Today begins a new series I have held off on for sometime because I wanted to make sure I could do it justice. So many of you email me or talk to me personally at events asking me questions about God, politics, homosexuality, the environment, musc, and parenting. Two of them, however, are the most common.

1. What EXACTLY do you do?
2. How do you do it?

Over the next few posts, I will be attempting to communicate what God has called me to do with my life, how that plays out practically, spiritually, and mechanically, and the joys and struggles associated with this calling.

I begin by saying deliberately and without apolgy…I AM AN EVANGELIST. Not the TV type with a Rolex and a bad hairdo. I am the Billy Graham type (though I would never compare myself with a man of such annointing and integrity). This simply means that I do not pastor a church. I do not preach to the same people week after week. I do not endure deacons meetings or business meetings/fights.

My calling takes me all over the world. I am what we call an “itinerate” evangelist, meaning that I move, travel, fly, drive, perambulate, and stay in constant motion. I live on the road. I live out of a suitcase or a backpack. I sleep in hotels and people’s guest bedrooms. I spend copious amounts of time in airports and I know ticket agents by name. I am always someone else’s guest and I am always leaving my home to serve someone else in theirs.

When I was a teenager, the Mel Gibson classic movie “The Road Warrior” came out, and not long after that, a wrestling tag-team named themselves “The Road Warriors.” Even though Hawk and Animal no longer wrestle and there is a rumor that Mel will once again don the post-apocolyptic vagabond role for a comeback (if Rambo can do it, why not Mel?), I like to consider myself a Road Warrior. There are precious few of us and we like to stick together for strength, friendship, and accountability, but what we do is difficult and challenging. It takes a toll on us, but most people in the kingdom have no idea that we even exist. So I want to tackle some issues and bare my soul as I take you inside the mind of a Road Warrior.

Here are a few of the issues I will be writing about.

1. What is an evagelist?
2. How do you get paid?
3. How do you get opportunities to preach?
4. Is there still a place for the evangelist in a post-modern culture?
5. How much do you travel?
6. What are the most difficult elements of being on the road?
7. How do you decide when to say NO and when to say YES to an invitation?
8. What temptations do you face when you are away from your family?
9. How does life on the road affect your health?
10. How do you stay connected to Christ spiritually?
11. How do you prepare sermons, and do you only have a handful you preach?
12. Do you still give public invitations? Why or why not?
13. Do weird things happen to you on the road (just wait to hear the stories…)?

This is my life and calling, and as hard as it is, I love it and would never dream of doing anything else. This should be fun!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.