Inviting People To Church Quotes

The church is God saying: 'I'm throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.

If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.

When you invite people to share in your miracle, you create future allies during rough weather.

If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?

Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus' irresponsible love, we decide to make grace "more responsible" by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include).

People always assume that the church's primary business is to teach morality. But it isn't; it's to proclaim grace, forgiveness, and the free party for all. It's to announce the reconciling relationship of God to everybody and to invite them simply to believe it and celebrate it.

In my struggle to find church, I’ve often felt that if I could just find the right denomination or the right congregation, if I could just become the right person or believe the right things, then my search would be over at last. But right’s got nothing to do with it. Waiting around for right will leave you waiting around forever. The church is God saying: “I’m throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.

Because of Christ's prevenient and unconditional invitation, the fellowship of the table cannot be restricted to people who are 'faithful to the church', or to the 'inner circle' of the community. For it is not the feast of the particularly righteous, of the people who think that they are particularly devout; it is the feast of the weary and heavy-laden, who have heard the call to refreshment.

The fundamental question in everything we do must be: Will this honor God? Does this display Jesus Christ? Does this make people see how awesome the LORD is? Failure to answer “Yes!” invites Ichabod. I have many, many wonderful

Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer. Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free. If he offered men his salvation, he also demanded their submission. He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship. He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer. He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty. Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the Lord’s test. The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish. For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so. The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.” In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience. No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different. He never lowered his standards or modified his conditions to make his call more readily acceptable. He asked his first disciples, and he has asked every disciple since, to give him their thoughtful and total commitment. Nothing less than this will do

What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would his Word still be enough for his people to come together? At Brook Hills we decided to try to answer this question. We actually stripped away the entertainment value and invited people to come together simply to study God’s Word for hours at a time. We called it Secret Church. We set a date—one Friday night—when we would gather from six o’clock in the evening until midnight, and for six hours we would do nothing but study the Word and pray. We would interrupt the six-hour Bible study periodically to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who are forced to gather secretly. We would also pray for ourselves, that we would learn to love the Word as they do.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we can’t read singular verses or chapters in a vacuum; perhaps we can’t read letters written to specific people with specific situations in mind in a specific context and then apply them, broad-brush, to the whole of humanity or the church or even our own small selves. Perhaps we need wisdom, insight. We need the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we need Jesus as our best and clearest lens; we need all of Scripture, too. After all, Jesus is the Word of God incarnate.

The church is God saying: “I’m throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.

Surely we can only come to understand each other's beliefs by means of direct encounter and open, honest discussion. In the meantime, many free churches invite all believers in Jesus Christ to the Table for the sake of true spiritual unity that transcends intellectual differences of interpretation. Withholding sacramental sharing on the basis of disagreement about the nature of the Lord's Supper seems odd to us. What two people think exactly alike about the act? We are not offended by Catholics' closed Communion, but we find it odd and exclusive. It places intellectual understanding above fellowship among disciples of Jesus Christ.

What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools are vital parts of the social infrastructure. So too are sidewalks, courtyards, community gardens, and other green spaces that invite people into the public realm. Community organizations, including churches and civic associations, act as social infrastructures when they have an established physical space where people can assemble, as do regularly scheduled markets for food, furniture, clothing, art, and other consumer goods. Commercial establishments can also be important parts of the social infrastructure, particularly when they operate as what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called "third spaces," places (like cafes, diners, barbershops, and bookstores) where people are welcome to congregate and linger regardless of what they've purchased.

In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I don’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they had signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.

Whether we admit it or not, as people of faith, we sift our theology through Scripture, Church history and tradition, our reason, and our own experience. Most Christians, even the most committed of the sola scriptura crowd, use these four pillars—at varying degrees of importance and strength—to figure out the ways of God in our world and what it means here and now for our walking-around lives. And taking this a bit further into postmodern territory, we can also admit that we are relying on our own imperfect and subjective interpretations of those pillars, too.

About the same time I came in contact with another Christian family. At their suggestion I attended the Wesleyan church every Sunday. For these days I also had their standing invitation to dinner. The church did not make a favourable impression on me. The sermons seemed to be uninspiring. The congregation did not strike me as being particularly religious. They were not an assembly of devout souls; they appeared rather to be wordly-minded people, going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom. Here, at times, I would involuntarily doze. I was ashamed, but some of my neighbours, who were in no better case, lightened the shame. I could not go on long like this, and soon gave up attending the service.

But sometimes I think what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird. There’s no sense in sending her through the makeover montage of the chick flick when she’ll always be the strange, awkward girl who only gets invited to prom on a dare. In the ritual of baptism, our ancestors acted out the bizarre truth of the Christian identity: We are people who stand totally exposed before evil and death and declare them powerless against love. There’s nothing normal about that.

The purpose of the local church is not primarily to be one's church home or extended family, though it can be at times. And it is not to survive by obtaining more people for its support base. Its purpose is to invite people to be part of the true mission of the church. Reception into the church is only a threshold to involvement in its mission. The task of the church is not to accumulate attendees. The church is a school for developing agents of the new creation from among those who are the beneficiaries of God's grace.

The practices and disciplines of building and sustaining community could fill volumes (and has). From mystics to anthropologists, we learn how critical the quality of a community is to the health and well-being of people. Yet, community remains one of the most elusive goals to so many of the Christians and churches in our individualistic Western societies. When we encounter true community, we are not encountering mere healthy relationships of equality and moral uprightness, but we are witnessing, and being invited to participate in, the divine nature of God.

Going to the extreme of inviting and welcoming people into your church in order to hear you condemn them or to know from your policy that you condemn them is not much better than bullying.

When a male-based culture is re-formed into a male-and-female-based culture, it presents a truer picture of the character of God, who created all people as his image bearers. When the voices of women become customary, common, expected, and accepted, the church becomes more inviting, more inclusive, more empathetic, more compassionate, safer, and more secure—for everyone. We pray for that day. [1] Luke 4:18-19, NRSV, italics added. [

When I’m sitting by my gay friends in church, I hear everything through their ears. When I’m with my recently divorced friend, I hear it through hers. This is good practice. It helps uncenter us (which is, you know, the whole counsel of the New Testament) and sharpens our eye for our sisters and brothers. It trains us to think critically about community, language, felt needs, and inclusion, shaking off autopilot and setting a wider table. We must examine who is invited, who is asked to teach, who is asked to contribute, who is called into leadership. It is one thing to “feel nice feelings” toward the minority voice; it is something else entirely to challenge existing power structures to include the whole variety of God’s people. This is not hard or fancy work. It looks like diversifying small groups and leadership, not defaulting to homogeny as the standard operating procedure. Closer in, it looks like coffee dates, dinner invites, the warm hand of friendship extended to women or families outside your demographic. It means considering the stories around the table before launching into an assumed shared narrative. It includes the old biblical wisdom on being slow to speak and quick to listen, because as much as we love to talk, share, and talk-share some more, there is a special holiness reserved for the practice of listening and deferring.

Because we are invited to be part of God's new creation now, we seek to embody the identity we have been given in Christ. . . . We engage in mission to establish friendships that lead to the formation of a new people in the world.

Frame the spiritual journey as a stark good-vs.-evil battle of warring sides long enough and you’ll eventually see the Church and those around you in the same way too. You’ll begin to filter the world through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a threat to the family; everyone becomes a potential enemy. Fear becomes the engine that drives the whole thing. When this happens, your default response to people who are different or who challenge you can turn from compassion to contempt. You become less like God and more like the Godfather. In those times, instead of being a tool to fit your heart for invitation, faith can become a weapon to defend yourself against the encroaching sinners threatening God’s people—whom we conveniently always consider ourselves among. Religion becomes a cold, cruel distance maker, pushing from the table people who aren’t part of the brotherhood and don’t march in lockstep with the others.

Though I have never been part of a church that hosts an open table, I’m with Sara on this one. I don’t know exactly how Jesus is present in the bread and wine, but I believe Jesus is present, so it seems counterintuitive to tell people they have to wait and meet him someplace else before they meet him at the table. If people are hungry, let them come and eat. If they are thirsty, let them come and drink. It’s not my table anyway. It’s not my denomination’s table or my church’s table. It’s Christ’s table. Christ sends out the invitations, and if he has to run through the streets gathering up the riffraff to fill up his house, then that’s exactly what he’ll do. Who am I to try and block the door? Long

The first and most basic task of the minister of tomorrow is to clarify the immense confusion which can arise when people enter this new internal world. It is a painful fact indeed to realize how poorly prepared most Christian leaders prove to be when they are invited to be spiritual leaders in the true sense. Most of them are used to thinking in terms of large-scale organization, getting people together in churches … running the show as a circus director. They have become unfamiliar with, and even somewhat afraid of, the deep and significant movements of the Spirit. I am afraid that in a few decades the Church will be accused of having failed in its most basic task: to offer men creative ways to communicate with the source of human life.

