Ecclectic 101

Seems like I always have an interesting conversation when I fly. I sat next to a man named Mike from Australia who now lives in Vriginia. He travels extensively around the world (within a month he was going to be in China, India, Russia and Brazil. It was cool since I have been in those countries with the exception of India - and I made big points when I told him that my favorite was Australia. But, the real conversation starter was when he asked me whether I enjoyed studying the Bible. I was reading Timothy Keller's book, "The Reason for God". I responded "yes" and we enjoyed an interesting conversation. He asked if I had read "The God Delusion" by the famous atheist Richard Dawkins. (I have blogged about Dawkins before and some of his thoughts from the book.) He said he enjoyed the book because he likes the writing style of Dawkins. Within moments of our conversation about Dawkins he brought up Joel Osteen and said that he would love to go to his church and see him "live". OK, let me summarize. Mike loves to read and atheist's enthusiastic rants about how God doesn't exist, but he would love to go hear Joel Osteen preach. How's that for ecclectic? Mike is a good example of what we can expect in the arena of conversation if we are willing to dive in. On the past few Sunday evenings we have been discussing the opportunities that exist for the church today and we have been discussion our level of preparedness or the lack thereof. Is it challenging to minister to an ecclectic world? We should read the New Testament with a fresh perspective.