whatever you do.

I never mentioned on here how our weekend in Grand Rapids went. We had a fantastic time. Mike and I didn’t make it to the crazy hotdog place, but we did manage to get to Hopcat. I had an really great Belgian Beer – quite sweet-tasting with a tremendous flavour. Alas, I don’t remember its name.

We camped a couple nights at a local campground and spent most of Sunday touring the revitalizing downtown core. Revitalized though it may be, it was the most eerily quiet downtown I have ever been in. On many of its red cobblestone streets we were the only car – or people for that matter – about. We also ducked into the Grand Rapids Zoo for a couple hours. Zoos in the middle of a city are fairly odd. I’m not sure what else to say on that at the moment so I’ll leave it.

In the evening we trotted on over to Fellowship Covenant Church for the Roadshow. Blazing (see below). The three fellas really brought it, and the crowd fully caught the revival spirit. There have been reports of people who have misinterpreted the 1908 Revivalist schtick as mockery, but I’m not sure anyone who came out that night left with that impression. I’m fairly convinced that if you expected to find mockery and are determined that that is what it was then you will hold to that conviction. Otherwise, you will see it for what it really is. A wonderfully whimsical and poetic homage to an era that was being as faithful to the gospel in its day as we are trying to be in ours. (again, see below)

John Frye, pastor at Fellowship and his partner in crime, Jeremy Bouma were fantastic hosts to everyone that came that night. Also, we are incredibly thankful for the generosity and hospitality of Randy and Kathy Buist who are part of the Water’s Edge community. Randy invited us over for breakfast on the Monday morning and we had only met them the previous night. We ended up talking with Randy, Kathy and Wendy Eason around the breakfast table until around noon. As we drove back to Canada that day both Mike and I were quite high on the beautiful emerging picture of a church community that really cares for each other. All the theologizing in the world can’t compare to the Church being the Church, caring for and conversing with each other. So amazing!

So, back to Brother Duke, Professor A. B. Hawthorne and Preacher Withee. These three grandest of gentlemen and their “great grandsons” are here to tell you about a man they called Truth. His other name is Jesus. And they are calling all y’all to join in a healing and restoring, sanctifying and rectifying, purifying and death-defying good news message we call the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But don’t take my word for it. Emergent Village has posted a recording of the Church Basement Roadshow in its entirety as filmed in Birmingham, Alabama. So stand up, get your healing balm of Gilead in hand, give it a Whoop and Pushhhh, and get ready for a Rollin’ Gospel Revival!

Church Basement Roadshow from Steve Knight on Vimeo.

Tags: emergent, grand rapids, church basement roadshow

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 12:46 am and is filed under Church, Community, Conversation, Kingdom, Thoughts. 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.