Our respondents also told us they’d encountered church planters, missional pastors, and on-campus religious groups who had utilized a “relationship first” model in which they were exhorted to make friends with people, gain their trust, and then invite them to church. Our respondents found these “shadow missions” abhorrent. The idea of pursuing relationships or conversations with an ulterior motive was anathema to them. They rejected the goal of shadow missions: to get people to come to God and/or the church.

Any gospel which purports to save people without also transforming them is inviting easy-believism. If you think being a Christian is nothing more than saying a prayer or joining a church, then you’ve confused real grace with cheap grace. Those who are justified will be sanctified.

There was a difference, besides, between Catholicism and Judaism. He went to the synagogue when he needed company and fellowship with other people. Catholics went to church to seek peace in the presence of God. The church invited silence and visitors would always be left to themselves.

John Chandler, who leads a Christian community in Austin, Texas, shared this: We’ve by far had the most success inviting people into our community life by inviting them to serve alongside us. As a matter of fact, that’s about the only thing that’s worked consistently as far as “official” church activities go.

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

Jesus said, " I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself," knowing that the nature of a forgiving Christ on the cross would compel people to follow Him. As long as the church remains an effective platform for God's light to reveal to the world the sacrifice Jesu samde, the church will be anturally irresistible. Light is inherently inviting-- just think of a porch light left on late into the night. Light communicates comfort, warmth, and healing. It gives direction and hope so we can see better and understand more fully. Most people I meet are looking for light. The problem is that the emphasis is of too many churches has gradually shifted and changed.

The Jesus described in the Bible never uses the word religion to refer to what he came to establish, nor does he invite people to join a particular institution or organization. When he speaks of the "church," he is talking about the people who gather in his name, not the structure they meet in or the organization they belong to (see Matthew 18:15-20). And when he talks about connecting with God, he consistently speaks not of religion but of "faith" (Luke 7:50; John 3:14-16). Jesus never commands his followers to embrace detailed creeds or codes of conduct, and he never instructs his followers to participate in exhaustive religious rituals. His life's work was about undoing the knots that bound people to ritual and empty tradition.

Rather than boasting a doctrinal statement, the Refuge extends an invitation: The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other. We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can. We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24 Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.

The disease of addiction, for all the pain and damage it causes, is an invitation to see this prodigal God in action. The question is, will we? Will we as the church step out of our comfort zones into uncharted territory that will at times be unpredictable and even scary for us? Or will we, like the older son, gloat, sulk and stomp off in resentment? Would we rather be party poopers or partygoers, estranged children or reconciled ones?

Not only did Jesus save Mary; He gave her a job to do. Everyone whom the Lord cleans He commissions. After Isaiah had his lips cleaned with a coal from God’s altar, the Lord commissioned him to go and preach (Isa. 6:1-9). Basically, Jesus said to Mary, “Don’t just cling to Me; go and tell others.” If we love Jesus as Mary loved Jesus, we are compelled to tell others. We can’t keep Him to ourselves. The man from whom Jesus purged an army of demons wanted to just stay at His side. “Now the man from whom the demons had departed begged Him that he might be with Him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you’ ” (Luke 8:38, 39). Like Mary and this man, the church is saved for the purpose of telling others. Salvation involves coming and going. We come to Jesus at His great invitation, then we go for Jesus -181- with the Great Commission. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). “Now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household” (2 Kings 7:9, KJV). We should not go for Jesus until we first come to Jesus. God uses people to reach people. He could preach the gospel much more efficiently through angels. However, witnessing is part of our sanctification process. Mary is never identified as having an exceptional gift of communication, but the Lord chose her to communicate the good news of His resurrection. This should encourage each of us to come to Jesus that we might go for Jesus and become witnesses of His resurrection.

Instead of waiting around for church to assemble a perfect group dynamic of People Who Can Meet on Tuesdays, maybe just invite some folks over. A shared table is the supreme expression of hospitality in every culture on earth. When your worn-out kitchen table hosts good people and good conversation, when it provides a safe place to break bread and share wine, your house becomes a sanctuary, holy as a cathedral. I’ve left a friend’s table as sanctified and renewed as any church service. If you have a porch, then you have an altar to gather around.

This life is hard. There is a lot going on in the world today that makes it even harder. And I believe that’s why now, more than ever, we need to be sounding boards for each other. Maybe that looks like joining or organizing a parents’ group, a support group, a church group, a book club, a walking club, a volunteer organization… Maybe that looks like inviting a friend who may be down and out for coffee and a vent session. My heart is for making connections with people, because as you’ve read in my stories, you never know how far one of those connections might take you.

In some circles, using the word feminist is the equivalent of an f-bomb dropped in church—outrageous, offensive. It’s likely some people saw this book sitting on the shelf and figured they knew what sort of author was behind the words written here: a bitter man-hater arguing that men and women had no discernable differences, a ferocious and humorless woman, perhaps, and so it’s no wonder they reacted at the sight of Jesus alongside feminist like someone had raked long fingernails across a chalkboard. Who could blame them with the lines we’ve been fed about feminists for so long?

N. T. Wright explains, “What [Jesus] was promising for that future, and doing in that present, was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity, but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose—and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that larger project.”1 A promise of a new creation and an invitation to a new vocation stretches beyond “me and Jesus” to God’s worldwide purposes. The mission of the church must be informed and shaped by how the New Testament presents the future hope.

The situation we have just described—the disconnection of life from faith, the absence from our churches of Jesus the teacher—is not caused by the wicked world, by social oppression, or by the stubborn meanness of the people who come to our church services and carry on the work of our congregations. It is largely caused and sustained by the basic message that we constantly hear from Christian pulpits. We are flooded with what I have called “gospels of sin management,” in one form or another, while Jesus’ invitation to eternal life now—right in the midst of work, business, and profession—remains for the most part ignored and unspoken.

It seemed fitting to arrange the book around the sacraments because it was the sacraments that drew me back to church after I’d given up on it. When my faith had become little more than an abstraction, a set of propositions to be affirmed or denied, the tangible, tactile nature of the sacraments invited me to touch, smell, taste, hear, and see God in the stuff of everyday life again. They got God out of my head and into my hands. They reminded me that Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can’t be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.

This message, that Jesus is now ruling, had particular significance for believers in Rome. Caesar, the emperor who lived in Rome, was the most powerful man in the known world. His titles included ‘son of god’, his birthday was celebrated as a ‘good news’, or ‘gospel’, and he ruled the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Yet Paul declares that Jesus is descended from a royal house far older than that of any Roman Caesar, and that Jesus’ resurrection has established his kingdom reign with power – a power that no other ruler can match. This message was a challenge to the whole cultural and political system of the Roman Empire. And this is the message that we must announce – that Christ is ruling. Gospel messages can so often be somewhat less than this, with a focus on Jesus as the answer to our needs rather than Jesus as the King of kings. Paul envisages the apostles being sent throughout the world to claim people’s obedience to King Jesus and bring them under his kingdom rule, rather as the Roman legions were sent to bring tribes and peoples into the Roman Empire in submission to Caesar’s rule. We can hardly imagine Caesar’s generals going through the world inviting people to have a ‘Caesar experience’ where their needs would be met! Rather, they commanded people to obey, and in our proclamation of the gospel we, likewise, must let people know that Jesus is reigning, and must call people to obey him.

