Author: Bill Mowry

May 15 is the starting gun for gardeners in Columbus, Ohio. An imaginary shot is fired from a starting pistol on this date. What makes May 15 so special? This date represents the last possible time for a frost. The planting season can now begin. Amateur gardeners like Peggy and myself begin packing nurseries. Flooded…

If you’ve every tried ballroom dancing, you’ve learned a simple rule — someone always needs to lead.  In our evangelism strategies, we generally make ourselves the leader in the gospel dance. We ask people to follow us in our reasoning, our words, and our illustrations. What happens if we reversed the roles and allowed the…

A recent study of five-hundred adult converts in Great Britain revealed an interesting finding. Sixty-nine percent of these adults described their Christian conversion as a gradual event. Only twenty percent described their experience as dramatic or radical. What does this tell us about evangelism? The researchers concluded that this gradual process is the way most…

Evangelism is like reading a good novel. Good novels absorb us in their plots, characters, and action. Major and minor themes unravel as we turn each page. Scenes build on top of each other. We resist the temptation to skip to the end because we don’t want to miss the thrill of the adventure. Our lives…

Once upon a time I worked in construction. The years between college and my current career was spent outside on a ladder, walking a scaffold, holding a hammer. This wasn’t a glamorous job. I endured the summer heat and the winter’s cold installing aluminum siding (before vinyl became the standard), shingling roofs, and hanging gutters….

The answer to this question may surprise you. What was one of Jesus’ strategies for evangelism? He did it over dinner. “The primary venue for evangelism in Jesus’ life was the meal,” writes Eugene Peterson. Why meals? Meals are natural and relational places for insiders to begin faith conversations. Jesu set the example by regularly…

As we sat on my deck talking, Jim’s comment caught my attention: “What’s really important to me is to live a margined life.” The term puzzled me. “What’s a margined life?” I asked. “A margined life is having enough margin in my schedule to be available for people when they’re available. I want people to…

“My business is circumference,” wrote the poet Emily Dickinson. How can a nineteenth-century poet act as an insider? Using a geometric measure, Dickinson creates an analogy to show how her poetry encompasses — draws a circle — around life’s experiences. This circumference was the picture for her poetry. This is fascinating since Dickinson was a…

A new neighbor moved in across the street from my parent’s home. Stopping his lawnmower, my dad walked across the street to meet him. Repeated street crossings produced an amicable friendship and then the discovery was made. The new neighbor was a widower and had lung cancer. My dad began to help him do odd…