Mobile Chapel

"For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who shall ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' . . . But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it" (Deuteronomy 30:11-14).

The highlight of last week for me was the annual banquet of Transport for Christ, International, in New Holland, Pa. It was exciting to see a Christian organization that hasn't slipped at all. When I say "slipped," I mean it hasn't become more about the programs and the self-perpetuation of the company than about Jesus. You can tell.

David Roberts---the head trucker-chaplain of the Harrisburg, Pa., Mobile Chapel at the Wilco Travel Plaza off Exit 77---was joyful as he regaled me with story after story of truckers who have come to Christ through the brothers stationed at this divine ambush at the crossroads. One thing Roberts said in particular delighted me: "We have made things complicated. This is not mysterious. We make it fancy, but the power is in the Gospel."

I was tracking with him as he added that the important thing is intimacy, not programs: "Jesus took 12. There's something in relationship. We can't do it with everybody; we'd spread ourselves too thin. That's why Jesus gives us two or three. It's multiplication . . . 'make disciples.' . . . What happens to Christian organizations, more and more, is that we don't have relationships. . . . Some seminaries are run like secular organizations."

I have been to seminary, and I know it's possible to formally study Jesus without making Jesus a subject in school. But I always do appreciate it when God reminds me, in encounters such as the one with David Roberts, that at the end of the day the Gospel and the sharing of it are "not too hard for you, neither is it far off."

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.