Thursday, January 25, 2007

Blue Like Jazz in Portland

When I first started going to Imago Dei, I told people I heard of the church through reading "Blue Like Jazz" by Don Miller. A lot of people rolled their eyes. A friend of mine said that "we had a nice little church until that book came out". Now the church is over a thousand people with more people coming every Sunday. All the new people I've talked to say they read the "Blue Like Jazz" and they wanted to see what Imago is all about.
Don't get me wrong, Imago welcomes the new people and is trying to raise money to build a bigger church, but no one is sure how big Imago will get. I'm just amazed how influential a book can get. Don Miller has led so many to Imago Dei.
I have since started rereading "Blue Like Jazz" again and notice that a lot of the locations that Don talks about are in my neighborhood. I first noticed "Stumptown coffee" which Don mentions he frequents often. I then recognized Lauralhurst Park from the book which is right down the street from where I work. It really is a nice big park in the middle of the city. Also I'm right down the street from Reed College where Don writes about being a radical but brilliant college full of liberal ideas. I'll have to check out their naked parade.
I want to drive up Mt.Tabor sometime in the evening to view the city which Don mentions as being beautiful. Mt. Tabor is only a few blocks from my house. Lastly, I briefly met Pastor Rick who Don writes a lot about in the book. He's a big guy. I wanted to tell him how impressed I was that he started Imago is his own living room, but I was too shy. It's pretty cool to read a book and see it all in front of you .

4 comments:

GoldenSunrise said...

That's awesome! It's nice to have a visual to go along with the book.

Sounds like you are settling into the church and making friends.

shakedust said...

It would definitely be cool to see things and people that you have read about (or seen on TV or something).

f o r r e s t said...

I want to see pictures of you naked body painted purple marching in the parade...with some strategically place greenery of course.

roamingwriter said...

What a fun way to re-read a book. On location. Sounds like an intriguing mix of things.