The following is one of the oldest sermon illustrations used in the Christian church. It also tests one’s understanding of the Christian life. There once lived an ugly, hunchback dwarf. No one ever invited him to a party. No one showed him love or even attention. He became disillusioned with life and decided to climb a mountain and throw himself from its peak into the abyss. When he ascended the mountain, he met a beautiful girl. He talked to her and discovered that she was climbing the mountain for the same purpose. Her suffering was at the other extreme. She had everyone’s attention and love, but the one she loved had forsaken her for another girl, one with riches. She felt life had no meaning for her any longer, so they decided to make the ascent together. While they climbed, they met a man who introduced himself as a police officer in search of a very dangerous bandit who had robbed and murdered many people. The king had promised a large reward to the person who captured him. The police officer was very confident: “I will catch him because I know he has a feature by which he can be recognized. He has six fingers on his right hand. The police have been looking for him for years. For the last two or three, nothing has been heard from him, but he must pay for a multitude of past crimes.” The three climbed the mountain. Near its peak was a monastery. Its abbot, although he had become a monk only recently, had quickly attained great renown for saintliness. When they entered the monastery, he came to meet them. You could see the glory of God in his face. As the girl bowed to kiss his right hand, she saw he had six fingers. With this, the story ends. Those who hear this story are perplexed. It can’t finish like this! What happened to the dwarf, the girl, the policeman? Was the criminal caught? The story’s beauty is that it does finish here. Something beautiful has happened: A criminal hunted because of his many robberies and murders has become a great saint, renowned for his godly life. All the rest is of no further interest. The great miracle has been performed. Christ has been born in the heart of a man of very low character.

TO THE ATHEIST WHO IS CURRENTLY DYING IN HOSPICE: While you have the energy, invite all your friends over for a last supper. As they enjoy their meal of bread and wine, look at them and say, "One of you will betray me." Because, dear Atheist, there is a Judas among your apostles. A secret Christian in desperate need of a deathbed coversion to brag about at church. A friend who will wait until you are alone, then ask you to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Who can blame this person? Convincing an atheist to die a Christian is the faith version of getting the Verizon guy to switch to Sprint. The moment your stage 4 fate was posted on Facebook, you went from being a regular dick to some Christian's Moby Dick. Believe me.

America became very confident in its own English language. A witty resolution was proposed in the House of Representatives in 1820 suggesting they educate the English in their own language: Whereas the House of Representatives in common with the people of America is justly proud of its admirable native tongue and regards this most expressive and energetic language as one of the best of its birthrights . . . Resolved, therefore, that the nobility and gentry of England be courteously invited to send their elder sons and such others as may be destined to appear as politic speakers in Church and State to America for their education . . . [and after due instruction he suggested that they be given] certificates of their proficiency in the English tongue.

To hail a religion for its compatibility with a secular society was decidedly not a neutral gesture. Secularism was no less bred of the sweep of Christian history than were Orban's barbed-wire fences. Naturally, for it to function as its exponents wished it to function, this could never be admitted. The West, over the duration of its global hegemony, had become skilled in the art of repackaging Christian concepts for non-Christian audiences. A doctrine such as that of human rights was far likelier to be signed up to if its origins among the canon lawyers of medieval Europe could be kept concealed. The insistence of United Nations agencies on "the antiquity and broad acceptance of the conception of the rights of man” was a necessary precondition for their claim to a global, rather than a merely Western, jurisdiction. Secularism, in an identical manner, depended on the care with which it covered its tracks. If it were to be embraced by Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus as a neutral holder of the ring between them and people of other faiths, then it could not afford to be seen as what it was: a concept that had little meaning outside of a Christian context. In Europe, the secular had for so long been secularised that it was easy to forget its ultimate origins. To sign up to its premises was unavoidably to become just that bit more Christian. Merkel, welcoming Muslims co Germany, was inviting them to take their place in a continent that was not remotely neutral in its understanding of religion: a continent in which the division of church and state was absolutely assumed to apply to Islam

The former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu used to famously say, “We are prisoners of hope.” Such a statement might be taken as merely rhetorical or even eccentric if you hadn’t seen Bishop Tutu stare down the notorious South African Security Police when they broke into the Cathedral of St. George’s during his sermon at an ecumenical service. I was there and have preached about the dramatic story of his response more times than I can count. The incident taught me more about the power of hope than any other moment of my life. Desmond Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of his cathedral, wielding writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever he said and thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in jail for several days to make both a statement and a point: Religious leaders who take on leadership roles in the struggle against apartheid will be treated like any other opponents of the Pretoria regime. After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze, the church leader acknowledged their power (“You are powerful, very powerful”) but reminded them that he served a higher power greater than their political authority (“But I serve a God who cannot be mocked!”). Then, in the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny I have ever witnessed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshipers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began…dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshipers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.

Our safety lies in repentance. Our strength comes of obedience to the commandments of God. My beloved brethren and sisters, I accept this opportunity in humility. I pray that I may be guided by the Spirit of the Lord in that which I say. I have just been handed a note that says that a U.S. missile attack is under way. I need not remind you that we live in perilous times. I desire to speak concerning these times and our circumstances as members of this Church. You are acutely aware of the events of September 11, less than a month ago. Out of that vicious and ugly attack we are plunged into a state of war. It is the first war of the 21st century. The last century has been described as the most war-torn in human history. Now we are off on another dangerous undertaking, the unfolding of which and the end thereof we do not know. For the first time since we became a nation, the United States has been seriously attacked on its mainland soil. But this was not an attack on the United States alone. It was an attack on men and nations of goodwill everywhere. It was well planned, boldly executed, and the results were disastrous. It is estimated that more than 5,000 innocent people died. Among these were many from other nations. It was cruel and cunning, an act of consummate evil. Recently, in company with a few national religious leaders, I was invited to the White House to meet with the president. In talking to us he was frank and straightforward. That same evening he spoke to the Congress and the nation in unmistakable language concerning the resolve of America and its friends to hunt down the terrorists who were responsible for the planning of this terrible thing and any who harbored such. Now we are at war. Great forces have been mobilized and will continue to be. Political alliances are being forged. We do not know how long this conflict will last. We do not know what it will cost in lives and treasure. We do not know the manner in which it will be carried out. It could impact the work of the Church in various ways. Our national economy has been made to suffer. It was already in trouble, and this has compounded the problem. Many are losing their employment. Among our own people, this could affect welfare needs and also the tithing of the Church. It could affect our missionary program. We are now a global organization. We have members in more than 150 nations. Administering this vast worldwide program could conceivably become more difficult. Those of us who are American citizens stand solidly with the president of our nation. The terrible forces of evil must be confronted and held accountable for their actions. This is not a matter of Christian against Muslim. I am pleased that food is being dropped to the hungry people of a targeted nation. We value our Muslim neighbors across the world and hope that those who live by the tenets of their faith will not suffer. I ask particularly that our own people do not become a party in any way to the persecution of the innocent. Rather, let us be friendly and helpful, protective and supportive. It is the terrorist organizations that must be ferreted out and brought down. We of this Church know something of such groups. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Gadianton robbers, a vicious, oath-bound, and secret organization bent on evil and destruction. In their day they did all in their power, by whatever means available, to bring down the Church, to woo the people with sophistry, and to take control of the society. We see the same thing in the present situation.

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. —Psalm 85:10 (KJV) When my husband, David, made the heart-wrenching decision to leave his post as senior minister at Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, the church was strong, thriving, and ripe for new leadership. But leaving was complicated. No one has ever loved a congregation more than David, and the congregation responded in kind. So it was infinitely sad when an influential person began working to erase David’s legacy. We had looked forward to returning to Hillsboro after the proper transition period, but now amid the confusion, the outlook was cloudy. Would it work for David to come back? Would we lose our church family forever? Finally, a new minister was chosen. For me, I wasn’t sure how I would feel until I met Chris. My reaction was immediate. I have a pastor! But what about David? I would never go back to Hillsboro without him. Well, it seems God had planned ahead. Chris sent out a letter to the congregation, addressing the misperception that “it’s not possible to love the new pastor if you still love the previous pastor.” He dispelled that notion with five simple words: “It’s okay to love both.” Chris went on to describe his meetings with David and to announce that he had invited him to come back to Hillsboro where the two of them “share a love for the church and its people.” And so it was finished. We had a church home once again, where we could come and worship with our family and friends, a place where there’s enough love for everyone, and a new minister wise enough to know that’s true. Father, I pray for the day when all of us grasp the unlimited reservoir of Your love and can finally see its regenerating power. —Pam Kidd Digging Deeper: Ps 132:7; Eph 4:15–16; Col 3:14–17

Christians and Jews hold in common one theological basis for hospitality: Creation. Creation is the ultimate expression of God's hospitality to His creatures. In the words of on rabbi, everything God created is a "manifestation of His kindness. [The] world is one big hospitality inn." As Church historian Amy Oden has put it, "God offers hospitality to all humanity... by establishing a home.. for all." To invite people into our homes is to respond with gratitude to the God who made a home for us. In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, we find another resource for hospitality. The trinity shows God in relationships with Himself. our Three-in-one God has welcomed us into Himself and invited us to participate in divine life. And so the invitation that we as Christians extend to one another is not simply an invitation into our homes or to our tables; what we ask of other people it that hey enter into our lives.

