Full Circle

Today I had one of those weird, rare moments where I was able to step outside myself and view my life for the past few years as a spectator.

As proteges we read a different book each month. This month the book was UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. This was not the first time I had read this book. I had actually read it about four years ago. I confessed to a couple of my fellow proteges just before our meeting that I had actually not reread the book but since I remembered it pretty well I figured I'd still be ready for discussion. Josh Stockstill, the discipleship protege said, "Well that's okay. The book already changed your life, what more could you really hope to get out of it?" I laughed but he was actually completely right. That book had changed my life.

Now I'm not one of those people that reads or hears something and then tells everyone how it changed my life blah blah blah. But this time it was true. Not because I found something the authors said to be particularly poignant or something. I mean, I enjoyed the book but that wasn't it. Deep in the middle of the book was a passage written by a pastor in Washington, DC. He was explaining why his church built a coffeehouse instead of a church building. He said that Jesus hung out at the wells and since coffeehouses are postmodern wells, it only made sense. This is a place where the community and church can cross paths. As I read those words, I remember having this uncontrollable excitement fill me. I had been telling people about this idea I had for a coffeehouse. It would be nonprofit and would give back to the community. I had a hard time completely explaining it but I knew I would know if I ever saw it. And here it was. Someone I had never met, or even heard of, was perfectly articulating my vision.

I immediately Googled that church and the pastor and read the passage aloud to my roommates. They now had a new understanding of what I had been trying to tell them for so long. I was not only excited, I was encouraged.

Now, when I read those words I had no intention of packing up and moving to DC. I thought it might be interesting to visit this church sometime, just for a frame of reference but that was all. But something changed that day. A seed was planted. After that, in the back of my mind was always this church in DC doing ministry in a way I could relate to. In a way I believed in. It's hard to ignore that.

Fast forward four years and I'm sitting in a circle in the NCC offices discussing this very same book, even the same old copy. My old book opens easily to that same passage now and reveals the star I scribbled in the margin next to it that day. It was a bit surreal.

What if I had never read that book four years ago? Where would I be? What if that book had been like so many others I have purchased, only to sit on my shelf for years before I got around to reading them? Would I have heard of NCC or Ebenezers or Mark Batterson? That is crazy to think about.

It also makes me want to get around to reading all of those unread books of mine...