Last Saturday night I went to the largest smorgasbord/buffet I’ve ever seen in my life. It is the mother of all smorgasbords. I went with my wife, RobAnne, Gordon Anderson, and Rich Cundall, one of our board members. It was unbelievable, this monster smorgasbord in the middle of nowhere. It’s off the beaten path, but it seats 1,200 people, and the buffet, I understand, is 1,000 feet long. It’s like a cruise ship on land.

They had shrimp, pork, beef, pizza, beans, beets, salads, soups, drinks, pies, and cakes. It was absolutely amazing! But I began to think about it: Someone had a vision to add a smorgasboard to a farm market in the middle of nowhere, and they decided to try it. They took a risk, and somehow, some way, it has now become an institution where people drive for miles and miles, like we did, just to eat.

It started with just a vision, but then someone knew how to tell the story. They made it compelling to come there. It wasn’t just like “If they build it, they will come.” No, they told a story. They were able to tell it in such a compelling way that people will go way out of their way simply to eat food from a buffet.

And they’ve kept that story for years, and they’ve expanded. And they took new and different opportunities. Someone still keeps the story alive. They keep it alive through innovation, new products, quality control, evaluation, and building into their staff to build up people.

Well, I began to think about my position at AMF. You know, almost 200 years ago, some people had a vision to reach America, and they knew how to tell the story, and they began to build momentum. Now there needs to be some people who will keep it alive, who will tell the same story. Maybe the style will be a little different, maybe it will be a little more relevant to our culture, but the vision stays the same. And a little mission that started in Philadelphia and spread across America, one rural Sunday school at a time, suddenly becomes a mission that people are drawn to because people know how to tell the story.

I look forward to being able to do what Shady Maple Smorgasbord did, and that is somehow, some way, to tell the story in such a compelling way that people will go out of their way just to be part of American Missionary Fellowship.