Snapshots from the road: Portland, Oregon.

Last week we began the national 20-city book tour for The Great Awakening in Portland, Oregon, at a majestic old venue called the Bagdad theater. It's a renovated 1920's era cinema, one part Grand Old Opry and two parts Ali-baba – complete with a retro, neon-lit marquee. Imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the theater to find my name up in lights immediately above the name of the feature film screening later that evening. It read…

AMERICAN GANGSTER
JIM WALLIS

Talk about kicking off the book tour in style.

Earlier that same day, Donald Miller, the author of runaway best-seller Blue Like Jazz, had me over to his home along with several dozen local evangelical leaders.

I told him, "I meet a number of young people for whom your books have been faith-saving." He smiled humbly, "that's huge."

It would prove to be an intimate discussion about authentically pursuing our faith while engaging movements for social justice – a conversation all seemed hungry for. It's certainly the beginning of a new friendship between Don and me that I'm encouraged to continue.

More to come...

[Correction: With the arrival of the photo, we realized that we had the correct order of Jim's name and the movie title on the sign transposed in the original post. We've corrected this in the text and title above.]