It was more than your average laid-back, phlegmatic Aussie could take: for about the 47th time in one day, an American pastor with a warm smile was shaking my hand and thanking me so much for the work I was doing and the valuable contribution Matthias Media was making to their ministry.
I was at the Matthias Media stall at Together for the Gospel (popularly known as T4G)—a massive pastors’ conference held recently in Louisville, Kentucky. Among the many culture shocks that came with hanging out with 7000 American pastors was the relentless optimism and warmth of everyone to almost everyone else. The speakers introduced each other like they were long-lost brothers; everyone was thanked and applauded with gusto (pretty frequently); and the delegates were even nice to each other while waiting in line for the bathroom. (It was a sight to make female conference-goers smirk; just for a change, long lines snaked out of the gents’.)
To be fair, it wasn’t all positive. There was regular negativity about false teaching, ‘adjusted’ gospels and those who were trying to sidetrack, hijack or otherwise divert us from the truth of the Bible—in other words, negativity in a good way. But otherwise, if you were one of the good guys—and it seems that they had decided that I was—they let you know it openly, warmly and (I had to conclude) genuinely.
Now, amid all this heart-on-sleeve positive reinforcement, my inner Australian voice kept muttering, “Orrhh, come off the grass! Give it a rest. Don’t come the raw prawn!” and so on. But eventually, after the 174th warm handshake, two things began to sink in.
Firstly, being thanked warmly, genuinely and without qualification was actually quite encouraging. I could get used to it. There’s nothing like a bit of thanks and encouragement to drive away those feelings that what you’re doing doesn’t matter. Maybe there was a cultural lesson to learn here.
Secondly, the thanks and encouragement were coming for things that we’d produced a little while ago—things that I had largely put out of my mind. For example, I was thanked often for Six Steps to Reading Your Bible, which Simon Roberts and I put together back in 2008. Lots of pastors spoke about how useful they had found this resource—not only for teaching people the basics of Bible reading, but for inspiring them to get into (or get back into) reading the Bible for themselves. It’s easy to talk about the importance of the Bible, but how are we motivating and equipping people to sit down and actually soak up God’s word regularly on their own? One youth pastor told me (glowingly, of course) that he had put all 140 members of their senior high group through the course, to great effect.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever checked out Six Steps to Reading Your Bible or used it in your Bible study group, youth group or some other context for training. Maybe it has passed you by. Or maybe, like reading the Bible itself, it’s something you’ve been meaning to do, but haven’t quite gotten around to.
If so, let me try very hard to learn the lesson from my American sojourn and be unapologetically warm and positive: you really should get hold of Six Steps to Reading Your Bible. The content is excellent, the packaging is first-rate, and the guy who presents the video segments is genuine, funny, charming, articulate and a brilliant teacher (that’s me).
So order what you need through the Matthias Media website (it’s brilliant, by the way!), and our customer service staff (who are the best in the world) will get it to you lightning quick.
Do it today. Believe me, you’ll thank me.
