Saturday night was a crazy one. I went to a Ben Kweller concert by myself. I have never been to a concert by myself before but it was kind of fun. I just went in and sat at the bar and talked to a few people. After a few beers I went up to the show room to get ready for the concert. I saw a guy down there standing by himself so I walked over and said hello. We talked a while about the venue (Bowery Ballroom) which is a great place for a show. It is small, probably holds 500 people but the sound is great. They have hosted some pretty big bands such as REM, Soul Asylum, Cranberries, Cracker, Sonic Youth, and Wilco. I will never understand how they had REM perform in such a small place but that would have been an unbelievable show. So anyway, this guy is about 50 years old and from Bedford, Connecticut. He is a custodian in a local high school and his daughter told him that he should check Ben Kweller out. So anyway, Adam Green from the Moldy Peaches came out and opened up with a few songs. It is probably the worst performance I have ever seen. I honestly think I could have done better than that. Then a band called My Morning Jacket came out and they were actually very good. It was a throwback, guitar driven type rock. So during these two bands we were talking and he said, "Man, to tell the truth i liked the city before they cleaned it us, when you could still find drugs and prostitutes on every corner." I didn't have much to add here but he kept talking. "I know a great place over in Chinatown where the prostitute will even give you a bath" At this point he went into detail about what you could get for 175 dollars. I am actually too embarrased to put it on the page which should say something about the graphic nature. But the whole time I was thinking, "Don't ask me what I do, don't ask me what I do". Immediately after the prostitute talk he said, "So, what do you do?" Ahhhhh Crap. So I thought in my head, "Do I sell insurance, work at a bank?" I just didn't want to embarrass this poor guy after all he had just said by telling him that I'm a pastor. I felt terrible for the guy but I said it anyway. "I'm a pastor". He just looked at me and said, "oh". Kind of a conversation stopper. But he kept talking a little and asked what kind of church it was. He grew up in the Catholic Church so I made sure that he knew that it was a church filled with grace and that we were not trying to work our way towards heaven. He asked if we had confession and I told him that we did not have formal confession and then he asked the questions, "So where does redemption come in?" Not what I expected but over the next half an hour I was given the opportunity to share the whole gospel with him and dispell some of the images he had in his head about what he thought church was. He was very interested and there is a good chance that I will see him again because I'm sure this will be a place I spend a lot of time. It is this kind of thing that I have in my mind when I think of ministry. Not clean cut Sunday services and fellowship luncheons but hanging out in dirty bars in a neighborhood filled with prostitutes and drugs because that pretty much describes the lower east side. Getting a chance to share the gospel with people who have really never heard the gospel. I realized Saturday night that I was indeed finally doing real ministry, the very thing God called us to do.