When high expectations are communicated to members, the unchurched are attracted to these churches that have meaningful membership. One such church among the churches we have received information on is Carron Baptist Church, an African-American church in Washington, D.C. They actually require their members to agree to a church covenant that mandates the following: To read the Bible daily. To pray with and for members of your family daily. To attend all worship services unless hindered by health or circumstances beyond your control. To abstain from gossip, backbiting, murmuring, or negative talk. To respond to conflict and disagreement according to biblical precepts. To share your faith regularly; to invite people to church. To participate in Bible study/ Sunday school To be in agreement with the church’s doctrine. To be involved in at least one ministry in the church. To tithe. To abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs. To be sexually pure. The unchurched that visit Carron Baptist Church quickly discern that it is a high-expectation church. Yet they keep returning, keep joining, and the church continues to grow.

Ralph, none of us are strong enough to stand on our own, or to bear our own sins. That’s why Jesus died for us. Your soul is crying out to Him and you just don’t know it.” “Isha, I’m not ready to start going to church, okay?” Every now and then she invited him to worship with her and he always declined. It wasn’t that he had anything against Christians, most of the best people he knew were Christians. When ever he’d run into an anti-Christian bigot, on the other hand, he was always taken aback by their hypocrisy. If they were “tolerant” as they claimed, then they’d accept both homosexual and Christian viewpoints, for example. Instead, they choose sides and called those that disagreed with them the bigots. Ralph suspected “tolerance” was really just a smoke screen for people who wanted to hate Christians. He couldn’t explain it, he liked Christians and disliked their opponents, but it just wasn’t for him. Isha looked at him like she could read his mind. “Sometimes we think something might be good for other people, but not us. Then we find out we didn’t know what we were missing.” She smiled at him, leaned over and rubbed Tabooli’s belly. “Of course, I’m talking about dogs.” Ralph smiled back.

The compulsion to keep a pure, homogeneous table is an old one, reflective of ingrained social customs and taboos that surround communal eating. The English word companion is derived from the Latin com (“with”) and panis (“bread”).53 A companion, therefore, is someone with whom you share your bread. When we want to know about a person’s friends and associates, we look at the people with whom she eats, and when we want to measure someone’s social status against our own, we look at the sort of dinner parties to which he gets invited. Most of us prefer to eat with people who are like us, with shared background, values, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, beliefs, and tastes, or perhaps with people we want to be like, people who make us feel important and esteemed. Just as a bad ingredient may contaminate a meal, we often fear bad company may contaminate our reputation or our comfort. This is why Jesus’ critics repeatedly drew attention to the fact that he dined with tax collectors and sinners. By eating with the poor, the despised, the sick, the sinners, the outcasts, and the unclean, Jesus was saying, “These are my companions. These are my friends.” It was just the sort of behavior that got him killed. The

Psalm 5 Song of the Clouded Dawn For the Pure and Shining One, for her who receives the inheritance.11 By King David. 1Listen to my passionate prayer! Can’t You hear my groaning? 2Don’t You hear how I’m crying out to You? My King and my God, consider my every word, For I am calling out to You. 3At each and every sunrise You will hear my voice As I prepare my sacrifice of prayer to You. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on the altar And wait for Your fire to fall upon my heart.12 4I know that You, God, Are never pleased with lawlessness, And evil ones will never be invited As guests in Your house. 5Boasters collapse, unable to survive Your scrutiny, For Your hatred of evildoers is clear. 6You will make an end of all those who lie. How You hate their hypocrisy And despise all who love violence! 7But I know the way back home, And I know that You will welcome me Into Your house, For I am covered by Your covenant of mercy and love. So I come to Your sanctuary with deepest awe, To bow in worship and adore You. 8Lord, lead me in the pathways of Your pleasure, Just like You promised me You would, Or else my enemies will conquer me. Smooth out Your road in front of me, Straight and level so that I will know where to walk. 9For you can’t trust anything they say. Their hearts are nothing but deep pits of destruction, Drawing people into their darkness with their speeches. They are smooth-tongued deceivers Who flatter with their words! 10Declare them guilty, O God! Let their own schemes be their downfall! Let the guilt of their sins collapse on top of them, For they rebel against You. 11But let them all be glad, Those who turn aside to hide themselves in You, May they keep shouting for joy forever! Overshadow them in Your presence As they sing and rejoice, Then every lover of Your name Will burst forth with endless joy. 12Lord, how wonderfully You bless the righteous. Your favor wraps around each one and Covers them Under Your canopy of kindness and joy. 11. 5:Title The Hebrew word used here is Neliloth, or “flutes.” It can also be translated “inheritances.” The early church father, Augustine, translated this: “For her who receives the inheritance,” meaning the church of Jesus Christ. God the Father told the Son in Psalm 2 to ask for His inheritance; here we see it is the church that receives what Jesus asks for. We receive our inheritance of eternal life through the cross and resurrection of the Son of God. The Septuagint reads “For the end,” also found in numerous inscriptions of the Psalms. 12. 5:3 Implied in the concept of preparing the morning sacrifice. The Aramaic text states, “At dawn I shall be ready and shall appear before You.

It's important to remember that having a conversation about us (LGBT) without us will usually be a recycling or preconceived ideas and misconceptions. Can you imagine a group of male church leaders discussing the role of women in the church without females present. We would call that misogyny. Or church leadership discussing indigenous issues without ever consulting with indigenous people themselves to get insight into what their life experience is really all about. We would call that white supremacy/racism/elitism. The church has done a great deal of talking about us but rarely has spoken with us. So when church leaders discuss LGBT people, relationships and the community without speaking with or spending time getting to know LGBT people it does beg the question why. What is there to fear? Why the exclusion? Is this another evidence of homophobia? It's time for the church to invite LGBT people into the conversation. For some this is a conversation about their thoughts and beliefs but for us it is about who we are. You can ask questions. What was it like to sit in church and hear the word abomination to describe your orientation. What was it like to get to the point of coming out knowing you might be rejected by those you've loved and a church you've served.? How did you find resolution of your Christian beliefs and your sexuality? In listening you will learn. That's why it's so important to remember. No conversation about us, without us.

I see at least three reasons why the gospel, as many white Christians understand and proclaim it, causes so few disturbances within our racialized society. The first has to do with the dualistic spirituality that separates people’s souls from their bodies. In this view, the priority of evangelism is to save souls for an eternity with God; everything else is secondary. An evangelistic sermon climaxes with a call to conversion without ever meaningfully addressing the material realities in the new Christian’s life. So this new believer is left to assume that the point of the Christian life is salvation from sin for heaven. A second reason for our culturally palatable evangelism is the hyper-individualism we’ve discussed in previous chapters. Because white Christianity tends to view people as self-contained individuals, we can miss significant relational connections and networks. We are blind, for example, to the cultural privilege into which white people are born in this country. Similarly, the generational oppression and disempowerment attached to the African-American experience is generally invisible to people who believe so strongly in people’s ability to determine their own future. From this individualistic vantage point, inviting people to follow Jesus will almost never disrupt the societal forces that resist the kingdom of God in their lives. Finally, in the previous chapter we observed how race detaches people from place. When Paul began proclaiming the gospel in Ephesus, both the Jews and the Greeks immediately saw how the kingdom of God challenged the deep cultural and religious assumptions of their city. But our detachment from place blinds us to how we have been impacted by our society as well as to how the gospel may very well be an offense to that same society.

