friends that we had invited showed up. (In a deer-in-the-headlights moment, a friend of mine ( E. D., PhD) asked me if i went to the festival. During our interesting interaction, I asked if HE had gone to the festival, to which he replied that he almost had gone, to protest it, but that his wife had prevented him. He asked a thought provoking question which I thought was valid. "Had I done my homework to find out if FG really had some of the things he was accused of saying?" Nope.)

SO . . . that got Karen and I thinking. If FG did what we thought was a lousy job explaining the gospel, how would we explain it? Hmmm . . . hard question. I think it would be something like this. . .

We believe there is one God, the creator of all things, who has made the world and everything in it, including people, animals and all we can see, and maybe more importantly, all that we can't see. We believe that life is lived to it's fullest when people have a strong desire to know and follow God and want, and try, to live their lives to honor him. We also believe that God sent Jesus, for a lot of reasons. Some of those reasons the Bible explains and some it doesn't. It seems like the Bible teaches that Jesus came to rescue people from a lot of things, like fear, greed, idolatry, and many other problems, both self-inflicted and inherited because of the world that we live in. We also feel that Jesus wants us to follow him in a new way of life - a life that offers freedom and hope and forgiveness and a new beginning, a new beginning which leads to service toward others, loving our neighbors, and pursuing justice and showing mercy. It seems pretty clear that people have a choice if they want to enter this new way of life. Jesus, being from God and in some way actually being God, demonstrated this way of life for us while he was here. We have to choose, will we have the faith to believe in him, in his whole message that he lived out for us, and the need to die for us, and rising again part, and the "I'll follow you for the rest of my life" part? If we decide to partner with God and live our lives in a way that says I want to honor Jesus, and I want to stop trying to live life by my own rules, then God gives a special gift by living in our hearts. If however, we say, no thanks, I prefer to do it on my own, then God respects that decision and the special relationship reserved for those who want to serve him is forfeited.

Maybe that is a harder message to communicate. Maybe that isn't the whole message. Maybe we don't have it nailed either. It's definitely not easy to put into a four point outline. But I think if we are going to represent Jesus, we should try to represent more of him then just trying to scare the hell out of people (literally).

If nothing else, the festival has made us think, re-think and discuss this among ourselves, our families and our friends. We sure don't have it all figured out, but we would invite more discussion about this issue, an issue we feel is so important.