New Leaders, Unmarked Paths
A night in the desert taught me to be ready to do things I've never done before.
Alex McManus
July 1, 2003
Ever felt like you were going nowhere? That's what I felt a few years ago while traveling deep into the desert with an enthusiastic young couple from Urban Mosaic, our worship celebration in a nightclub just west of downtown Los Angeles, to oversee an outdoor experience they called "Walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death." The idea: Invite people to travel with some sort of percussion instrument three hours into the desert. Worship and talk through the night, and be there to greet the sunrise. As they first described the event, I thought, Will there be toilets? Will this be evangelistic? And did I mention toilets? "Why not?" I said. At the very least, I'd be able to spend time with up and coming leaders, as well as to watch a dynamic couple from a "rave" background put an event together. A few weeks later we loaded a Jeep Montero and followed our map to a designated site in the desert. The last third of the three-hour trip was on off-road "lanes" in the desert. No road signs, only landmarks and approximate mileage from one marker to another. I recalled as a young boy asking my mother to explain camping to me. "I think," she answered in her beautifully accented English, "that's when people sleep at night in the dirt." As we drove deep into the desert night, I realized that's exactly where I was going, "camping." ... I looked around at the accommodations: logs around the fire pit, some beach chairs, blankets, and some tents pitched around the perimeter. To one side of us was open desert, to the other side, forming a natural amphitheatre, a wall of rock rising high into the sky. Stark beauty, but uncomfortable, I thought. This has all the makings of a disaster. What would people be expecting as they left Los Angeles after ...
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