What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur. Steve’s mother threw us an engagement party for Queensland friends and family, and I encountered a very common theme: “We never thought Steve would get married.” Everyone said it--relatives, old friends, and schoolmates. I’d smile and nod, but my inner response was, Well, we’ve got that in common. And something else: Wait until I get home and tell everybody I am moving to Australia. I knew what I’d have to explain. Being with Steve, running the zoo, and helping the crocs was exactly the right thing to do. I knew with all my heart and soul that this was the path I was meant to travel. My American friends--the best, closest ones--understood this perfectly. I trusted Steve with my life and loved him desperately. One of the first challenges was how to bring as many Australian friends and family as possible over to the United States for the wedding. None of us had a lot of money. Eleven people wound up making the trip from Australia, and we held the ceremony in the big Methodist church my grandmother attended. It was more than a wedding, it was saying good-bye to everyone I’d ever known. I invited everybody, even people who may not have been intimate friends. I even invited my dentist. The whole network of wildlife rehabilitators came too--four hundred people in all. The ceremony began at eight p.m., with coffee and cake afterward. I wore the same dress that my older sister Bonnie had worn at her wedding twenty-seven years earlier, and my sister Tricia wore at her wedding six years after that. The wedding cake had white frosting, but it was decorated with real flowers instead of icing ones. Steve had picked out a simple ring for me, a quarter carat, exactly what I wanted. He didn’t have a wedding ring. We were just going to borrow one for the service, but we couldn’t find anybody with fingers that were big enough. It turned out that my dad’s wedding ring fitted him, and that’s the one we used. Steve’s mother, Lyn, gave me a silk horseshoe to put around my wrist, a symbol of good luck. On our wedding day, June 4, 1992, it had been eight months since Steve and I first met. As the minister started reading the vows, I could see that Steve was nervous. His tuxedo looked like it was strangling him. For a man who was used to working in the tropics, he sure looked hot. The church was air-conditioned, but sweat drops formed on the ends of his fingers. Poor Steve, I thought. He’d never been up in front of such a big crowd before. “The scariest situation I’ve ever been in,” Steve would say later of the ceremony. This from a man who wrangled crocodiles! When the minister invited the groom to kiss the bride, I could feel all Steve’s energy, passion, and love. I realized without a doubt we were doing the right thing.

LEAD PEOPLE TO COMMITMENT We have seen that nonbelievers in worship actually “close with Christ” in two basic ways: some may come to Christ during the service itself (1 Cor 14:24 – 25), while others must be “followed up with” by means of after-service meetings. Let’s take a closer look at both ways of leading people to commitment. It is possible to lead people to a commitment to Christ during the service. One way of inviting people to receive Christ is to make a verbal invitation as the Lord’s Supper is being distributed. At our church, we say it this way: “If you are not in a saving relationship with God through Christ today, do not take the bread and the cup, but as they come around, take Christ. Receive him in your heart as those around you receive the food. Then immediately afterward, come up and tell an officer or a pastor about what you’ve done so we can get you ready to receive the Supper the next time as a child of God.” Another way to invite commitment during the service is to give people a time of silence or a period of musical interlude after the sermon. This affords people time to think and process what they have heard and to offer themselves to God in prayer. In many situations, it is best to invite people to commitment through after-meetings. Acts 2 gives an example. Inverses 12 and 13 we are told that some folks mocked after hearing the apostles praise and preach, but others were disturbed and asked, “What does this mean?” Then, we see that Peter very specifically explained the gospel and, in response to the follow-up question “What shall we do?” (v. 37), he explained how to become a Christian. Historically, many preachers have found it effective to offer such meetings to nonbelievers and seekers immediately after evangelistic worship. Convicted seekers have just come from being in the presence of God and are often the most teachable and open at this time. To seek to “get them into a small group” or even to merely return next Sunday is asking a lot. They may also be “amazed and perplexed” (Acts 2:12), and it is best to strike while the iron is hot. This should not be understood as doubting that God is infallibly drawing people to himself (Acts 13:48; 16:14). Knowing the sovereignty of God helps us to relax as we do evangelism, knowing that conversions are not dependent on our eloquence. But it should not lead us to ignore or minimize the truth that God works through secondary causes. The Westminster Confession (5.2 – 3), for example, tells us that God routinely works through normal social and psychological processes. Therefore, inviting people into a follow-up meeting immediately after the worship service can often be more conducive to conserving the fruit of the Word. After-meetings may take the shape of one or more persons waiting at the front of the auditorium to pray with and talk with seekers who wish to make inquiries right on the spot. Another way is to host a simple Q&A session with the preacher in or near the main auditorium, following the postlude. Or offer one or two classes or small group experiences targeted to specific questions non-Christians ask about the content, relevance, and credibility of the Christian faith. Skilled lay evangelists should be present who can come alongside newcomers, answer spiritual questions, and provide guidance for their next steps.

The invitation came from Studio Morra in Naples: Come and perform whatever you want. It was early 1975. With the scandalized reactions of the Belgrade press fresh in my mind, I planned a piece in which the audience would provide the action. I would merely be the object, the receptacle. My plan was to go to the gallery and just stand there, in black trousers and a black T-shirt, behind a table containing seventy-two objects: A hammer. A saw. A feather. A fork. A bottle of perfume. A bowler hat. An ax. A rose. A bell. Scissors. Needles. A pen. Honey. A lamb bone. A carving knife. A mirror. A newspaper. A shawl. Pins. Lipstick. Sugar. A Polaroid camera. Various other things. And a pistol, and one bullet lying next to it. When a big crowd had gathered at eight P.M., they found these instructions on the table: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8pm - 2am) Slowly at first and then quickly, things began to happen. It was very interesting: for the most part, the women in the gallery would tell the men what to do to me, rather than do it themselves (although later on, when someone stuck a pin into me, one woman wiped the tears from my eyes). For the most part, these were just normal members of the Italian art establishment and their wives. Ultimately I think the reason I wasn’t raped was that the wives were there. As evening turned into late night, a certain air of sexuality arose in the room. This came not from me but from the audience. We were in southern Italy, where the Catholic Church was so powerful, and there was this strong Madonna/whore dichotomy in attitudes toward women. After three hours, one man cut my shirt apart with the scissors and took it off. People manipulated me into various poses. If they turned my head down, I kept it down; if they turned it up, I kept it that way. I was a puppet—entirely passive. Bare-breasted, I stood there, and someone put the bowler hat on my head. With the lipstick, someone else wrote IO SONO LIBERO—“I am free”—on the mirror and stuck it in my hand. Someone else took the lipstick and wrote END across my forehead. A guy took Polaroids of me and stuck them in my hand, like playing cards. Things got more intense. A couple of people picked me up and carried me around. They put me on the table, spread my legs, stuck the knife in the table close to my crotch. Someone stuck pins into me. Someone else slowly poured a glass of water over my head. Someone cut my neck with the knife and sucked the blood. I still have the scar. There was one man—a very small man—who just stood very close to me, breathing heavily. This man scared me. Nobody else, nothing else, did. But he did. After a while, he put the bullet in the pistol and put the pistol in my right hand. He moved the pistol toward my neck and touched the trigger. There was a murmur in the crowd, and someone grabbed him. A scuffle broke out. Some of the audience obviously wanted to protect me; others wanted the performance to continue. This being southern Italy, voices were raised; tempers flared. The little man was hustled out of the gallery and the piece continued. In fact, the audience became more and more active, as if in a trance. And then, at two A.M., the gallerist came and told me the six hours were up. I stopped staring and looked directly at the audience. “The performance is over,” the gallerist said. “Thank you.” I looked like hell. I was half naked and bleeding; my hair was wet. And a strange thing happened: at this moment, the people who were still there suddenly became afraid of me. As I walked toward them, they ran out of the gallery.

Summing Up While the Old Testament envisions occasional short-term avoidance of sex for the purposes of holiness, it does not envision celibacy as a lifelong calling. The ancient world generally tended to view the question of whether to marry or remain single as a pragmatic matter. Marriage was considered primarily in terms of the responsibilities and duties required to sustain a household. Cynics and Stoics differed on the relative importance of marriage for the fulfilled life. Jesus, in his commendation of those who have “made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19: 12), recognized that God calls some, but not all, to a single life. Paul addresses this question extensively in 1 Corinthians 7 in a carefully balanced way, recognizing some circumstances under which married people might avoid sex for brief periods of time, but discouraging married people from avoiding sex altogether. Paul invites single people to remain unmarried, but clearly recognizes that not all people are gifted with lifelong celibacy. The modern awareness of the persistence of sexual orientation thus raises an important question: Are all gay and lesbian Christians whose sexual orientation is not subject to change necessarily called to a celibate life? If so, then this stands in some tension with the affirmation—of both Jesus and Paul—that lifelong celibacy is a gift for some but not for all.

