While I enjoyed the big EXPO event in Dallas this past weekend, I also noticed the cavernous halls nearly devoid of people. The three-day event cost $29 bucks plus $10 daily for parking. All so people could meet authors, browse, and buy books? At the Convention Center, which is near…nothing. Ow.

I felt fortunate in that Kregel, who published three of my books, donated a case of each for me to give away. And AMG, which produces the Coffee Cup series, coughed up ten copies of each of the six studies. Three cases and sixty books are sizeable investments in an author. They certainly did their part.

Now, considering the poor turnout at CBE, I could have had a lot of leftovers. But my trainer had invited me to set up a booth at a Gold's Gym grand opening in Dallas on Saturday and to give away a bunch there. I did, and I met the most interesting people, many of whom wanted to talk about faith. Seriously. They’d see my titles and bring it up.

One woman, seeing my Bible studies, told me boldly that she wasn't "anything" but leaned toward Buddhism. She then waited for my reaction. I asked if she had been to the Far East or if she got her introduction to Buddhism some other way.

And she got the coolest look on her face. Like she was glad I asked. And she went on to tell me how she grew up in Japan as the daughter of Baptist missionaries. She spoke of what it was like being a third-culture kid. And about how the mission board had clamped down on women in ministry in the sixties (when radical feminism freaked out many American Christians), and she watched her mother go from having a thriving ministry to pretty much serving coffee. Ow.

We had a wonderful conversation about women, the church, and history—the intertwining of these subjects being one of my favorites—and at the end, she took a copy of Mocha on the Mount. Initially she said she wanted it for her sister. But as she left she told me she just might read it for herself, too. I loved that she would talk to a stranger about issues of such import.

One of my favorite artists, a guy who played “the aquarium section” at the Kennedy Center's Princess Grace Memorial Concert, makes music using ordinary glasses filled with varying amounts of water. And he and his wife made the commitment early in his career that he would always make time to play his music out on the streets. Now I see why. Something happens when we take our craft to the street and make ourselves available to strangers. We meet folks who add meaning to our lives, who give us new perspectives on stuff, who get us out of our sheltered worlds and force us to encounter something we don’t ordinarily see—beauty and pain through completely new points of view.