A Note from Greg: Greetings from the International Office for Emmaus and Chrysalis. I want to thank you for taking the time to visit our website. I'd like to let all of you know that the new Emmaus Team Manual is now available to order. Also we have been working very hard to get both the Emmaus Worship Booklet and the Chrysalis Worship Booklet ready for printing. It has been especially challenging to get all the page references and all the Holy Communion liturgy to be the same. We are still hoping for a late Fall 2008 release, so watch this page for more information.

Several months ago I traveled to Virginia to do a Board and Community teaching and then attended their Gathering. The Board meeting was very difficult at first, but as we talked and shared, we discovered that we are all working for one person, Jesus Christ. This movement is not about me and it is not about you but how Christ's love and grace will touch the pilgrim so that they can return to their churches, homes, workplaces and communities to be the hands and feet of Christ. Below is one man's Fourth Day testimony that witnesses to Christ's love and grace and once accepted, is like a burning fire from within.

My Walk was way back in 1991, the first of the double-digit Walks, Richmond 10. It was a life-changing experience! As you know, Emmaus is not a conversion experience. Its purpose is to strengthen church leaders. I was the Chairman of our Diaconate, and a Sunday School teacher of many years. One of my students, Bruce Barr, suggested that I did not know Jesus.

I thought he was ridiculous! I could pick Jesus out of any lineup right away! But ... I didn't have a personal relationship with him.

You see, I thought I was "grandfathered" in my sins. I knew Jesus had to die for our sins, but I thought my sins were so small and inconsequential that I slipped in on YOUR coattails. He died for you, not me. In other words, I was a good man.

I worked hard, hadn't killed anybody, and spent a lot of time on charity work. I couldn't imagine the few little sins I had would be enough for anybody to die. In fact, at Dying Moments, my piece of paper was blank. I honestly couldn't think of a sin to write down.

The Walk to Emmaus has a way of presenting Christ in new and striking ways. For me, it was a vision of Christ. At the very moment I began to nail my piece of paper to the cross, I could plainly see a man on it. To my horror, I was holding the hammer and nailing his hand to the cross.

Looking into those eyes was a life-changing experience! I knew then that He would have died for me if I had been the only man on earth. This was the beginning of my personal relationship with Jesus.

Now, after many years of reflection, I'm pretty sure that Hell is not made up of sinners. It's filled with "good men" who don't need the saving grace of Jesus' death.

The many blessings I had received on this weekend were like water to a man dying of thirst! This weekend was perhaps the most important seventy-two hours of my existence! I wanted the whole world to share in my experience. I sponsored everyone I could think of and served on ten teams. I cannot take communion without tearing up. Jesus has carried our new relationship to heights I could not have imagined on that weekend!

BUT, I have a confession to make. It was NOT an Emmaus Walk. Oh, sure, the sign on the door said Emmaus, but we had come from the community in Northern Virginia, and the "Cha Schedule" or model they passed on to us that we used to conduct our weekends was a mish-mash of traditions coming from many other denominations. We didn't know any better, so this is what we followed.

In a few years, one of our Community Lay Directors happened to be a lawyer. He actually read the document The Upper Room presented to communities for them to sign. He found it quite interesting that The Upper Room wanted us to follow a "model." I'm not sure we even knew what that was! Nonetheless, our board announced that we would be making changes to our Weekend, my beloved Weekend!

I was really upset by this. I knew the hearts of the men who had put on the weekend of my Walk. I knew the hearts of the men and women of our community who had served on teams, and many other selfless ways, providing support, agape, and much more. I did not know the people in The Upper Room.

To me, it was as though these people were trying to take away an experience that had affected me so profoundly. I grumbled about every change we made to my beloved weekend. I complained about the board, and griped to everyone within hearing. I spoke openly about the motives of the board. I sowed the seeds of bitterness and division in our community.

I served on one of the first teams that made adherence to the "model" a stated goal. This weekend was ably led by Curtis Butterworth and Tom Brown. We worked hard to stick with "the model." I saw first-hand that God was as powerfully present on that weekend as any other I had seen. The changes we made weren't noticed by the pilgrims. How could they be? To the pilgrims, this was just how an Emmaus Walk should be.

Even having witnessed this, I was still opposed to more change. I continued to second-guess the board, and be suspicious of The Upper Room. When asked to serve on the board in this current class, it was my secret intention to reinstate many of the trappings of the "old" weekends. It was in a heated exchange with Greg Engroff, International Director of Emmaus, that he told me something very profound. My weekend may have been wonderful, but it wasn't an Emmaus Walk. He was right! The next several days were very confusing and troubling for me. I had to spend a great deal of time in prayer.

I want to share with you some of the things God showed me. First, we are an Emmaus Community because we draw our materials and spiritual directors from churches largely under the umbrella of The Upper Room. This assures that the theology we present on our weekends is uniform and mainstream. Imagine how easy it would be to have distortions enter into our traditions.

Second, because of this relationship, we have credibility. We are no cult! We can point to this association when we are recruiting pilgrims for our Walks.

Third, The Upper Room is as profoundly interested in all pilgrims experiencing the love of God as any of us here. They have a board of directors who review each aspect of the weekend to make sure it helps to express that love without undue manipulation or false emotions. We are not in the brainwashing business.

Now comes the difficult part. Having seen the great love The Upper Room has for this wonderful experience, I now must admit that I have been wrong. I have said things that disrupted the unity of our community and undermined the authority of the board. I have sown the seeds of division. I now stand before you to ask two things of you. First, I ask your forgiveness. I pledge to you that I will strive to be the best Emmaus Community Lay Director I can be next year. Second, I ask you to reflect on your own thoughts and actions. I know how important your weekend was to you. We share that common bond. Yet we must in some cases acknowledge that our weekends were far from the Emmaus model. I ask you to join me in my pledge to lay aside the critical spirit I have carried so long. I ask you to seek reconciliation in our community, and pledge your support to the board and to Emmaus.

If we continue as a divided community, we will spend valuable resources in hours of endless debate and recrimination. Satan can be the only winner in such a situation.

I am convinced that our best days as a community are before us. If we will approach these days in humility, forgiveness, and reconciliation, God will make of us a mighty instrument of His grace. I pray that all mankind will have the Emmaus Road experience so that every heart would burn as Christ reveals Himself to us in new ways.

DeColores!
Mike Meacham