Well, it's over.  All I can say is...wow.

First off, there is something cool about seeing folks walking around with a book  wrote - so that was really cool just from the get-go.  Other than that, well...it's been an interesting ride.

On the surface, BE seems to have been a success.  The vast majority of folks who started in BE completed the movement, which was a good sign.  Also, most folks actually managed to do their work outs, and as the movment progressed people even managed to invite people to worship and have them look at it from their perspective.  As a wonderful plus, the friends my wife and I invited to worship have been coming regularly since I invited them (and they didn't even particularly care for our worship the first week!).  Worship attendance has been up in general over the course of BE - which is also nice.  It's still below what it was when I got here - but it's nice to be going in another direction there.

Under the surface, I've been unsure where BE has been going.  Folks are hard to get a read on much of the time, and when you're deliberately attempting to stretch their minds - well, let's just say that I wasn't sure if this was the start of something cool of if I was gong to loose all my credibility here by the time BE was over.  It turns out, BE seems to be hitting somewhere deep.

Here's a link to the video that we viewed for the last week of BE.   I got it down to 59.4mb from 71mb.  I'm working on shrinking the video even more (assistance would be most welcomed...).

Week eleven has people come back with ideas on the types of people they feel a call to "image God" among.  It was a very teachable moment - because folks tried to go "general" and I pulled them back into a more specific frame of mind.  This was important because the more "general" we are with direction - the less likely we are move towards that direction.  Folks seemed to get that, and began to get more specific in their ideas - that was nice (more on that in a bit).

This Sunday marked the last worship gathering during Biblical Evangelism.  We opened with "The Field," which was the video from week 10, that set the mood nicely.  Then, instead of the prayer-time I showed a seven minute video that I filmed on Friday - it was a message to the church from a dear woman is is dying from cancer.  It was a hard thing for the church to hear, but it was a good thing for them to see (and one of the greatest gifts this saint has ever given the Church).  By the time that was done there were very few dry-eyes in the place (and then I made the choir sing, I'm cruel that way).  Finally, instead of a typical sermon, I shared a short devotion on how we are the light of the world - then the congregation got to share their own reflections on what they learned during BE.  We finally ended up asking what we'd be willing to take up, and what we'd be willing to put down in order to put those lessons into practice.  We got some good responses - and no one flipped out.  Heck, on the most-stuck "sticks in the mud" acually said that the "service" was "very nice."  I literally lost my breath.

 Week 12, which is actually after the official study, will be about taking the groups people envisioned this week, and pondering some specific ways we might reach out.  As those get fleshed out, you'll able to down load a mind map on this site.

Did I get my "10?"  I'm honestly not sure.  I guess I'll know as the specific ideas begin to get fleshed out - if we do one thing to get beyond ourselves for the sake of the Kingdom then I'll call BE a success.  Which would make this flash movie true.

Oh, and if you want to see the original BE Crawl, click here . 

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