This being Evangelism Sunday in our church, I made the flip remark to someone last week that I was going to preach about the "sawdust trail." And the answer I received really stopped me. "Oh," this person said, "going to talk about the circus, huh? What’s so theological about that?"

I had thought that the "sawdust trail" was an expression that was so much of a cliche that everyone knew just what it meant - but apparently that was not the case. The sawdust trail, of course, got its name from the old tent meeting revivals, where the evangelists would exhort the sinners to come forward and to be saved. Since the dirt floors in the tent were covered with sawdust, one who went forward to the altar to make a decision for Christ - or whatever - was said to be walking down the "sawdust trail."

Th…