Summing Up We see the presence throughout Scripture of contrasting patriarchal and egalitarian streams. These tensions are best resolved by the eschatological vision of the New Testament, which holds in tension the ways in which we “already” have entered into the new life of the world to come (and thus have left patriarchy behind) and the ways in which we still live in this world, and have “not yet” fully entered into the life of the world to come (and thus are still bound, in some ways, by the structures of society, including—in the ancient world—patriarchal structures). But the canonical witness as a whole portrays the egalitarian vision as the eschatological destiny of human life, and invites people to live into that destiny, as long as such life does not disrupt the everyday functioning of the Christian community. This means that the hierarchy of the genders cannot be used today as a form of gender complementarity, which is allegedly violated by same-sex intimate relationships. However, to the extent that hierarchical assumptions shape the Bible’s negative portrayal of same-sex eroticism (and such assumptions are evident in multiple places), these texts may be limited in their ability to speak directly to same-sex relationships today—in a context where such hierarchical assumptions no longer apply.

Summing Up • Central to the debates about the applicability of Romans 1: 24-27 to contemporary committed gay and lesbian relationships is Paul’s claim that the sexual misbehavior he describes in these verses is “unnatural,” or “contrary to nature.” We must understand the moral logic underlying this claim in order to discern how to apply these verses to contemporary life. • The Greek word that Paul uses for “nature” here (phusis) does not occur in the Septuagint, the early translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Rather, it arises in Jewish discourse after 200 BCE, when Jewish writers make use of it as a Stoic category in order to interpret Jewish ethics to Gentiles. • In the ancient world there were three dimensions to the understanding of nature, and we find each of these reflected in Paul’s use of the word: ° Nature was understood as one’s individual nature or disposition. Paul’s language in Romans 1 thus reflects the ancient notion that same-sex eroticism was driven by an insatiable thirst for the exotic by those who were not content with “natural” desires for the same sex. The ancient world had no notion of sexual orientation. ° Nature was also understood as what contributed to the good order of society as a whole. In this sense, it looks very much like social convention, and many ancient understandings of what is natural, particularly those concerning gender roles, seem quaint at best to us today. ° Nature was also understood in the ancient world in relationship to biological processes, particularly procreation. Paul’s references to sexual misbehavior in Romans 1: 24-27 as “unnatural” spring in part from their nonprocreative character. Yet there is no evidence that people in the ancient world linked natural gender roles more specifically to the complementary sexual organs of male and female, apart from a general concern with the “naturalness” of procreation. • While we as modern persons should still seek a convergence of the personal, social, and physical worlds, just as the ancients did under the category of nature, we must recognize, even apart from the question of same-sex relationships, that this convergence will look different to us than it looked in the ancient world. • The biblical vision of a new creation invites us to imagine what living into a deeper vision of “nature” as the convergence of individual disposition, social order, and the physical world might look like, under the guidance and power of the Spirit of God. This might also entail the cultivation of a vision for how consecrated and committed gay and lesbian relationships might fit into such a new order.

Long-term results are even harder to measure. On one hand we know that in Graham’s meetings, at home and abroad, some people were alienated by the perceived thinness of his theology and irrelevance of his message to the deeper needs of the times. On the other hand, others found the theology clear, direct, and relevant. One Anglican bishop, looking back, likened Graham’s meetings to “divine adrenaline for a jaded church.” And so it was that thirty years later, Queen Elizabeth II invited Graham to join her for dinner on the royal yacht when it was anchored in San Francisco Bay. As he boarded the vessel, a British naval officer, part of a color guard, broke ranks and whispered two words in Graham’s ear. “Wembley, ’55.

If a church represents the efforts of the devout to invite God to join them in a place created by people, then a forest is a place where God already resides, and people can choose to recognize or ignore his presence.

A church leader studied the history of architecture in New Zealand and found that before World War II, homes were built with verandas, where people would sit in the evenings with their family to great passersby and invite them to stop and chat.

I chose an invitation from the National Council of Churches, a fragile assembly of mainline Protestant churches with no authority but with a tacit commitment to promote Christian ethics in national affairs….Our chairman was Edwin Epsy, a saintly layman who had lived a lifetime on the side of the angels. He was surrounded by serious and committed church leaders, but they failed to recognize the huge gap between themselves and the people in the pews. When white Protestants realized what their liberal clergy was up to, the money simply evaporated. The better I explained the goals of our mission-to inaugurate a just, fair, and free society with equal opportunity and a higher quality of life for all, just as Jesus talked about-the worse our fortunes became.

I’ve found weddings are the event of the world where people will most test your boundaries. If you are not used to drawing lines, you might not be ready to have a wedding. Consider going to a courthouse and calling it a day, because people will TRY YOU during weddings. I don’t know what it is about folks and that day. All types of randoms allasudden feel entitled to everything in your life. From the folks asking if they’re invited (if you have to ask, odds are the answer is a swift NOPE) to the kinfolk who wanna bring plus-four. You got plus-four money? WHO IS PAYING FOR ALL THEM PLATES?!? (Low-key, I know if my grandmother were alive when I got married, she’d have wanted to bring a whole posse of the village plus ten. And I’d have given it to her. I thought about her on my wedding day. She would have had an amazing time. She would have had her own entrance moment, like her church one. She would have worn ALL GOLD EVERYTHING with matching shoes and bag and dripping in at least five gold chains. She would have loved the man I married.)

I chose a new story, and turned the tragedy of Chapter 1 into the posttraumatic growth of Chapter 7. We’ve all had tragedies in our lives. You’ve had tragedies in yours. What insults still run riot in your Default Mode Network, transporting the misery of your past into the promise of your future? Cementing the suffering of yesterday into the mystery of tomorrow? Guaranteeing that you suffer subsequently the way you suffered previously? I invite you to examine every old suffering story of your entire life, and open your mind to the possibility of a new narrative. We can’t change the past, when miserable things happened to us. But we can change our story about the past. This exercise aligns us with the power of possibility; we embrace redemption and growth. Changing our stories doesn’t mean that we justify the actions of the people who hurt us. We don’t need to forgive till we’re 100% ready. And our forgiveness doesn’t excuse what they did to us. What it does accomplish is to release our own stress. We’re not changing our story to help them. We’re doing it to help ourselves, and liberate our own future from the suffering of the past. While we can’t change the past, we can change the story we tell ourselves about the past. That creates a new future.

If we want to learn how to be the church in the twenty-first century, we must change. We have to be transformed. We cannot externalize or outsource the change that needs to happen in many congregations. We can’t become the kind of church we want to be only by hiring a new pastor, changing our worship style, improving our website, or raising more money. The change has to begin with all of us. We have to become people who know how to get outside our comfort zones and connect with our neighbors in ways that build trust and mutual respect. This trust will give us the chance to notice ways the Spirit of God is already at work in the lives of those around us, and it will clarify how our congregations can join in the work that God is doing in and through our neighbors. This is a totally different approach from assuming that our job is to invite people to meet God through joining our own church activities (like worship, small groups, or serving). We are talking about a paradigm shift in our perception and understanding of what the primary activities of the church should be.” (p. 83, Leading Faithful Innovation, by Dwight Zcheile, Michael Binder, & Tessa Pinkstaff)

We have an invitation to go to church in a new way, by praying before the new leaves budding through dormant trees or the wobbly flowers by the side of the road pushing through the solid earth…. [Like Francis of Assisi,] we too can sing with the air we breathe, the sun that shines upon us, the rain that pours down to water the earth ... For we are Easter people, and we are called to celebrate the whole earth as the body of Christ. Every act done in love gives glory to God: a pause of thanksgiving, a laugh, a gaze at the sun, or just raising a toast to your friends at your virtual gathering.

The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem. Without saying as much in so many words, fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.

Burke's complaint against the [(French)] revolutionaries was that they assumed the right to spend all trusts and endowments on their own self-made emergency. Schools, church foundations, hospitals - all institutions that had been founded by people, now dead, for the benefit of their successors - were expropriated or destroyed, the result being the total waste of accumulated savings, leading to massive inflation, the collapse of education and the loss of the traditional forms of social and medical relief. In this way contempt for the dead leads to the disenfranchisement of the unborn, and all that result is not, perhaps, inevitable, it has been repeated by all subsequent revolutions. Through their contempt for the intentions and emotions of those who had laid things by, revolutions have systematically destroyed the stock of social capital, and always revolutionaries justify this by impeccable utilitarian thinking.

Mahatma Gandhi once said to some missionaries in India: “You work so hard at it. Just remember that the rose never invites anyone to smell it. If it is fragrant, people will walk across the garden and endure the thorns to smell it.” The apostle Peter instructs us to live in such a way that others will inquire of the hope that lies within (I Peter 3:15).

