Three Amigos and a dying world...

El Guapo. Just say the name around any male in their thirties and immediately they will laugh hysterically and begin quoting from the classic movie Three Amigos! It is one of my all time favorite movies and it never gets old. Here is one of my favorite scenes:



As funny as that clip is, I also think it's a pretty sad allegory of the Church in America. Do you remember the woman at the well in John's Gospel? She was a woman that if most people walked past her in Target, they would inwardly call her a slut, grab their child's hand, and briskly walk past her while desperately trying not to make eye contact. Yet Christ sits next to her, tells her about the Living Water that only He can provide. He cares for her, spends time with her, and doesn't bother about her sinfulness. She is a dying woman that needs a drink.

Our world is dying. It is filled with people like the woman at the well. They look like Martin Short and Steve Martin, emptying their canteens in desperation, only to find a drop of water and heaps of sand. A 2006 Baylor University study stated that as low as 17% of North Americans are in church on any given Sunday. Most churches that are growing are doing so because of church hopping, not because more and more people are giving themselves to the saving grace of Christ. Let me say it once again, people are DYING and they are desperate to be saved! We CANNOT sit around, swishing water in our mouths, carelessly spilling the Living Water onto the ground, while offering only lip balm to the parched, dying people.

It's time that we stopped being selfish fighting over trivial things like whether or not we should sing hymns or contemporary music or have VBS in the morning or evening; it's time we started passing the canteen...lives depend on it.