I had a strange dream the other night. I was sitting at a table in a McDonald’s restaurant. The room was filled with people of all ages, from children to senior citizens, married couples and singles, and teenager of all shapes and sizes. In all there were about 50 people in the room.

The smell of fries and happy meals and the sound of boisterous conversation and squeals of playing children filled the air. I had a sense of anticipation because I knew that in a few minutes I would stand up on a chair and begin to "preach" to this crowd of people.

In my dream I was turning over and over what I was going to say to this diverse group of people that would bring them to faith. I was turning words and phrases over and over in my dream-state mind, searching for just the right combination that would have the maximum effectiveness.

On another level, I thought about how my dream-character had obtained permission to preach at McDonald’s. Somehow it had been arranged. Somehow it was authorized. I don’t know the details, but it was O.K., in a minute I would stand and speak.

I moved to the front of the room, climbed on a chair, one of those plastic kind that is attached to the table and swivels and it was as I began to open my mouth that I moved from dreaming to the twilight zone between sleep and waking. I wondered about the dream as I lay there. What did it mean? What were the words that I was about to say? What would have been the effect on the crowd?

So much of the program-based church is built on the assumption that people will come to us to hear the message. We spend hours preparing and then executing our weekend "services". We are intentional (at our best) in attempting to communicate our chosen themes to the audience that will gather. But what of the majority of people who are making their way through life without ever taking advantage of what we have to offer. Is God’s message compelling enough that it can be brought into the marketplace, into the McDonald’s?

For that matter, is some form of preaching enough, or should we also be examples of what faith can mean in life? And is that preaching, that example, truly "good news?"

I recently received a letter written in response to one of the articles that has appeared in Next-Wave. The letter went something like this:

"I saw the... article [in Next-Wave]... and found it disgusting. Are you people so mixed up as to think that this is somehow reverence to God? Why don`t you just drive stakes through your hands and feet? It would follow your screwed-up logic. Only morons and depraved derelicts would do such things, not real Christians. [What] is the next step...? Please pray for wisdom before it`s too late. P.S. I give this counsel out of love for your soul.....Bro. Blank."

Brother Blank’s disgust doesn’t feel like good news to me. And he’s writing in response to an article by Christians about Christians. I wonder what message he would "preach" if given the opportunity at McDonald’s.

Paul, of course, understood. He knew that religion can get in the way of trusting in God. He expounds at length on this subject in the letter to the Romans, chapter 10. He describes the dangers of trying to live according to the law code, religion at its finest, as Dr. Petersen says in The Message translation: "every detail of life regulated by fine print!" Unfortunately for most of us who have been alive for a while we’ve learned that "it’s not so easy"to live right before God in our own power.

Paul says, "Say the welcoming word to God—"Jesus is my Master"—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not "doing" anything; you’re simple calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: ‘God has set everything right between him and me!’ Scripture reassures us, "No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it." It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. "Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help."

I guess that is what I would have liked to preach to my dream McDonald’s audience. I would have liked them to know that you can live a life of faith, hope and love. You can draw strength and courage to face the trials of sickness, heartache, tragedy and death. God is more than willing to help if we will only ask. I would have wanted them to know that I struggle with "right-living" but that I have the confidence that God is with me in the struggle, guiding, teaching, loving and encouraging me along the way.

I would have wished that some of them would have been willing to give God a chance to help them.

I don’t think I could have used some sort of scriptural formula to persuade folks that trusting in God is a good idea. You see, people who don’t know the book, can’t be persuaded by the book. I probably would have had to rely on my own life experience, to tell them about how trusting God has helped me.

Somehow we need a different language to communicate God’s message to our friends, neighbors, co-workers and fellow McDonald’s patrons. People are less willing to hear dogmatic diatribes that speak from a posture of disgust and superiority. The language and attitude of "winning" the "lost" should be abandoned. We should begin tell our stories without arrogance or pride and offer good news.

Last fall I attended the Off-the-map Evangelism conference at the Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I got to listen to Steve Sjogren, Brian McLaren, and Leonard Sweet talk about the new understandings and language needed to help our fellow travelers along on the journey of faith. The Off-the-map evangelism group is offering another conference in Seattle, Washington, May 18-20, 2001.

Paul asked a good question in Romans 10: "But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it?"

All of us Christ-followers are sent to someone, to tell our story, by preaching or example. Will you be sent to McDonald’s?

Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994, 1995. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Charles R. (Charlie) Wear, is the Editor, Publisher and Webmaster of Next-Wave. From 1998-to the present he has been working with a team reaching out to teens to twenty-somethings and their parents through the extreme sport of skateboarding (see If you build it, they will come.) His passion is to see young leaders released in ministry, ready and well-equipped. He has four children and one grandson. You can e-mail him at publisher@next-wave.org.