I still remember that flight into Germany as if it were yesterday. It was 1980 and I was a brand-new second lieutenant, headed for my first assignment. With the exception of one short fishing trip to Mexico a few years earlier this was my first “real” experience outside the United States and it wasn’t long after landing in Frankfurt that the “strangeness” of it all began to sink in. The lieutenant who picked me up from the airport had taken me to the headquarters where I could sign-in off leave and then dropped me off at the officer’s quarters so I could unpack and get some rest. I had told Cathy I would call once I arrived so I immediately went searching for a pay-phone (yes, it was that long ago…even in Europe they still had pay phones). The symbols on the phone were strange and the prices were in “pfennigs” whatever they were. I only had American money in my pocket so I started trying to flag down a taxi and see if the driver could exchange some dollars for deutschmarks. I finally managed to get one to stop and after each of us working hard to understand each other I was liberated of twenty U.S. dollars and had received what appeared to be monopoly money (bills and coins). Anyway, to make a long story short I made the call (with some difficulty) and that twenty-dollars went by in what seemed like thirty seconds.

Throughout that tour in Germany as Cathy and I traveled around Europe it was always clear that no matter how comfortable we were with the language, customs, etc., we weren’t citizens. We had different license plates on our cars, “looked” American, and even had our own TV channels. We were outsiders. And I learned what it’s like to be on the outside looking in.

Today, I am convinced that “The Church” has done a pretty good job of making too many folks feel like outsiders. Maybe they don’t look like us, act like us, drive the right kind of car, or don’t know how to “act” in church. Maybe they feel like they wouldn’t fit in. For whatever reason they are on the outside looking in and just as Cathy and I had many kind Germans make us feel at home and help us understand what life was all about “over there” so, too, we are called to do the same for those outside church and looking in.

God wants everyone on the journey and it is up to each of us to do our part. As it says in that old African-American spiritual: get on board, little children; get on board, little children; get on board, little children; there’s room for many-a-more.

Who have you helped get on-board lately?

Peace, Bro. Neville