More Outreach Angst

Just as I realized that I can survive the outreaches after all, the level of challenge is rising, and not exactly in the way I expected.

So far, our outreaches have basically had the theme of giving something away. The 'service' aspect was not particularly difficult (except for people like me who have trouble initiating a conversation, but I've already covered that topic).

I was interested and excited to hear the good report from a fellow VLI student in another church, who planned an outreach to pray for, meet with and talk with an Alpha attendee. A word of knowledge caused this to be an example of power evangelism. That was so cool! I was so psyched! Giving out apple juice seemed tame in comparison. After all, most of our servant evangelism outreaches were giving of the resources of the church more than they were giving of ourselves.

So I asked my mentor for additional ideas. As soon as he opened his mouth, I could tell what was coming. It was like watching an accident. You know that it's going to happen no matter what you do. He suggested going out and... cleaning toilets.

I'm trying to talk myself into this. Actually, my personality shows really clearly in my reaction to this. As unappealing as the task itself may be, my bigger concern is the idea of having to tell someone that I want to clean their toilet. I just can't quite get my brain around this one. I mean, how do you start the conversation? I can visualize myself with my rubber gloves on, brandishing a toilet brush, but I just can't imagine initiating the conversation. Maybe it would go like this. I walk into the restaurant and the waiter greets me saying "Hi, I'm John and I'm going to be your server today." And then I say "Hi, I'm Ann, and I'm going to clean your toilet today". It sort of sounds like a bad line in the kind of movie I don't even like. I'm really going to need a script if we do this. Or maybe I can just beg my partner to do the talking.

And also I can't imagine what I'll say when a friendly co-worker asks me how class is going, and what I've learned lately!