I was in Cincy for a couple of days this week at the North American Christian Convention to help run a booth and work a little for Tumaini. In Wednesday morning's main session, the featured speaker was a gentleman named Jon Weece from Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. There was not a dry eye in the building as he told stories and talked to us about focusing more on the "who" (person of) Jesus rather than getting bogged down in the "what" or the external issues that cause us to lose sight of Him instead of "fixing our eyes on Jesus" as we are told by the author of Hebrews.

Two things really stood out to me in his speech. First, in 2005 he cancelled their Christmas services, instead calling his congregation to out into the community to be Jesus and be Christmas rather than come to a building and put on a show. I thought it was a great idea and he told powerful stories of the life- and eternity-changing results of that day (people going to restaurants and leaving thousand-dollar tips, little kids saving money and working extra to personally deliver gifts to not just people they didn't know, but their own classmates...I said, there was not a dry eye in the building) and the baptisms into Christ that happened shortly after. I thought it was a great idea, I guess I was in the minority. A quick google search of his name shows you how many people disagreed with him, he said he received 20,000 emails blasting him for that decision. And the ironic thing, according to him, was that he was not even at the elders meeting when the decision was made, but he hasn't missed one since :)

On the topic of the power of story is the second thing I'll never forget, he talked about getting to the essence of things and keeping them simple when simple is called for. He told the story of Hemingway who wrote what he felt may have been his best work when he wrote the short story in "flast fiction": For sale, baby shoes, never worn. I will never, ever, ever forget that story...the power of words, the power of story.