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Evel Kneivel – there’s a blast from the past. He put motorcycle daredevil jumping on the map a few decades ago. He once claimed to have broken every bone in his body during crashes minus the tiny bones in his ears! It takes a “special” person to make one’s living that way.

A few weeks ago he told his recent Jesus story at Crystal Cathedral at their televised service. The result? Over 500 present asked to be baptized! That is super. I think we are approaching “normal.”

Let’s be perfectly clear about this:

The pundits who sit off to the side with theoretical theology (by the way, that is a huge oxymoron) and proposed what happened on Palm Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral was a touch of revival are way off. (You can read the ChristianityTodayOnline story for yourself.)

We are so starved for a single drop of authentic spirituality, when we hear of something or see something, the media tends to show up with satellite trucks en masse.

What happened was really very simple.

I am a fan of Robert Schueller, Sr’s. He is an amazing pioneer in nearly countless areas of the expansion of areas of the way the local church does things – more practices than most of us realize.

What happened that day was what Peter referred to when he stated, "Be ready to give an account of the hope that lies within you…"

We are nearly addicted to the notion that if something significant happens there must be come sort of magic bullet effect that has taken place…

- let’s load up the busses and head there – some sort of amazing move of God taking place… let’s not miss the bless spout

- …for Pete’s sake, someone contact the publisher’s 800 number and get a ghost writer moving on this at double time…

- this has sales potential all over it!

A thousand times no!

A couple of things stand out from Kneivel’s story that are simply profound:

1. He told his simple story.

Back to Peter. Your – story – has – great – power! Your peoples’ stories have great power. Just start telling them. Great things will be released. No need to exaggerate. Jesus will shine through.

It’s simple. Drop the cute. Drop the memorized program. Start telling your story and watch what begins to happen. You will be amazed.

2. He told his story from his heart.

Evel Kneivel is a high school drop out.

He is simple.
He is unfiltered.
He hasn’t been "church broken" yet.

"I don’t know what in the world happened. I don’t know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just—the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me. … All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him! … I rose up in bed and, I was by myself, and I said, ‘Devil, Devil, you bastard you, get away from me. I cast you out of my life.’ … I just got on my knees and prayed that God would put his arms around me and never, ever, ever let me go."

You have to love it when someone tells their story or even prays from their heart, without guile, and uses colorful language!

He hasn’t been trained how to "church-speak" yet so he spoke from his heart – and it was p-o-w-e-r-f-u-l.

I’m certain a "volunteer" will inform Mr. Kneivel how he "ought" to rightly tell his story versus the way he has told it up until now.

Personally, I hope he doesn’t listen to that person(s) – for it will rob his story of part of its purity and power.

3. He gave glory to God.

If you look through Church history you will see that the truly profound conversions are nearly all just like Mr. Kneivel’s. Something happens in the heart that is unexplainable. C.S. Lewis got on his brother’s motorcycle on the way to the London Zoo not knowing Jesus. When he got off the bike he knew Jesus. How did it happen? He had no idea.

Conversions are the arena of the heart, not the mind.

Let’s invade hearts by doing the ministry of Jesus – loving, serving, showing generosity, meeting the needs of the next person he invites across our path. Sure, let’s answer questions. But we don’t need any more mental conversions. It appears we have plenty of those already.

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Steve Sjogren is the senior leader of CoastlandTampa, a church launch. He is also the leader of ServeCoach – a group of coaches that are dedicated to making leaders successful in areas such as outreach, outward focused leadership, writing, communications and innovative church start ups based on an over 90% successful coaching history with church planters.