bumpkin

I'm a bumpkin - I admit it .

This fact was confirmed to me this weekend when I walked into a church building that seats 5,000 for a Beth Moore conference. I should have realized it would be a monstrous event when every person checking into our hotel was female. Or maybe when it took 20 minutes of circling the parking lot to figure out there were no free spaces - not one - even though we were an hour early. Still, climbing to my seat in the third balcony, I was dizzy at the height and breadth of it all.

I'm a bumpkin and I tend to distrust people and events that look too organized and dolled up.

5,000 women gathered to praise God and listen to a woman who has a following among evangelical Christians as smitten with her as others are with Oprah. Christian Rock and Roll, I thought. Anything this popular, this polished, cannot be sincere.

Did I mention that I wasn't supposed to be there? The event sold out MONTHS ago. MONTHS. By the time I even heard about it, there was no way to get a ticket. Then, with only a few days before the event, God blessed me with a ticket, a ride, and companions. Still, I wasn't sure.

A lot of blessings came with the weekend-- the chance to spend with friends and to get to know other ladies, the chance to worship with abandon, the chance to witness an interpreter for the deaf turn an already beautiful language to pure art, the chance to sit at the feet of a woman - a gifted teacher - who gives all the praise to God.

Perhaps the greatest thing I took from the weekend, though, was the realization that just because something is popular and crowded does not mean it's insincere. As I sat and looked out at the thousands, seated neatly in numbered rows, I imagined Pentecost in Jerusalem.

3,000 people turned their lives over to Jesus that day. Just because they were numerous did not mean they were half-hearted.

3,000 people in one day, with no microphones or comfy seats or advertising fliers. So many in one small place, so few in the vast world. Yet those 3,000 changed the world forever.

3,000 in Jerusalem. 5,000 in Seattle.

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." Acts 1:8 NAS