Hippies, nudists, atheists & us… That may sounds like a big off, but that is what happened this past weekend at the Hyde Park Street Fair here in Boise. First a little back ground.
The North End of Boise is a unique neighborhood full of hippies, yuppies, and all kinds of nature loving fringe groups. It is also one of the oldest parts of Boise with narrow tree lined streets and old historic homes. Most people live there love it because of the location to downtown (5 min bike ride), the Boise River Greenbelt (10 mins), and the foothills with its multiple mountain biking/hiking trails (5 mins). Basically a place where I would love to live!
Every year the North End Neighborhood Association organizes the Hyde Park Street Fair (2007 was the 27th annual fair). The fair is full of music, arts & crafts, food, and various non-profit booths. Due to the location and sponsors, the fair tends to draw a lot fringe groups.
This year Let’s Tend The Garden and the Vineyard Boise decided to host a booth at the fair. Our purpose in doing so was two fold: one, to share the love of God; two, to advertise our upcoming Environmental Stewardship Conference. [@more@]
Being the coordinators for the booth, E and I invited different ministries within the church to come out and share their heart with the attendees. We also set up a schedule where folks could volunteer to man the booth for two hour slots. The cool thing is that it all work!!! We had logs of help and could actually go home Saturday afternoon to rest (the fair ran Friday evening, all day Saturday, and most of Sunday).
As we had hoped, God started some good conversions. We had a lot of folks drop by looking for a church home and where excited to see a church who cares for environment. Others where interested in some of the activities we were involved in while at least one young man wanted to engage in a theology debate.
Your truly was the person to draw that straw… And it was pretty fun. =) A quick overview – at first the young man sounded interested and open to my responses. However, part way through our talk an older woman came up and listened in. When this happened, the young man started getting very defense and stopped listening…. Turns out that the lady was a member of his Unitarian church, which explained his sudden change of attitude.On my part, the whole thing was pretty cool – I was able to keep a cool head and response with solid answers. It was good practice – serving to help strengthen my abilities to the hard questions of Christianity. =)
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