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"hunting the hunters: how to reach specific people groups." that was the assigned topic for my session this weekend at the CTK conference i attended. it was a lot of fun...i talked about durango and how it is so subculture driven, and then brought up paul in acts 17...how he integrated his knowledge of jewish culture when he was in a jewish context and how he infiltrated greek culture and used their language, poets, and symbols to communicate christ to them.

people were digging it! i've never had 15-20 furiously writing down words that were coming out of my mouth (certainly never happened when i was teaching geometry)...i concluded that we need to integrate groups that we are already a part (ie soccer players) and share jesus with those people, but there are also groups we need to infiltrate and learn their ways and customs before we start sharing jesus with them.

then i opened it up for feedback and questions and discussions and i got more strokes! a lot of people were resonating with what i had to say and asking good follow up questions...then, right at the end as i am about to wrap things up, this one dude speaks up: "i'm sorry but i have to totally disagree with everything you are saying...we don't need to infiltrate or integrate anything....we have the truth, the gospel....and the gospel is confrontational, there's no way around it...we need to be getting in people's faces...going door to door...passing out tracts! in fact your title it perfect...these people are hunting for souls and we need to HUNT THEM DOWN!"

after his little speech everyone was stunned...i started to respond but the frazzled host quickly dismissed everyone to the next session. i had a short but good conversation with the guy afterward...it was good to have a little tension in what was an overwhelmingly positive experience....but definitely not going to forget that for a while!