One of the common habitas of the early church was hospitality. This does not mean inviting people over for a dinner party; rather, the word hospitality literally means “love of strangers” and is found several times in the New Testament (Romans 12:13; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:8; 1 Peter 4

Although the move from Calvinism to Arminianism began in the seminary classroom, it came to have a profound influence on American culture through the events of the Second Great Awakening. The revivals of the first Great Awakening were supernatural events, wrought by the power of God’s Spirit. The same could be said of the new wave of revivals that began in the 1790s and continued well into the nineteenth century. Like its predecessor, the Second Great Awakening began and flourished in Calvinist churches, where it was believed that because revival is a work of God alone, it is “peculiarly illustrative of the glorious doctrines of grace.”29 However, since it was only natural to want the awakening to continue, some Christian leaders—especially Methodists—sought to devise methods for promoting revival. Their concern for personal salvation was commendable. However, rather than relying on God to bless the ordinary means of grace (prayer, the ministry of the Word, and the sacraments), they adopted the “New Measures” associated with the invitation system: the protracted camp meeting, the “anxious bench,” the altar call. These pragmatic techniques were susceptible to manipulation, especially where it was considered important to count the number of converts. Preachers stressed the necessity of “coming forward to receive Christ,” with the unintended consequence of con-fusing a human decision (to come forward) with a divine transformation (spiritual conversion). In short, there was a shift from revival to revivalism.30 This transition was rooted in an Arminian theology of conversion, which maintained that sinners were neutral—free to choose their own spiritual destiny. Whereas the Puritans had insisted that depravity prevented anyone from choosing for Christ apart from the prior work of the Holy Spirit, the new revivalists called on people to exercise their own ability to receive the gospel. Gardiner Spring described this as the difference between a revival that is “got up by man’s device” and one that is “brought down by the Spirit of God.”31 The difference can be illustrated by comparing Jonathan Edwards, who described revival as “a very extraordinary dispensation of Providence,”32 with Charles Finney, who insisted that a revival is not supernatural but the natural “result of the right use of the constituted means.” Like most revivalists, Finney explicitly rejected the doctrines of grace. Early in his ministry he left the Presbyterian church and repudiated Calvin’s views “on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, or any of the kindred doctrines.”33 The view he eventually adopted was not merely Arminian but actually Pelagian. Finney believed that sinners could initiate their own conversion: “Instead of telling sinners to use the means of grace and pray for a new heart, we called on them to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit and pressed the duty of instant surrender to God.

A church leader studied the history of architecture in New Zealand and found that before World War II, homes were built with verandas, where people would sit in the evenings with their family to greet passersby and invite them to stop and chat.

But this rebellion differed from the tribal disputes of recent years inasmuch as courts had been set up in Albertville which condemned dozens of people to death daily for petty crimes—failure to carry a M.N.C. Lumumba card, failure to agree with the new régime.To be well dressed or to be able to read and write were an invitation to attend the daily tribunal. Daily executions took place in the main street, the Avenue Storms, when the victims were stood against the bricked-up windows of the mission church to face a firing squad. Their bodies were carted away unceremoniously in wheelbarrows to be dumped in the fast-flowing Lukuga. The bullet-pocked walls are there to this day, a grim reminder of senseless tyranny.

A local church invites the prisoners to a viewing of slapstick cartoons. Amid the roars of laughter of his fellow inmates, Sullivan comes to understand the value of his previous work. Once a final plot twist returns him to his former state of comfort and affluence, he renounces his attempts at more serious filmmaking. He concludes, “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Don’t you know that’s all some people have? It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.

If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples. A gifted discipler is someone who invites people into a covenantal relationship with him or her, but challenges that person to live into his or her true identity in very direct yet graceful ways. Without both dynamics working together, you will not see people grow into the people God has created them to be. Challenge may be given from the pulpit or stage on Sunday mornings, but challenge is always given best in the context of personal relationships. No one accidentally creates disciples. Discipleship is an intentional pursuit. In life, when we want to learn how to do something, we find someone with real flesh and blood and have that person teach us how to do what they do. The truth of Scripture is meant to be worked out in us, not something that we hold as an abstract reality. If there’s anything any of us should become great at, it’s making disciples who can make disciples. Every disciple disciples. You can’t be a disciple if you aren’t willing to invest in and disciple others. That’s simply the call of the Great Commission. From the beginning, members know that one day they will start a group of their own. Leaders tell members from the beginning that the expectation is that in 6-12 months they will start one of their own. People often become stunted in their spiritual development if they assume it is only affecting them (though this is never really the case), but knowing that other people are depending on them changes the game in their minds and makes them take their own spiritual development more seriously. When the bar is raised, people either bow out or step up. Most of the time people step up. It is our experience that people want to grow but are unable to will themselves to transformation. They need relationships and structures that keep them accountable and moving toward Jesus. They also know the only way this can happen is with high commitment.

SINCE I HAVE MY LIFE BEFORE ME” By Brooke Bronkowski I’ll live my life to the fullest. I’ll be happy. I’ll brighten up. I will be more joyful than I have ever been. I will be kind to others. I will loosen up. I will tell others about Christ. I will go on adventures and change the world. I will be bold and not change who I really am. I will have no troubles but instead help others with their troubles. You see, I’ll be one of those people who live to be history makers at a young age. Oh, I’ll have moments, good and bad, but I will wipe away the bad and only remember the good. In fact that’s all I remember, just good moments, nothing in between, just living my life to the fullest. I’ll be one of those people who go somewhere with a mission, an awesome plan, a world-changing plan, and nothing will hold me back. I’ll set an example for others, I will pray for direction. I have my life before me. I will give others the joy I have and God will give me more joy. I will do everything God tells me to do. I will follow the footsteps of God. I will do my best!!! During her freshman year in high school, Brooke was in a car accident while driving to the movies. Her life on earth ended when she was just fourteen, but her impact didn’t. Nearly fifteen hundred people attended Brooke’s memorial service. People from her public high school read poems she had written about her love for God. Everyone spoke of her example and her joy. I shared the gospel and invited those who wanted to know Jesus to come up and give their lives to Him. There must have been at least two hundred students on their knees at the front of the church praying for salvation. Ushers gave a Bible to each of them. They were Bibles that Brooke had kept in her garage, hoping to give out to all of her unsaved friends. In one day, Brooke led more people to the Lord than most ever will. In her brief fourteen years on earth, Brooke was faithful to Christ. Her short life was not wasted.

In a certain sense, these people have a better appreciation of the Church and of Catholicism than many Catholics have: an appreciation which is detached and intellectual and objective. But they never come into the Church. They stand and starve in the doors of the banquet -- the banquet to which they surely realize that they are invited -- while those more poor, more stupid, less gifted, less educated, sometimes even less virtuous than they, enter in and are filled at those tremendous tables.

Where I live, on the West Coast, most churches tend to be small and to have little influence in the culture. Stark and Finke explain, “A major reason for the lack of church membership in the West is high rates of mobility, which decrease the ability of all voluntary organizations, not just churches, to maintain membership. That is, people move so often that they lack the social ties needed to affiliate with churches.”25 To address this problem, one of the most effective church-planting networks in the United States began in Tacoma, Washington, by using a method of developing intensive community in neighborhoods. Soma Communities fosters deep and intense relationships by teaching church planters to get closely involved in their neighborhoods, opening their homes to neighbors, gathering friends together on a regular basis, and forming “missional communities” focused on discovering and meeting the needs of neighbors and the community. It is these relational bonds that make someone unfamiliar with Christianity want to try it out. Rick Richardson, who directs the evangelism and leadership program at Wheaton College Graduate School, argues that “belonging comes before believing.” He contrasts older methods of evangelism that focused on asking individuals to make a set of commitments. Today, asserts Richardson, presenting four spiritual laws and inviting people to make decisions for Christ is less effective. “Evangelism is about helping people belong so that they can come to believe. So our communities need to be places where people can connect before they have to commit.”26 The idea is held up by social science research showing that converts tend to sign on to a new faith only after their social ties become stronger to those in the new faith than to others outside it. “This often occurs before a convert knows much about what the group believes.

