As many of you know, Durham played host to the NY Times best-selling (62 weeks and counting) authors of the increasingly famous book, “Same Kind of Different as Me” two weeks ago at the Marriott Convention Center.

Theirs is an incredible story of the most unlikely of best friends:  a rich, white art dealer from Ft. Worth Texas, and a poor, black, sharecropping hobo from Red River Parish, Louisiana.  The story shatters myths about relationships between white and black, what it means to be homeless, and has a great tale of sin, forgiveness and redemption too.

Ron is handsome, articulate and has a great comfort in interacting with his audience, and his time in Durham was no exception.  Denver, however, is the star of the show.  He speaks of truth and wisdom with an incredible efficiency of words, and when he tires of telling stories or making his point, he breaks out in song in one of the most amazing voices that I have ever heard.

The story that the title of this blog refers to comes from the early days of their book’s release (as with so many best selling books, seemingly no publisher wanted to have anything to do with it at first) when they tried to gain exposure for their book, often by talking about it with very small groups.  Some of these groups were men from Bible Studies.  After going to a few of them, Denver asked Ron why white people seemed to be so interested in just sitting around and studying the Bible.  In his words “I’ve had enough of these white men talking about the Bible.  When you show me a group of white men that are having a ‘Bible Doing’, then I’ll go and talk with them.”

How incredibly convicting.  Don’t get me wrong or Denver for that matter.  He is a great man of Christian faith.  There is clearly much need in our lives for quiet, contemplative study of Scripture, both alone and with small groups.  But when we are doing Bible studies at the expense of actively engaging others in our city, particularly those that we might be able to really bless then I think we are often missing much of what God wants us to hear, learn and know as we seek to faithfully obey his commandments to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Is your ratio of bible doing and bible studying in the right place?  I know mine isn’t.  I thank Denver for giving me a perspective and lesson in a few short sentences that Ron couldn’t in 20 minutes.