I am paid to evangelize, to grow current congregations and plant new congregations. I’ve been lurking on internet sites of fundamentalist evangelists, because, quite frankly, they have systems for planting new congregations. I mean, they’ve got systems! They have trainings and boot camps and coaches and conferences just for planting. I have a hot case of holy envy.

So I thought about attending such a conference as an add-on activity in a city where I was already working on behalf of our Association. Well, attending it didn’t work out, but on the plane back home guess who my seatmates were? That’s right, two fundamentalist, evangelical men who had been to the church planting conference.

I strained my ears to hear what they were saying. The older man seemed to be in charge, and the younger one deferred to him. The elder quoted scripture and talked a lot about saving people. Their whole mission is converting people to Christianity so they may be saved and get into heaven.

I wanted to jump in, interrupt with all of the questions I had for them.

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