It's important to remember that having a conversation about us (LGBT) without us will usually be a recycling or preconceived ideas and misconceptions. Can you imagine a group of male church leaders discussing the role of women in the church without females present. We would call that misogyny. Or church leadership discussing indigenous issues without ever consulting with indigenous people themselves to get insight into what their life experience is really all about. We would call that white supremacy/racism/elitism. The church has done a great deal of talking about us but rarely has spoken with us. So when church leaders discuss LGBT people, relationships and the community without speaking with or spending time getting to know LGBT people it does beg the question why. What is there to fear? Why the exclusion? Is this another evidence of homophobia? It's time for the church to invite LGBT people into the conversation. For some this is a conversation about their thoughts and beliefs but for us it is about who we are. You can ask questions. What was it like to sit in church and hear the word abomination to describe your orientation. What was it like to get to the point of coming out knowing you might be rejected by those you've loved and a church you've served.? How did you find resolution of your Christian beliefs and your sexuality? In listening you will learn. That's why it's so important to remember. No conversation about us, without us.

A good church service pulls the vulnerability out of people. When God’s presence is strong in a corporate worship setting, hopefully people will drop their guard and invite Him in. When a sermon is anointed and passionate, people will open their hearts to the words and the message behind it. People come to church expecting to find answers and help for the tender spots in their lives.

There’s one thing that 82 percent of all unchurched people can’t seem to resist. It cuts through their defenses and penetrates their barriers. According to surveys at LifeWay Research, 82 percent of them seem to have a single weakness: if a friend, or someone they know, invites them to church. Reread that: 82 percent of all unchurched people would come to church this weekend if they were invited by a friend.2

Mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God's people, at God's invitation and command, in God's own mission within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation."4

Now, it is important to understand that 82% of all unchurched people would attend your church if they were invited to do so.17 The sad part of this is that only 2% of the church members have invited someone to attend in this last year.

It is a good practice to invite Christians to your house for fellowship. Inviting people into your house means that you are open to them, that you have nothing to hide from them, and that they are welcomed to be comfortable around you.

When it all comes down, the church is the living story we’re inviting young people to participate in. Again, to quote Robert Jenson: “If the church does not find her hearers antecedently inhabiting a narratable world, then the church must herself be that world.

During my time in India, the commitment level of the believers there shocked me. I visited thousands of Christians who had been beaten or watched relatives murdered for their faith. At one point, I said to one of the leaders, “Every believer seems so serious about his or her commitment to Christ. Aren’t there people who just profess Christ but don’t really follow Him?” He answered by explaining that nominal Christianity doesn’t make sense in India. Calling yourself a Christian means you lose everything. Your family and friends reject you, and you lose your home, status, and job. So why would anyone choose that unless he or she is serious about Jesus? I witnessed that same passion during my time in mainland China. The highlight was attending a meeting with underground church members training to become missionaries. The way they prayed and gave testimony about being persecuted was convicting and encouraging. The most surprising part of our time together was when they asked me about church in America. They laughed hysterically when I told them that church for Americans tends to focus on buildings and that people will sometimes switch churches based on music, child care, preaching, or disagreements with other believers. I honestly was not trying to be funny. They laughed in disbelief at our church experiences, thinking it was ridiculous that we would call this Christianity. Keep in mind that the population of China is over 1.3 billion, and in India it’s over 1.2 billion. Meanwhile, there are around 300 million people in the United States. This means that we are a small minority. Our views of “Christianity” are peculiar to the vast majority of the world. I used to think of those “radical believers” overseas as the strange ones. Some simple math revealed to me that in actuality we are the weird ones. The majority of believers on this earth find it laughable that we could reduce the call to follow Jesus and make disciples to an invitation to sit in church service.

Honey, we may not have much money or the other things that some people think are so important. But I have a feeling that of the four men on that plane, I was the happiest and, in a way, the richest. I have blessings that money simply cannot buy. And I have the satisfaction of knowing that the things that are most important to me—you, our family, and my love of God—can endure forever.

Refusing to let the craziness spiral on for even a moment more, cutting off the volleying darkness of revenge and cruelty and condescension because they realize good can only come when one chooses not so much to win but to forgive—this is a taste of Christ’s Way. These folks who astonish us by circumventing something like Newton’s third law by not pushing back with the same force, the same level of consciousness, aimed at them. They respond under a different Law, and the energy of harm is absorbed. It can’t always be done. And sometimes it can be done and isn’t. Alas, even this inconstancy is absorbed. We’re invited to gather these sorts of folk together with the rest of us. Ideally, we can call it a church. Those who show us the power of such Love, such ability to absorb rather than reflect evil back; Christ lives the loudest through such people. Deep down, you and I are all such people. And we are forgiven and embraced even when we refuse to be such people, forget we are such people, or can’t find a way to remain such people.

Todd Billings has articulated the dynamics of theological interpretation in a way that resonates with my account of Derrida’s emphasis on context and communal criteria for what constitutes a “good” interpretation. As Billings winsomely puts it, the ecclesial and theological interpretation of Scripture invites us into “the spacious and yet specified place of wrestling with, chewing on, and performing Scripture.”[422] The generous boundaries (spacious yet specified) of ecclesial interpretation constitute a context for interpreting well, and for knowing what counts as “good” interpretation. Billings captures this dynamic well: Christian readers occupy a spacious territory when they come to know the inexhaustible power of the Spirit’s word through Scripture, a word that is both strangely close to us and yet always meeting us anew as a stranger. Our imaginations need rejuvenation so that we can perceive the wide, expansive drama of salvation into which God incorporates us as readers of Scripture. Yet, as Christians, we also interpret Scripture from a specified location. We are not simply modern individuals looking at an ancient text, or members of a social club looking to an instruction manual on how to make the church run more effectively. We are people who interpret Scripture “in Christ,” as those united to the living Christ by the Holy Spirit’s mediation and power.[423] Such a stipulation of the church (and the canon) as the context for “good” scriptural interpretation is completely consistent with Derrida’s account of iterability and decontextualization.

a closer walk with God than any man he had known. Davenport went from place to place without invitation, and depending upon impulses and impressions, denounced as unconverted such ministers as disagreed with him and exhorted their flocks to desert them and follow him. Confusion and bitterness resulted in almost every parish which he visited. Congregations were divided, alienation and strife were created, the evil effects of which continued for many years.  In order to suppress these evils the Connecticut legislature in 1742 passed an act forbidding any minister or licentiate to preach in any church not his own, without the consent of its pastor and the major portion of its membership, under penalty of forfeiting the right to collect his legal salary, if a resident of the colony, and liability to expulsion from the colony if not. Davenport was accordingly arrested and brought before the assembly, by whom he was adjudged insane and sent to his parish on Long Island. Not long afterwards he appeared in Boston, where in accordance with his custom he denounced the ministers as "unconverted" and "leading their people blindfold to hell." He was arrested for uttering slanderous statements

What if many listeners hold a profoundly different understanding of the concepts of God, truth, right and wrong, freedom, virtue, and sin? What if their approaches to reality, human nature and destiny, and human community are wholly different from our own? For decades, this has been the situation facing Christian churches in many areas around the world — places such as India, Iran, and Japan. Evangelism in these environments involves a lengthy process in which nonbelievers have to be invited into a Christian community that bridges the gap between Christian truth and the culture around it. Every part of a church’s life — its worship, community, public discourse, preaching, and education — has to assume the presence of nonbelievers from the surrounding culture. The aesthetics of its worship have to reflect the sensibilities of the culture and yet show how Christian belief shapes and is expressed through them. Its preaching and teaching have to show how the hopes of this culture’s people can find fulfillment only in Christ. Most of all, such a congregation’s believers have to reflect the demographic makeup of the surrounding community, thereby giving non-Christian neighbors attractive and challenging glimpses of what they would look like as Christians.

In our city, there is a growing homeless problem, and a number of city churches work to alleviate the problems. One of the exciting events that they have from time to time is a public baptism. Men off of the streets who want to profess Christ are immediately invited into the river to be baptized. It is quite a moving experience, and may I notice that it is quite close to the original Bible times experience. Men and women found out about the love of God given to them through Jesus dying on the cross, and they believed God, repenting of their sin, and being baptized in the nearest river at hand. It was a demonstrable change of life to their community, and naturally elicited great interest. I am told the same thing happens in our city; the testimony of people being baptized generates much interest from the homeless people themselves and leads to decisions.

days of the earliest Church? I ask you: Do you want things to go on as usual, or do you want to see God do something unusual? If you want to see the extraordinary, I have to tell you that it means going outside your comfort zone. I wish it were not that way, but it is! Every person God used in the Old Testament and the New Testament and in Church history over the last two thousand years has had to go outside his or her comfort zone. That is partly why faith is sometimes spelled R-I-S-K. I would say this to you: If you get a clear invitation to move outside your comfort zone because of the possibility you might see God do the unusual, take it with both hands!