Context

Guest post from George.....Pray for him and support him! Our resurrection celebrations were wonderful and I hope that yours were too.   If you are fishing for trout then you go to fresh water. Lakes and rivers. Places like that. Why? Because that’s where fresh water fish live.   If you want to catch barracuda then you go to the ocean. You go to salt water. Why? Because salt water fish live in the sea.   I have a theory. As Jesus followers, we often fish for salt water fish in a pond. - By salt water fish I mean prebelievers. By the pond, I mean inside of our chapels.   But if we are going to catch ocean going fish, we have to get out into the ocean. The deep blue sea (the world) is a big and perilous place. There are dangerous currents and animals in there that have big teeth and sometimes they want to take a bit out of us.     Here’s the deal. Today I signed a contract to put our Renaissance gospel communications/advertisements into Portland’s notorious Mercury newspaper for a 4th year.   It is a great privilege to have a regular ad in the Mercury. Why? Because The Mercury is “salt water”.  People who read the mercury don’t yet swim in the fresh water of our (beautiful) Jesus lake.   Context is everything.   As I look at our ad, (with a different headline every week) I try to absorb our context. As far as I know ours is the only Jesus oriented communication in The Mercury, now or ever.    Placed around our ad are other communications for concerts, strip clubs, sex boutiques, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, tattoo parlors, book reviews, sex columns, angry political commentary, porn festival ads and vehemently anti-Christian essays, articles cartoons... Context is everything.   And another neat thing is that God seems to have given us favor with The Mercury staff. Sure they like our advertising dollars but we have become pals with some of them. We chat. We’ve gone out as couples.  We hang out at their company parties. We’re invited into their homes. We are fishing for the souls of men and women who do not yet know Jesus, the Captain of Seas, Souls and our Salvation.   We could not run these ads in The Mercury without you. Thank you for joining us in these sometimes dark, cold waters. Let’s keep going where the fish are!   We are hoping that an ad space will open up on the back page of The Mercury. If we get on the back page our exposure and readership will increase tremendously. Thanks for praying with us about that.      Here is this week’s cover story at The Mercury. It’s on why you should kick your faith to the curb. - http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/faith-no-more/Content?oid=5876950   Context is everything. Thank you for helping us be where the fish are.                                                                                                                                                                                       Yours, George   www.ThinkRenaissance.org