Broke Bike Evangelism

I went to do some odd jobs at the church last Thursday and as I worked I noticed four raggedy little heads peering at me from the crumbling fence that separates the church property from the "house next door" (the words are in quotes, because if you saw "the house" you would probably place the words between ? Marks).
"Pasthdoor, comeer!" Thadeu, is three years old but he is still sucking a pacifier which makes his "three-year-old Portuguese even harder to understand. "Can we wide your bike?"

I had ridden Jackson's bike to work and Thadeu and his siblings: Marcia, Eduardo, and Edson were enthralled! "Our dad had two bikes, but one of them boke and he gave the udder one away."

For the next half an hour seven kids (Edson, Marcia, Eduardo, Samuel, Mateus, Jacklyn, and Maria Julia) took turns taking the Schwinn for a spin around the parking lot. I winced a few times as they whizzed by on a rapid rush down the ramp that runs beside the church, and I noticed an argument breaking out each time that Samuel asked his little brother, Mateus, if he could borrow his bike. "NO!" was always the reply. Samuel's bike was in disrepair with a loose chain, no brakes, a twisted handle bar, among other things and I promised that I would be back after lunch to try and fix it up a bit.

As I returned and dove into the overhaul of Samuel's beat up little two-wheeler it didn't take long for the same crowd to gather. I struggled with the rusted lug nuts and a very corroded chain but was able to get the wheels working and prayed that I didn't break something else in the process. During the work I began thinking of "Broke Bike Evangelism" (I realize that it is not the best English).

As I sat watching the kids, one of their grandmothers came over to talk. Clarinda is 78 and has been invited to church on a number of occasions. Her three older daughters are all Mormons and when I asked her about her beliefs she said that she had been raised in the Roman Catholic church. "Do you go to church?" I asked. "No, I don't like the Catholic Church. I like evangelical churches much better."

"Evangelical" is an all encompassing word here in Brazil. Everything from A to Z comes under the large umbrella of evangelicalism. "So, what do you like about evangelical churches?" I asked. ''I like their music and the way they pray. It is so beautiful, don't you think!" She caught me off guard with the beautiful prayer comment. But our prayers are beautiful, aren't they.

I continued the conversation with Clarinda by asking if she ever goes to an evangelical church of any kind? I knew that she didn't come to ours. "No. I just watch them on TV."

As I shared the Gospel with this religiously baffled grandmother I couldn't help thinking about the contrast between her jumbled religiosity and the the relatively simple beliefs of the kids riding their bikes on our parking lot, most of whom came to our VBS just a couple of weeks ago. I decided then and there that this type of conversation needed to be a continuing effort. Could God use a bike, broken or otherwise, to begin the trip down a new life path, THE Way? Jesus used a lot of interesting and common things in His ministry. I don't know why He couldn't use a Schwinn!