Dusting Off and Street Combat

BTI officially started on July 5 at 7 PM, so we took some time during the day to . . . guess . . . yup- hang out at Steve and Danielle's! We also did some more walking around Vancouver (and another movie!). When BTI started, we got the run down of how things were going to play out through the week. Then we started the "dusting off" of each other.

Dusting off is a term coined by Charles Roberts a few years back when some of us gathered with Steve and Danielle at the Williams Lake Corps (Canada) for a week long Primitive Salvationist Networking (PSN) conference. As we began, we decided to pray and prophesy over each other to sort of "dust off" the junk that had accumulated after years of ministry. Those times proved to be powerful and released a whole lot of blessing into our lives! We had someone scribing so we could re-read and pray through it all afterwards. I still have my transcription and review it once in awhile (actually, I keep a prophecy notebook that contains prophecies that have been spoken over me for many years- talk about encouraging and challenging!). The War Collage (and therefore BTI) is continuing the practice of dusting off with amazing results.

After praying for about 3-4 of us, we moved on to Street Combat. Street Combat is when we get into teams of two and walk the Vancouver streets to make friends, talk with people, prayer walk and generally "combat" sin! After an hour or two, we head to the Army canteen that drops by on Sunday and Tuesday evenings to pass out soup, sandwiches and hot and cold drinks. The combat is continued, but now with people who have come to us. I was amazed at how organized and effective this time is for social justice and evangelism.

While standing there "amazed," Michael Collins (the Vancouver social justice and evangelism guru) came up and introduced himself. He didn't talk long, because he flits in and out of the crowd, serving, witnessing and always having a blast with the people! After a moment, he moved off to quiet down a man who was getting a bit roudy. Before long, they were laughing and carrying on like old friends (actually, I think they were old friends!).

So after a few minutes of Shaun and I standing there agape at the immensity of it all, Michael came back and jokingly said: "If you can't fish in this pond, then you should have your fishing license revoked!" And he moved off laughing.

I looked at Shaun. He looked at me. We were laughing, but both realized at the same time, we were not fishing! Yikes! We weren't interested in having our licenses revoked, so we parted to get busy. BTW, Shaun the evangelist led at least 3 people to Jesus over the next couple of days! Hallelujah!

So how's the fishing in your pond lately?