Church from "the outside"

For a lot of people who are "outsiders" church is like a timeshare that you buy, but you still have to go sit through the sales pitch for it every week.

Church people will often respond with, "Well, those without the Spirit can't understand the things of the Spirit", but are just talking past outsiders, not realizing "church" sometimes has little to do with Spirit.

It's a conundrum I've been wrestling with over this past year since quitting a career in full-time ministry as a minister/pastor and "deconstructing" and rebuilding.

How do you get outsiders who don't "get" the actual Good News message of God through Jesus to hear that message without some of the unrelated baggage that "church" tries to attach to it?

How do you get insiders to see that the whole package deal of "church" as we often think about it is a mixed bag that often includes things that have little to nothing to do with the Good News of God?

And then there's a whole bunch of people in between who also see the conundrum and don't know what to do it about and sometimes "side with" church and sometimes with the outsiders.

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I still don't know the answer to all that.

I do see that people I and others interact with who are outsiders are sometimes very hostile to the idea of church and Christians - many of them deeply wounded from personal experiences.

I see that some are very interested in and amazed by the idea of a God who did what he did through Jesus -- you know, the whole complete forgiveness of sins, gift of the Spirit, etc - - that IS good news to them.

I'm not sure how to help outsiders bridge the gap between that good news and "church".  Church is often hostile to the outsider - even in their attempts to reach out and be nice, inviting, etc.

And maybe it's not always possible. Maybe the integrating of outsiders who come to know God through Jesus can't "join" an existing church because of all the Christian cultural barriers that exist.

Maybe you just have to start a new "group".  Or maybe you don't worry about it at all and you just work with that individual new believer and let God direct what happens next.  At least that's what I see so far.

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For the most part - huge generalization ahead - many churches are so culturally distant from outsiders they can't separate their local church from the good news of God - they're the same thing for many of them.

Socioeconomically, they're so homogenous yet they don't see it.  In spite of their last two decades of trying to be more inclusive and diverse, they're still not for the most part.

Most racial diversity that's come along is subtly laced with and held up by educational and economic similarities. Many of "the diversity" want to move up economically, so they strive to fit in - and some do.

Those who are ideologically and sociologically different "from the get go" don't want to "fit in" and so the insiders have a very difficult time finding any common ground to speak from.

Either the good news of God in Jesus stands on its own outside of middle class, Christian culture or it's only for those who happened to be born into a place in life where that slice of life is/can become attractive. 

That is a hard pill to swallow for those who want to share Jesus but don't know that the version of Jesus they're trying to share is completely tied to their Christian subculture, for better or worse.

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Many outsiders are bought into any one of many worldviews that automatically sees most churches as corrupt, predatory, and just unpleasant, culturally speaking.

They don't see their choices or value system as needing to be based on anything more than what they feel or what they perceive benefits them the most.

Cultural, religious, and political lines have blurred to a large extent and much of the acceptance or rejection of faith matches nicely with the alignment of "the left" and "the right". Not all, but a lot.

Any "Third way" of seeing things, as proposed by Tim Keller, is seen with suspicion by both "sides" as capitulating and selling out yourself and your people.

Lots of conversations need to happen with people from different backgrounds - large ones, small ones, complete ones, in-complete ones, etc - without all the need to stab, get a pound of flesh, etc from the other.

I get a sense of the heat the apostle Paul must have felt when trying to get people from different backgrounds to connect in Jesus and why he wrote so much above loving and accepting one another.

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It's always a nice thing to remember the time Jesus told the apostles that the gates of Hell could not hold back God's kingdom - that the way of life of God would be invasive & overcome the darkness.

The invading & overcoming was through a way of life that is opposite of "the world's" way of living - it would be through love, truth, & serving - not condemning, slandering, and attacking.

I think that whole idea confuses outsider and a lot of good churches & church people, equally.

Paul said that was the case - that God chose ideas, methods, people, etc that would seem foolish to the world and even to religious people.

Regardless of where the start from, may the Lord bless us all with wisdom, discernment, & openness - to have faith to hold on to what's important & faith to let go of what holds us & others back from knowing him.

Peace and goodwill to everyone.