Some great lines from The Unlikely Disciple

I am so jealous of this kid. He just graduated from college and already has a book published. But it's not even those lofty and clearly untouchable goals I envy. He can put a sentence together. Lots of sentences into pages and paragraphs which is something, alas, I know I can't do.

Onwards...

[on the subject of a "mission trip" to Daytona on spring break]:
Why not go somewhere where Jesus would be an easier sell? Like Islamabad? Or a Christopher Hitchens dinner party?

[on theological discussions in his dorm and the subject of Quiverfull which is the concept of having babies until a woman's uterus is stretched to the size of a Volkswagon to please God, who apparently is unfamiliar with the writings of Thomas Malthus]:

"But what about money?" I ask. "What if you have more kids than you can afford."

"Then your priorities are wrong," says Brad.

"Yeah," says Jake. "Plus, God knows how much money I've got. If he knows that one more kid will bankrupt me, he'll close my wife's womb until my financial situation improves."

"Totally," says Brad. "God is the only contraception that works a hundred percent of the time."

Okay, okay. I take it back. Some of the people are having crazy discussions.



[on Falwell's attempts to modernize Liberty]:
Tacking on an engineering school isn't going to do anything except make Liberty the only school in America where the engineering majors and the football player have exactly the same amount of sex.

[the chapter "The Workers are Few" about evangelizing at Daytona Beach is solid comedy gold. Here, his classmate attempts to evangelize to a Rastafarian-ish man named Reece, the only person who would listen to her]:

"I'm gonna live forever," he says. "You ever watch the Matrix? When Neo went to the Oracle, and he's like,'Am I the one?' and she's like, 'No you're not, because you don't know.' It's like that. You gotta know, you know?"
"No, I don't know," Claire says.
Reece tells us he's sorry but he has to go meet some friends at a different part of the beach. As we continue down the boardwalk, Claire turns to me.
"I think that man was on drugs." 

Even before this trip, I hated confronting strangers. I had a summer job once at a Manhattan juice bar. Every day, my boss would stick me on a SoHo street corner handing out coupons for raspberry smoothies. It was miserable. I'd spend five hours a day waving coupons at passersby, and when they didn't completely ignore me, they'd look at me like I was trying to stab them with a dirty syringe. One middle-aged lady swung her purse at me.  

A few people get genuinely angry. One biker said, "If I wanted to hear I was going to hell, I'd call my ex-wife." Then there's the you-poor-things response, which thus far has come exclusively from old ladies...They listen patiently, like a grandmother hearing a Girl Scout splutter through her cookie pitch-then they turn Claire down as politely as possible. One woman, who looked like Mrs. Butterworth in a one-piece, asked us, "Now, who put you two up to this?" 

Back at the host church, Scott explains that beach witnessing is just half of our agenda. Tonight, we'll get another chance at the nightclubs. We spend half an hour in prayer before dinner. It is, I suspect, the saddest prayer circle ever convened.
"Lord, I pray for the medical student I met today," says Scott's wife Martina. "Being a hotshot doctor at a big hospital is not going to help her when she has to face you, Lord."
"I pray, Lord, for the old man who spit on me," says Charlotte.
Claire is the last to pray: "Lord, let them be nicer to us tonight."

Witnessing at Razzle's, where everyone we meet is drunk or well on the way, makes communication a little harder. Two conversations I had in the first ten minutes:

"Excuse me, miss. Do you ever think about spiritual things, like heaven and hell?"
"Wooooo!! I love to party!!!"


"Excuse me, sir....Who is the greatest person you know?"
"Hmmmm...gayest person I know...I've have to say Richard Simmons."