I confess! I don't practise what I preach.

Over the holidays my family and I camped for the first time. It was only for a week, and it was in relative comfort, but it was all new to me. 

The thing I didn't anticipate was how communal the whole experience is. Your life is lived only a metre or so from someone you don't know and the privacy is created by two millimetres of fabric. There are communal sinks, so you meet the same people at least three times a day as you wash up. 

I did a lot of washing up on our holiday and had lots of enjoyable and friendly, but often fairly empty conversations.

I didn't think twice about those conversation until after we left. The other family we camped with stayed another day. On the day we left the women at the sinks asked our co-campers where the man had gone who usually did the washing up, as they enjoyed the conversations we had while our hands were in the suds. 

That made me think about what happened. Here are some thoughts. 

"¢ it is so easy to undervalue pleasant conversations. Christians are used to this quality of relating, but it seems unusual to others

"¢ I underestimated the communal nature of camping.

"¢ I didn't think about how to use the occasion to invite people to get to know Jesus. I think that is because I was so overwhelmed with the unknown that I was unprepared.

"¢ I didn't give a copy of The Essential Jesus to anyone. My guess is that my sink mates would have gladly accepted one, and they would have had the time on holiday to read it. In fact I had a few copies in the car, parked only metres away and I didn't think about distributing them. 

So what have I learnt? 

"¢ Don't let an unknown situation stop me from planning to proclaim Jesus.

"¢ People like chatting with pleasant, kind people.

"¢ High intensity, debating evangelism is not necessary. Just being interested in others and chatting about what matters to you is great.

"¢ maybe we should think more about how to use the socialness of camping as we share the good news.

"¢ You never go on holidays from being a gospel liver and proclaimer.